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As everyone round here knows Teles have become really popular guitars for jazz.
I was just curious to know if any jazzers used them right when they were new guitars back in the fifties.
Ive seen a picture of Oscar Moore’s Telecaster on here which was a very early one IIRC. Ed Bickert is a famous Tele player but he came a little later I suppose. Was there anyone else using them? Or was that first wave of electric jazz guitarists very much wedded to big jazz boxes?
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01-06-2018 07:49 PM
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no they did not use them right away...there was a long learning curve/adjustment period...the broadcaster/esquire/tele was originally made to appeal to the western swing crowd..that was leo fenders music...he brought an early prototype to jimmy bryant..who was one of western swing/west coast countrys greatest players..and jimmy just tore it up
but jazzers...not leo's niche!
even his brilliant jazzmaster design didnt draw trad jazzers, who were (and still are) forever drawn to the beautiful archtops!! hah
later all the jazzers gone LA session cats used them..so you see pictures of tommy tedesco, barney kessel, howard roberts etc etc with teles...but thats early 60's
good stuff
cheers
ps- and of course les paul had one!! haha
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Amen.
Of course, you could consider that "western swing" is primarily “swing", i.e. jazz. Jimmy Bryant recorded some rather jazzy stuff back when the tele was an absolute novelty.
There were also some jump blues players who adopted the tele (or esquire) early on: Clarence Gatemouth Brown (check his Peacock sides) and one BB King.
As far as I know, that’s as close as it gets to ‘50s “jazz” on a tele. But I’ll stay tuned in case someone can dig out an obscure piece of tele history. And I’m still curious about that Oscar Moore picture…
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I immediately thought of this video. Pretty cool to see a young Joe Pass on a Fender.
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in the studio, Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis used Teles
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I have pics of both… heck, I even have a pic of Joe Pass with a nice whiteguard tele, but I would not be able for the life of me to point to a single recording made by any of them (or Oscar Moore) on a tele… anyone? Now, that would be square in the OP’s ballpark.
Originally Posted by wintermoon
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I think to a large degree this must be a regional thing. Fender started out at a time when regional music scenes and radio and record markets were big enough to support large cohorts of performers. Fender targeted their local region and styles (Southern California and Southwest C&W and Western Swing) partly because they could, and partly because some of the people who actually designed Fender gear (Leo didn't do it all by himself) were part of that scene as players. Gibson dominated the Midwest and South at first (you don't see a lot of Teles in pictures of Nashville artists until the early 50s), and Gretsch and Epiphone had the East. As radio, records, and artists became more national, and with the big post-WW II population migrations, gear started spreading around and the virtues of Fender designs (lower cost, simplicity, ruggedness, versatility) caught on more broadly.
John
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Just thought I'd share an in-color photo of Moore's Nocaster.
Man, some recordings of this guitar through an octal tube amp would be great to hear, played by Moore or not.
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Here's more info on the tele... Originally Posted by omphalopsychos
Just thought I'd share an in-color photo of Moore's Nocaster.
A Modernist: Oscar Moore and Fender (1951)
Go to the website to read more (scroll down to the pic of the tele)...
Be sure to red the PDF of the 1953 letter from Fender trying to get Jimmy Raney to use and sign a release for Fender to promote Jimmy playing a telecaster... Fantastic history!
here's a quick quote
What makes Moore's Fender so unique? The biggest aspect is it's gold hardware. Based on other examples of these guitars from the same era, this is the first as well as the only for several years to sport gold metal hardware. Gold metal hardware was commonplace on higher-end archtops at the time, which most jazz guitarists preferred. But Leo's guitar was a working man's instrument seemingly fairly devoid of any such loft aspirations. This shows that maybe this is not the entire story. The guitar is also finished in white. A simple enough characteristic and certainly a color that would become fairly commonplace on Fenders by the end of the decade, but in the nascent days of the company nearly all of instruments produced blond(e). The gold pickguard, again, seems to be a complete one-off and unlike anything Fender would produce for years to come.
There seem to be as many questions about Moore and Fender as there are answers. It almost certainly was a custom guitar produced specifically for Moore. But why a jazz man like Oscar who seemed to be on the lee-side of success? It turns out that Fender was fairly aggressive in their efforts to get the Broadcaster/Nocaster/Telecaster into the hands of top players regardless of their primary field of music, which explains why everyone from Jimmy Wyble to Les Paul ended up with guitars from the company around this time....Last edited by Steve Z; 01-09-2018 at 04:15 PM.
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Jazz funk, Jim Mullen from Morrisey Mullen band (UK).
But now with a MoR Aria...
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So in the letter by Don Randall we have the name of an early jazz Telecaster adopter: “Michael Andre who is with Ralph Marterie”… unfortunately, he seems to have left no trace in the internet! More detective work ahead! Originally Posted by Steve Z
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not surprising that oscar moore would have one...nat king cole trio had been based in los angeles area since the late 30's....they signed with capitol in 1943...cole was on tv by the 50's...very hollywood..and very commercial
so-cal was fenders territory!
cheers
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that's a very tv friendly tele...tv white as gibson called it...with shiny gold bling...stands out!! like gretsch white falcon!! Originally Posted by omphalopsychos
Just thought I'd share an in-color photo of Moore's Nocaster.
Man, some recordings of this guitar through an octal tube amp would be great to hear, played by Moore or not.
check out our hep for some recent tele/octal action
Vintage 47 amp + tele, curious how it sounds?
cheers
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Twitter Bob Bain's Son of a Gunn Tele!
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Leo Fender gave it to Jimmy Wyble to test it out. Leo would make changes per Wyble's comments.
Same thing with the Strat. We're basically playing Jimmy Wyble's idea of a great solid body.
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bains a great..a real technician...was johnny carson tonight show guitar player for years!!!
recent fender custom shop bain tele repro-
Fender Custom Shop Announces Bob Bain “Son of a Gunn” Telecaster - Guitar World
cheers
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leo and freddie taveres brought it to jimmy bryant..they brought a proto-type to club jimmy bryant was hanging out in...he started playing it on stage, took to it immediately, and crowd flipped...that was the beginning! (there's a freddie tavares first hand account of it )
tho im sure wyble was consulted as well..that was leos crowd!!!..western swing and dustbowl so cal c&w...(some great players!!!)
wyble & bryant...two killers!!
cheers
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Forgotten Heroes: Jimmy Wyble
Wyble returned to Texas and enrolled at the Houston Conservatory of Music, but only studied a short while before joining Spade Cooley’s band. During his tenure in Cooley’s outfit, Wyble was featured in a 1950 Fender advertisement, decked out in Western shirt and dark rimmed glasses, holding a black Esquire model with a white pickguard and his name emblazoned on the lower side of the body. Other photos from the era show him with a blonde Esquire.
Over the years, Wyble played a variety of guitars and chose whatever was best for the particular application, as opposed to sticking with a single trademark instrument. In addition to the Fenders, he also played Epiphones, Guilds, Gibsons, and Hofners, and later in life, instruments by Roger Borys, Paul McGill, and others.
So there's a little more info about Wyble and Fender. There's a few vids of Wyble near the end of his life playing a Hofner JS Verythin that sounds wonderful.
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Some prominent playing in this video, and quite a surprise in the most recent comment from a year ago by Mr. Andre himself! Originally Posted by radiofm74
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Some Wyble and Bryant stuff...Wyble with Tele per Cunamara's quote:
Bryant pre-Tele:
Fender Custom Shop Bryant Tele:
The whole thing of "Western swing is jazz" works for me. These guys were very eclectic in their tastes, and if you listen to e.g. Light Crust Doughboys, Milton Brown, Bob Dunn, it's really mostly jazz with some Western instrumentation like fiddles and (at first acoustic) steel guitar. Hell, at that time steel guitar was in its infancy and was still very heavily influenced by the Hawaiian players that started it. Anyway I digress...but it's clear Western Swing was inspired by hearing Venuti/Lang, Django, Charlie Christian - guitarists, horn players, and pianists who were hooked on jazz forming bands with fiddlers, both old time and hot jazz-influenced and steel guitarists who had to invent new tunings to get the new harmonies under their bars. An amazing period in American musical history.
Now that said, I'm not sure Jimmy Bryant was so much a Western swing guy, but that could be because I don't have his early stuff. I have "Frettin' Fingers" (75 tracks on Bear Family, reissued through Apple) and a crapload of Speedy West/Bryant stuff, but most of it falls very much into the guitar-hero instrumental album mold, like a lot of Joe Maphis if you know what I mean. Would love to hear his earlier work if it's out there?...anyway great thread.
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There are claims that Christian was influenced by Eldon Shamblin. Shamblin started with Bob Wills in the early '30s, and Christian would certainly have heard him on the radio, as Wills was on daily broadcasts from Tulsa and OKC, as well as records. Shamblin was playing a Gibson at the time. AFAIK he never played a tele, but he played a Strat from 1954 on.
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@sgosnell, that sure wouldn't surprise me, especially since I have this quote by Les Paul from the liner notes of "Charlie Christian: the genius of the electric guitar," a 4-disk set on Sony Legacy:
That Western swing / jazz thing definitely cut both ways!
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Sorry to hijack but, does anyone know of any specific jazz guys (aside from Les), who played a Les Paul in 53' to 60'? I know Benson played a burst in 1964 and Jim Hall played a custom for a short while but I'm unaware other jazzers who played this new fangled jazz guitar in the first 8 years of production?
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Freddie King and Muddy Waters!
(sorry sorry sorry couldn't resist!)
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(responding to the hijack) Before Michael Bloomfield picked up the Les Paul and got the whole Baby Boom generation (including all the British Invasion folks) playing it, the folks who were associated with the Les Paul guitar were, IIRC: Les Paul, Jim Hall, George Benson, Muddy Waters, Hubert Sumlin, and Freddy King.
A bit later, jazzy players Frank Zappa and Al DiMeola took up the Les Paul and made it work to their advantages.
I'm sure there were others, besides these jazz and blues players, but these were the ones I thought of.
Last edited by Greentone; 01-10-2018 at 04:25 PM.
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