My Favorite Guitarists
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guitaristsfav.shtml | Updated: 18-Jun-2009 - 11:45
Favorite Jazz Guitarists
There are a wealth of jazz guitarists that we have to draw on. Here are a few my favorites and artists that have influenced me over the years.
All Time Greats and My Favorite Jazz Guitarists *
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Links
- www.howardalden.com
- Concord Records Bio: www.concordrecords.com/bios/aldenbio.html
- AMG
Info
"He may be the best of his generation," writes Owen Cordle in JazzTimes. George Kanzler of the Newark Star Ledger proclaims that he is "the most impressive and creative member of a new generation of jazz guitarists." And Chip Deffaa of the New York Post observes that he is "...one of the very finest young guitarists working today."
It seems that the only thing regarding Howard Alden on which the critics have debate is whether the remarkable jazz guitarist is one of the best or simply the best.
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As a JAZZ GUITARIST, Chuck broke into the Philly Jazz Scene with the Chuck Anderson Trio in 1973. The group featured Al Stauffer on bass and rotated Tim Paxon, Ray Deely and Darryl Brown on drums. The trio played concerts throughout the east coast and recorded its first album in 1975. the album, originally titled Mirror Within a Mirror is included in a compilation CD titled The Vintage Tracks. This CD, released in 2005, contains all of the trio recordings from the 70's.
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Links
Info
"The greatest jazz guitar player I ever heard is George Benson. He'll scare anybody to death in this world. But you see the stuff he plays? George Benson, wherever you are, come out of that stuff and play some Harold Arlen tunes and Duke tunes. - Ruby Braff
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Links
Info
Jimmy Bruno returned to the six string guitar in 2002 after many years on the 7 string guitar. He endorses Sadowsky Guitars and plays the Sadowsky Jimmy Bruno model guitar and a custom Sadowsky solid body. He also endorses and plays Sadowsky strings--a custom Jimmy Bruno set.
Jimmy Bruno Guitar Institute
The JBGI is a progressive, self-paced video course which teaches jazz guitar. It is intensively focused on developing the student's ear and sense of music. Jazz improvisation (soloing) is systematically presented. Students are invited to submit videos to Jimmy Bruno for his evaluation at various points in the method.
A Few YouTube Videos
- Jimmy Bruno Plays "Our Love Is Here To Stay"
- Jimmy Bruno Plays "Joy Spring"
- Jimmy Bruno - No Nonsense Jazz Guitar DVD, I'll Remember April
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Links
- Professor, Director of Jazz Studies Program, Department of Ethnomusicology, UCLA
- Kenny Burrell
- ClassicJazzGuitar.com
- AMG
Info
"There's no finer guitar player. There may be somebody else who is as good, but you can't play finer guitar than Kenny Burrell." - George Benson
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Links
- WikipediA
- Charlie Christan - Legand of Jazz Guitar
- ClassicJazzGuitar.com
- AMG
Info
Charlie Christian was born in Bonham, Texas, USA but his family moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA when he was a small child. Both of his parents were musicians and he had two brothers, Edward, born 1906 and Clarence, born 1911 who were both musicians, all taught music by their father, Clarence Henry Christian. The elder Christian was struck blind by fever and in order to support the family he and the boys would work as buskers, on what the Christian's called "busts." He would have them lead him into the better neighborhoods where they would perform for cash or goods. When Charles was old enough to go along he first entertained by dancing. Later he would learn guitar, and inherited his father's instruments after his death when Charles, as the family called him, was 12. He attended Douglass School in Oklahoma City, and was further encouraged in music by instructor Zelia Breaux. Charles wanted to play tenor saxophone in the school band, but she insisted he try trumpet instead. After learning you get a disfigured upper lip from playing trumpet, he quit, and pursued his interest in baseball, at which he excelled. Clarence Christian told Charlie Christian biographer Craig McKinney in an interview in 1978 that in the 1920's and 30's Edward Christian led a band in Oklahoma City as a pianist and had a shaky relationship with trumpeter James Simpson. After a rivalry with a certain girl, Simpson had the urge to get even with the egotistical Christian. Around 1931, he took guitarist "Bigfoot" Ralph Hamilton and began secretly schooling the younger Charles on jazz. They taught him to solo on three songs, "Rose Room," "Tea for Two," and "Sweet Georgia Brown." When the time was right they took him out to one of the many after hours jam sessions along "Deep Deuce," Northeast Second Street in Oklahoma City.
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Links
- Official Site: www.jimhallmusic.com
- ClassicJazzGuitar.com
- AMG
- NEA Jazz Masters Jim Hall
- Lushlife
- Europe Jazz Network
- Interview with Jim Hall at Dave Gould's Guitar Pages
Info
Jim Hall endorses Sadowsky Guitars and plays the Jim Hall Signature Model guitar. He also endorses and plays Sadowsky strings, specifically, the SGF11 set.
This is one of my favorite artists with great musical taste.
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Links
Info
Steve is one of my all time favorite guitarists. I really love his chord work. Check out his previous work with the Caribbean Jazz Project. Visit Dave Samuels web site.
Here are Steve's latest CDs
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Borrowed Time (2007) |
The Green Field (2006) |
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Links
Info
Pat Metheny was born in Kansas City on August 12, 1954 into a musical family. Starting on trumpet at the age of 8, Metheny switched to guitar at age 12. By the age of 15, he was working regularly with the best jazz musicians in Kansas City, receiving valuable on-the-bandstand experience at an unusually young age. Metheny first burst onto the international jazz scene in 1974. Over the course of his three-year stint with vibraphone great Gary Burton, the young Missouri native already displayed his soon-to-become trademarked playing style, which blended the loose and flexible articulation customarily reserved for horn players with an advanced rhythmic and harmonic sensibility - a way of playing and improvising that was modern in conception but grounded deeply in the jazz tradition of melody, swing, and the blues. With the release of his first album, Bright Size Life (1975), he reinvented the traditional "jazz guitar" sound for a new generation of players. Throughout his career, Pat Metheny has continued to re-define the genre by utilizing new technology and constantly working to evolve the improvisational and sonic potential of his instrument.
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Links
- WikipediA Wes Montgomery Tribute Page: glolink.com/WES/
- ClassicJazzGuitar.com
- Nancy Wilson's NPR Jazz Profiles series: Wes Montgomery
- AMG
Info
"The first time I worked with Wes was for a recording session at the Tsubo Club on San Francisco Bay. We played, just like we'd play in a club, with an audience, like crazy, with no other idea than to take off musically." - Johnny Griffin
Has to be considered one of the top three, if not top, jazz guitarists of this century. No guitarist that has come after Wes has not been influenced by him one way or the other.
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Links
- WikipediA |
- The Django Reinhardt Swing Page: www.hotclub.co.uk/index.html ♫
- A Django Article on the Vintage Guitar Site: www.vguitar.com/vguitar.htm ♫
- David Ahmed's Djangio Reinhardt page:homepage.mac.com/davidahmed/django.html
- ClassicJazzGuitar.com
- AMG
- FRENCH SITE: www.about-django.com
Info
Jean "Django" Reinhardt (January 23, 1910 – May 16, 1953) was a Belgian Sinto Gypsy jazz guitarist. He was one of the first prominent jazz musicians to be born in Europe, and one of the most renowned jazz guitarists of all time. His most renowned tunes include "My Sweet", "Minor Swing", "Tears", "Belleville", "Djangology" and "Nuages" (French, meaning "Clouds"). His name is pronounced [dʒɑ̃ŋˌgo ʀeˈnɑʀt].
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Links
Info
Guild Johnny Smith Award by Benedetto
(from WikipediA) - William Schultz, chairman of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, of which Guild Guitars was a subsidiary, asked Smith if he would be willing to return his endorsement to the Guild Artist Award. Familiar with Schultz's management, and knowing that the construction would be supervised by master luthier Bob Benedetto, Smith agreed. The Guild Johnny Smith Award by Benedetto was available through Guild dealers until early 2006 when Benedetto left Fender. Unlike Guild and Gibson, Heritage Guitars discontinued manufacture of their Smith-designed guitar after Smith withdrew his endorsement.
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Non Jazz Guitarists
Here are a few more of my all-time favorite guitarists. Not particulary jazz but some of the best guitarists around.
- Johnny A - Tommy's recordings are great but you have to see this guy live.
- Tommy Emmuanuel - Tommy's recordings are great but you have to see this guy live.
- Jeff Beck - I've always loved the Wired and Blow by Blow albums.
Johnny A.
The Koukla Music Co.
P.O.Box 550
Salem, MA 01970
YouTube: Johnny A. Open Forum
YouTube: Performances
Links
- www.johnnya.com
- WidipediA: Johnny A
Info
(from artist's site) For Johnny A., the guitar has held a lifelong fascination, her six strings exerting a powerful influence and addictive beauty since the first time he held them. The pursuit of this musical lady with the perfect shape has driven his years - shaping the course of his life – taking him places he never could have imagined. Through inspiring moments of ecstatic improvisation, deep contemplation and inevitable gaps of frustration it has been a stormy affair with a tempestuous hollow-body lover, but the marriage has been nothing less than remarkable.
Gibson Custom Shop Johnny A. Signature with Bigsby
Johnny A. is widely regarded as one of America's finest contemporary guitarists. Gibson thinks so – their Custom Shop designed a Signature Edition guitar per his specific requests which, when it was marketed in 2003, placed him in an exclusive club that included legends like BB King, Wes Montgomery, Chet Atkins, Joe Perry, Pat Martino and Les Paul himself. The public thinks so too - Johnny A.'s latest works have sold many thousands of copies as well as being his personal best. The most recent CD's - 2004's Get Inside and 1999's Sometime Tuesday Morning, are the critically acclaimed solo culmination of a lifetime of learning, sharing and bonding in a long parade of bands and players.
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Links
Info
(From JeffBeck.com) - Veering away from hard rock, Beck created two landmark two jazz-fusion albums-" Blow By Blow" (1975) and "Wired" (1976). The all-instrumental albums were a critical and popular success and remain two of the top-selling guitar instrumental albums of all time. The live album, "Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live" followed in 1977.
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Links
- www.TommyEmmanuel.com
- Woodsongs.com Performance (349)
- Woodsongs.com Performance 245
- AcousticPlayerMagazine.com Performance 245
Info
‘It’s always funny to me when people use the phrase, ‘Best guitar player in the world’. There are too many variables such as technique, uniqueness, emotional investment in the notes, etc. But If I had to pick one, it would be Tommy Emmanuel. Watching him perform can be a study in artistic and virtuosic human achievement.”
— Steve Vai, Guitarist and Co-Owner of Favored Nations
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Links
Artist Info
(from artist's site) - Styles may come and go, but good music will weave its ageless magic no matter what the current fad. Ulli Bögershausen is a guitar wizard with a truly remarkable craft at his command. He possesses a gift for making time stand still. And while the moment lingers, his solo guitar playing paints pictures upon the very soul of his audience – inobtrusive, yet unforgettable; vignettes glowing with the serenity of a day in late summer, a slight melancholy blended wonderfully with a mediterranean joy of living in a steady dance-like flow of notes in the air of an endless blue September day.
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Ukulele
For ukulele I reccommend the following:
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“[Hill's] technique is a seamless blend of speed, accuracy and expressiveness... A glimpse into the future of the ukulele.” - Jim Beloff, Author of The Ukulele: A Visual History
Artist Info
(Short Bio from the James Hill Press Kit)
Ever heard of the `ukulele? Sure you have - it's that funny little four-stringed Hawaiian guitar that goes “plunk-a-plunk,” right? Wrong. The `ukulele (pronounced oo-koo-lay-lay) is hotter than ever, embraced worldwide by a crop of young musicians eager to push the instrument into uncharted territory. Leading the charge is Canada's James Hill, “the Wayne Gretzky of the `ukulele” according to Stuart McLean, host of CBC Radio’s Vinyl Cafe.
With the release of his third solo album, A Flying Leap, this “imaginative and versatile” 26-year-old virtuoso continues to “tear up the uke” (AcousticGuitar.net). Seven of the album’s ten tracks are genre-bending originals ranging in style from the bluegrass-tinged 'Song for Cheri' to the jazzy 'Fleas My Dog Has' to the remarkable 'One Small Suite for `Ukulele,' an ambitious work in three movements written for `ukulele and string quartet. Displaying a “keen interest in pushing the envelope,” James' “broad musical horizons and crisp, clean playing” prove that “he can play just about anything in any genre” (John Berger, Honolulu Star-Bulletin). A Flying Leap is one part Earl Scruggs, one part Django Reinhardt garnished with a pinch of Don Ho and served with a side of Hendrix.
(Video) James Playing - Down on the Rideau Canal
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Links
- www.JakeShimabukuro.com
- www.JakeShimabukuro.net
- www.myspace.com/officialjakeshimabukuro
- allaboutjazz.com
- YouTube: Jake Shimabukuro - EPK (Electronic Press Kit)
Shot in New Orleans and Hawaii during the summer of 2006
Artist Info
(From Jake's bio) Jake Shimabukuro was born on November 3, 1976, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Having learned to play the ukulele from the young age of four, Shimabukuro marked his professional debut in 1998 after becoming a member of the group, Pure Heart, a few years after graduating from high school. Shimabukuro's appearance dramatically altered traditional perceptions of ukulele music. Playing with incredible technique and great feeling, he covers all types of music from Classical music to Jazz, Rock, Blues, Funk and of course, improvisation that comes naturally to the ukulele, Shimabukuro continues to be a source of inspiration to the Hawaiian music scene.
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