The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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    I came across this old video of my blues band this morning. As I watched it, I realized how important a versatile guitar and amp can be when you play different styles and get too old and/or lazy to schlep multiple guitars to every gig. This is the Carvin 7 that I had made in 1994, picked up at the factory, and used on most of my gigs for the next 20+ years with Chrome Jazz XLs on it (11-50 plus a 65 Chrome 7th). With all the talk here about pickups, wiring, phase switches, coil taps, etc in recent weeks, I thought the Carvin was a perfect example. It has twin minitoggles to split the hot humbuckers, and it makes great tones from screaming blues to mellow jazz. You can also see the Roland synth pickup on the tail end (not used in this tune). The guitar (without the synth pickup) has been with its new JGO owner for over a year now, and I do miss it.

    The amp is my trusty old Vox Night Train - switchable 7W (class A triode) / 15W (class A/B pentode), plenty of oomph, and a palette of tones to cover jazz, blues, rock, country and pop. It, too, is now in the hands of a new owner. And the speaker cab is my original Boogie Thiele cab with EVM (now also owned and loved by an appreciative and much younger, stronger guy). I also thought it was interesting to look back at so much of my stuff that's now living a new life.

    I also found aspects of my playing that I never realized I was doing - after all, this is the blues. But a lot of jazzy figures worked their way in, and at about 2:55 I even introduce Freddie Green to Doug MacClean. These days, I do a lot of my blues gigs with an archtop. It ain't what you play, it's how you play it.



    And in addition to the equipment turnover, only the bass player is still with the Philly Blues Kings. We've had 3 drummers, 2 keyboard players, 2 harmonica players, and 5 vocalists in the last decade since these guys.

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    Nice band, and playing! Turnover is a drag, but inevitable. Goals and agendas change over time. I've learned something for everyone I've played with - some lessons are harder than others - but that's life....

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    Great sounds and playing -- thanks for posting!

    I have a thinline tele-style that works for this stuff (and jazz, of course!), and if I played in a blues band like yours (which would be a blast!), my tube amp would work quite well. It has a Master and Gain, typically set (for clean jazz) with cranked Master and inched up Gain. The opposite gets a great, sensitive overdrive sound that would work "all night long," as they say in the blues.

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    Quote Originally Posted by citizenk74
    Nice band, and playing! Turnover is a drag, but inevitable. Goals and agendas change over time. I've learned something for everyone I've played with - some lessons are harder than others - but that's life....
    Thanks! At least we haven't killed anyone off.

    Turnover hasn't been a problem for sidemen / women. Our original drummer was with the band from the beginning (2006 or 7, as I recall) and moved to Florida right after that video was made in about 2010. We had no difficulty fillling that chair, but we had some keeping it filled. We had a fantastic woman on the drum throne who developed cancer less than a year after she started with us. Fortunately, she beat it and has subbed for us over the last year - but treatment and subsequent stabilization on meds were a bitch, and she had to quit the band. After a few itinerants, we ended up with our current drummer for the last 10+ years and he's a lifelong pro (and another senior, although a few years younger than me) who is also the drummer in my jazz trio. We went through a few harp players and finally replaced that role with a great keyboardist. And after several really fine years with us, he suddenly moved to San Diego about 5 years ago. Since I use my Roland synth for keys, and I play both keyboards and Hammond, we decided not to replace him

    The real problem has been vocalists. The guy in the video is Georgie Bonds, a lifetime Philadelphian, a truly decent guy, and a fantastic blues singer who's been a staple in the Philly blues scene for many years despite some health issues that sadly hindered his career. I backed him from the time we first met in the mid-1990s with his own band, and he was the original vocalist in the Blues Kings after he had to disband his group. But when he beat some big health issues and wanted to restart his national career, he left us. Then came a series of truly fantastic vocalists, all of whom were too good to stay with us (which is the simple truth and not at all sarcastic). We were lucky enough to have Gwen Jackson for about 2 years off and on. Gwen's been on Broadway, in Cirque du Soleil, and is the voice-over you hear in more ads etc than you could ever count. She's been a singer with and for some of the biggest acts in the world, and is Whitney Houston in the touring show So Amazing. And she's another truly wonderful person. But it was no wonder that she coudn't work weekly with us, which I predicted and the others in the band told me was ridiculous.

    And the default vocalist every time the mic is left out there all alone on its stand is.......me. I ain't no singer, but somebody's got to do it. I absolutely cannot play the guitar like I should while trying to sing, so it's a lose-lose all the way around. We just got another vocalist who's fine and mellow, and I think this one will be with us for a while. I've backed her many times over the years. Her husband is a fine blues, jazz and commercial drummer with whom I've played many fantastic dates over the years, like the North Atlantic Blues Festival, backing a great vocalist named Sydney Ellis, and the Wilmington (DE) Blues & Microbrews festival backing Chris Cain.

    Most relevant to this thread is the fact that each person who came through the band brought a different style, approach, and palette of skills. Some were jazzier, some were more elemental, and a few (including the best vocalists we ever had and the keyboardist who moved to San Diego) weren't at all familiar with the blues - they came to us wanting to learn. So the versatility of my rig was key to providing the best backing and guidance for each. We've run the gamut from jazzy jump and swing to bare elemental electric Chicago to acoustic stuff from Bonnie Raitt to Junior Wells & Buddy Guy (whose acoustic playing is the absolute opposite of his wild Strat flagellations). And that Carvin through the Vox head and Boogie cab did almost all of it.

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    Enjoyed that..

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Spook410
    Enjoyed that..
    You haven't heard me sing.....
    The real crossroads: where jazz meets the blues...in your gear!-smiley_hysterical-gif