Quote Originally Posted by L50EF15
I don’t have this Mel Bay book—yet. As Jeff will verify, Steve DeRosa has recommended it several times elsewhere.

But I have worked through the Mel Bay Tenor Banjo Method. Having done so, I can see that a lot of jazz guitar chords are variations on tenor banjo practice. Remember, the tenor is tuned in fifths, so you automatically get a wide voicing for most chords. And, being a four string instrument (and that the A string can be shrill if you’re not careful) jazz banjoists reduce chords all the time. Double stops and things guitarists would recognize as shell voicings are common. And the moving “tenor line” goes back to at least Johnny St. Cyr.

I thought I was reading too much into this idea, but then I read an essay on the Freddie Green site arguing that Freddie essentially imported his banjo voicings and techniques to the guitar, evolving over time to his famous “one note chord”/tenor line approach—which, again, was long established banjo practice.

Bottom line: There are only so many chord fingering patterns one can use on a fretboard, any fretboard, be it mandolin, banjo, or guitar. Since many of the Big Band guitarists came from playing banjo (including Mel Bay himself), seeing those patterns adapted from one instrument to the other makes sense.

And now to order that book…
P.S.: Here’s the essay I referenced:

A New Hypothesis About Freddie Green's Guitar Technique, by Albert Romaní