Herb Ellis RIP | Jazz Guitar Icon Passes

Jazz guitar great Herb Ellis passed away on March 28th 2010 at his home in Los Angeles, aged 88.  Together with Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Howard Roberts and Joe Pass, Herb was one of the 'Big 5' jazz guitarists of his era.  

Born in 1921 in McKinney, Texas, Herb Ellis started playing at age 10.  Citing Charlie Christian as a major influence, Ellis graduated from Texas State College, where he also helped develop a jazz program, and joined the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra in 1945.

But it was joining the Oscar Peterson Trio in 1953 that proved to be the pivotal point in his career, establishing his name in the Jazz Polls from Downbeat to Playboy. 

And in the face of Peterson's sheer virtuosity on the piano, Herb proved that he could hold his own even at breakneck tempos.  Using a down-picking technique interspersed with left-hand legato, Herb developed a very fluid sound. 

In a 1978 interview he explained how he had to quickly evolve his technique when he started playing with Oscar Peterson:
"Those really fast tempos were hard, and I realized that if I were to remain with Oscar I'd better get my act together.  So I practiced a lot of scales and things to build up my speed.  I don't pick all my notes, especially at a fast tempo.  I may pick about half or a third of all the notes I play.. I prefer to slur because I think it sounds more musical.  If a horn player were to tongue every note it would sound choppy, and the same goes for the guitar."

Herb's playing was a lesson to guitarists everywhere on how to play with one of the most accomplished and musically intimidating jazz pianists on the face of the Earth while keeping one's cool and keeping it swingin'.

And with all respect for the man and his memory, Herb always swung his ass off.

RIP Herb Ellis.  You will be missed.

Arlen Roth's Guitar Lessons At Gibson.com

Born 30th October 1952, Arlen Roth grew up in New York's Bronx district. The son of famed New Yorker magazine cartoonist Al Ross, Roth took an early interest in the blues guitar stylings of BB King, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush.

Attending the High School of Music and Art as an art and photography student, Roth was soon gigging locally. In 1971 he moved to Woodstock and started playing with John Sebastian and Paul Butterfield.

It was Butterfield who immediately noticed a stark similarity in Roth's playing style with that of Mike Bloomfield, his former guitar-playing partner in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

In the mid-70's Roth was active in the New York session scene and toured with Art Garfunkel and Phoebe Snow. Roth made enough of an impression on Garfunkel to be invited to join the Simon & Garfunkel reunion tour in 1983.

Perhaps one of Arlen's more unusual gigs was as guitar coach for actor Ralph Macchio for the 1985 film Crossroads, where he helped Macchio to convincingly mime his guitar parts for the movie.

But Roth's greatest claim to fame has got to be his groundbreaking Hot Licks series of instructional tapes.

What started out originally as a series of Roth's own lessons on cassette tape in 1981, the Hot Licks catalog soon grew to include players the caliber of Albert Collins, Steve Morse, Tal Farlow and John Entwistle.

Check out the tres cool National 'map-shaped' guitar Arlen is holding in this early Hot Licks ad from 1981!

Soon Hot Licks was producing lessons on videotape, allowing mere guitar mortals a peek at the genius and dexterity of players like Joe Pass, Eric Johnson and Vinnie Moore. Hot Licks single-handedly spawned the instructional video industry that fluorishes to this day.

Arlen contributes a Lesson Of The Day column at Gibson's website here:

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Lessons/Lesson-Of-The-Day/lower-position-slam-licks/

He also maintains a blog at Gibson's website which you can read here:
http://www2.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/Blogs/arlen-roth-blog.aspx

(Arlen Roth with Gold Top Les Paul Pic Source: www.gibson.com)

Check Out More Hot Licks DVDs Here!

Birthday Salute and Quintessential Solo #4 | Barney Kessel

Born 17th October 1923, jazz guitar icon Barney Kessel's credentials are staggering.

Having recorded with jazz luminaries such as Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins in the 40's and 50's, Kessel became a top-gun LA session guitarist in the 60's and appeared on many a Phil Spector-produced hit record.

Kessel was also a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio and a founding member of the Great Guitars that included Joe Pass, Herb Ellis, Tal Farlow and Charlie Byrd.

In this clip, Kessel's take on the Jimmy Van Heusen classic Here's That Rainy Day begins with his trade mark unaccompanied chord-melody style. Reharmonizing the melody with moving inner lines and chromatic devices, Kessel's chord solo is reminiscent of a lush orchestral string arrangement.

Check out also his guitar intro on his landmark recording with Julie London -- from his Columbia days as LA session man -- on Cry Me A River. Absolutely stunning.




Buy Barney Kessel CDs Here!

Joe Pass and the Synanon Fender Jaguar

Here's a clip, circa 1963, of the late, great Joe Pass playing a Fender Jaguar.

Born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua, Joe Pass claimed a strong Charlie Parker influence and spoke often about painstakingly copying the bebop innovator's licks line by line off of 45 rpm records. By age 20 in 1949, he was jamming in clubs on New York's famed 52nd Street -- the birthplace of modern jazz.

The negative aspects of the jazz life -- including an addiction to heroin -- soon took their toll on the young Pass. After 5 years in a Texas prison he decided that enough was enough and voluntarily entered Synanon's drug rehabilitation program.

While at Synanon he practiced on a Fender Jaguar that belonged to the center. He continued to play the Jaguar on gigs after his release and that guitar is the one he is playing in the video above.

After seeing him play the Jaguar at a club, a businessman by the name of Mike Peak, who was also an avid guitarist himself, decided that it was not an instrument befitting Joe's talents. Several months later, on Pass's birthday, a Gibson ES175 --the guitar most closely associated with the guitarist for much of his career -- was delivered to him at his home as a gift.

Ibanez AH10 Allan Holdsworth Signature Model

Determined to become the industry leader in a burgeoning guitar market, Ibanez started developing a roster of endorsees in the mid '70's.

Artists such as Bob Weir, Steve Miller and Paul Stanley played existing models from Ibanez's catalog, aesthetically modified with tons of inlaid mother-of-pearl, or in Stanley's case, with inlaid pieces of broken mirror.

In 1977, Ibanez collaborated with George Benson to produce the first of their artist-designed guitars -- the GB10 and GB20.

By the early to mid-80's, Ibanez's roster of artists with personalized signature models included Steve Lukather, Allan Holdsworth, George Benson, Lee Ritenour and Joe Pass.

Ibanez had yet to sign on rising-star Steve Vai -- arguably the company's most famous endorsee -- who was still mainly playing his Grover Jackson-built Charvel and Tom Andersons.

The AH10 model was designed in collaboration with Allan Holdsworth in 1984. Holdsworth had very clear and radical ideas as to what he wanted in a custom instrument:

• A light basswood body with a large, rectangular hollowed-out area under the pickguard for added acoustic resonance
• Custom designed AH Special humbucking pickups with adjustable polepieces on both coils
• A single volume and a single tone control
• A lightweight aluminum bridge
• A wider ebony fingerboard with jumbo frets
• Slightly wider string spacing at the nut and narrower string spacing at the bridge -- giving a very uniform string spacing along the entire length of the instrument
• The first model, the AH10 had only a single humbucking pickup at the bridge position, which is Holdsworth's preference to this day. A two-pickup model, the AH20 appeared after several months to create a more versatile (and probably more saleable) instrument

The AH10 and AH20 were only available for about 2 years making these guitars very sought-after by Ibanez afficionados.




Buy Allan Holdsworth CDs and DVDs Here!

Five Notes.. And You'll Know Who It Is

This is something you have to be born with, I think.

It is the ability to play three, four or five notes and be instantly recognizable. And it doesn't matter whether the player who posseses this rare gift is historically famous or a complete unknown.

For the rarest of this breed, one can even define eras by their influence on generations of guitarists, for example pre-Van Halen and post-Van Halen, or pre-Charlie Christian and post-Charlie Christian.

For most of us music mortals, a style is created by fusing several influences. And if one has listened widely, those influences can still be clearly picked out.

The unique innovator, on the other hand, has taken the amalgam of his influences and distilled them into a recognizable signature sound and style.


And then there is the true innovator.

The true innovator takes what has come before him, throws most of it out the window and re-invents the instrument. While sometimes influencing generations of players. You'll usually know who they are after just four or five notes.


This is a partial list of who I feel are the true innovators of the guitar world, past and present:

Robert Johnson
Charlie Christian
Freddie Green
Django Reinhardt
BB King
Wes Montgomery
Grant Green
George Van Eps
Joe Pass
George Benson
Jimi Hendrix
Carlos Santana
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Pat Martino
Eddie Van Halen
Yngwie Malmsteen
Jeff Beck
Al DiMeola
John McLaughlin
Pat Metheny
Chet Atkins
Allan Holdsworth