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Jimmy Bruno Guitar Licks

Jimmy Bruno was born in Philadelphia on July 22, 1953. He started playing guitar at the age of 7, inspired by his father who was also a guitar player. Jimmy never took formal training, but he had a lot of intruction from his dad. Jimmy Bruno's greatest influences are Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass and Barney Kessel.

When he was 19 Jimmy Bruno toures with Buddy Rich. After touring a year he did a lot of non-jazz gigs in Las Vegas and LA, but when his career didn't advance as expected he returned to Philly to focus on his passion: jazz. This meant that his wages went from several 1000 dollars a week to a minimum wage, but playing jazz fullfilled him and made him happy.

In 1992 Concord Jazz founder Carl Jefferson discovered Jimmy Bruno and he recorded his first album as a leader, called Sleight Of Hand.

In addition to being one of the hottest hard bop players, Bruno teaches jazz guitar and improvisation at Philadelphia's University of Arts.

Recommended listening : Like That

1) This guitar lick is an excerpt of Jimmy Bruno's guitar solo on Giant Steps from the CD Burnin' (click and scroll down to hear a sample mp3). The lick starts on bar 10 of the chorus.

The first measure starts with a sweep pick on C maj 7, the first upper structure triad of Am7. There's a modulation from G major to B major in bar 3.

Jimmy Bruno is besides an amazing guitar player also a very good educator. He wrote some great instructional jazz guitar books: Six Essential Fingerings For The Jazz Guitarist, The Art Of Picking and Jazz Guitar Virtuoso.

The Sibelius Score

2) Here's the intro to 'Giant Steps' from the album Burnin' (click and go down for a sample mp3).

The first bar of this lick has some double stops (another example of double stops) that contain the 3 and 5 of the chord. In the second bar Jimmy plays a Gm7 arpeggio on the Bb7 chord what sounds like a Bb6.