Results for "Wes Montgomery"

Wes Montgomery

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States (where he also died of a heart attack in 1968), Montgomery came from a musical family, in which his brothers, Monk (string bass and electric bass) and Buddy (vibraphone, and piano), were jazz performers. Although Wes was not skilled at reading music, he could learn complex melodies and riffs by ear. Montgomery started learning guitar in his late teens, listening to and learning recordings of his idol, the guitarist Charlie Christian. Along with the use of octaves (playing the same note on two strings one octave apart) for which he is widely known, Montgomery was also an excellent "single-line" or "single-note" player, and was very influential in the use of block chords in his solos

Gabriel Vicéns: A Growing Voice In Jazz

By R.J. DELUKE

Guitarist Gabriel Vicéns from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, has only been on the New York City scene for about five years. But his rich tone and engaging style have gained him a reputation—still growing—as a remarkable voice and an artist with something valid to say. He's not a guitar shredder, though he has plenty of ...

Chris May’s Best Releases Of 2020

By CHRIS MAY

Not the best year for live gigs in London, but Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra just made it under the wire, lighting up the Jazz Cafe in late January. Rather like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Sosimi's band has form as an incubator of young talent. A recent star in the making was trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi, who has ...

Derek Trucks: Chops, Romance & Dance

By ALAN BRYSON

It's a good bet that most of us have heard people say they don't like jazz, or even worse, drop the H-bomb, “I hate jazz." If you choose to engage, the key is to tread lightly and tailor an approach that considers the tastes and sensibilities of the other person. The “So You Don't Like Jazz" ...

Mike Melito/Dino Losito Quartet: You're It!

By JACK BOWERS

The album cover says “Mike Melito / Dino Losito Quartet." What it does not say is that drummer Melito and pianist Losito have at their beck-and-call an awesome secret weapon, Philadelphia-based tenor saxophonist Larry McKenna, a phenom from the Lester Young school of elegant swinging whose voice on the horn is as debonair and persuasive as ...

King Crimson: The Complete 1969 Recordings

By JOHN KELMAN

There will, inevitably, exist some cynics who will dispute the first comment about King Crimson's long-awaited The Complete 1969 Recordings box set, but it's difficult to imagine it being anything but the plain truth. This is, indeed, the definitive final word on the band's first lineup, collecting multiple versions of its earth-shattering 1969 Island Records debut, ...

The Archival Producer: Zev Feldman

By B.D. LENZ

I have to be honest. When I approached Zev Feldman about doing this interview I really had no idea what an “archival producer" was. I had the impression that it was a very solitary task that involved working in some, half-lit, library basement searching through dusty stacks. I came to understand that it's really more about ...

Jimmy Cobb: Remembering U

By PIERRE GIROUX

The death of Jimmy Cobb earlier in 2020 at 91 years of age marked the end of a singular era in jazz, as well as the career of one of the tastiest drummers in the field. Beginning in the 1950s, Cobb participated in numerous seminal recordings stretching from Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue (Columbia, 1959), John ...

Joe Farnsworth: Friends In High Places

By R.J. DELUKE

Joe Farnsworth is one of the top jazz drummers working today, with a resume that includes some of the absolute greats. His muscular swing and precise timekeeping have been attractive to employers like Wynton Marsalis, Diana Krall, McCoy Tyner, George Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, Eric Alexander, Benny Golson and many more. He likes to say ...

Chuck Anderson: Dominos

By VICTOR L. SCHERMER

This noteworthy album by Chuck Anderson, one of our finest guitarists, was composed and recorded in the midst of the pandemic but with no mention of it in the liner notes, so you can draw your own conclusions as to whether the “dominos" in the title bear any relation to the “falling dominos" of all the ...