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A long time ago I read that he could play those incredibly difficult octave and chord solos because no one told him he couldn't.
He said in an interview that he used to get headaches working on that stuff.
Many people think that just because someone is gifted it comes naturally but all the greats shedded their butts off to get where they did.
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03-08-2023 09:15 PM
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That's a fabulous clip. Wes knows how to make himself happy and it's infectious. One chord? Let's party!! His groove and his rhythm keeps the whole thing rolling.
I discovered him a year after he left. It's nice to have some folks on the forum who actually saw him perform. It sorta keeps the lineage alive in some way.
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They do play the bridge, too, but it's done so smoothly it's as if they were brothers or something.
Originally Posted by ccroft
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Yeah, at that point, he was mixing the chords and octaves together- playing shout chorus type chord rhythms and in a flash following them with octave lines that answered the chords. Kind of like Trumpets answered by trombones.. Originally Posted by wintermoon
He was influenced by Basie. On "The Thumb, he plays the shout chorus from Basie's "Splanky" on chords.
Who knows what he would've come up with if he lived longer...
He almost never played the melody as written. He always had his own interpretation of the melody. just like Farlow and Costa would.
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When I first heard "the incredible Jazz guitar" I thought it sounded very old, like a 78 rpm funnel gramophone. This was also when I discovered Wes. I wasn't even born when he recorded that album, so I quickly bought a slick studio compilation where his tone is as perfect as it gets.
But gradually over the years I've come to adore the sound of the "incredible jazz guitar". There's something very charming and inspiring with that unpolished sound, honest, sincere and spiritual.
Guitar tone... Some people try to capture the sound of Charlie Christian. A sound available only on very old recordings. So, -are fans trying to recreate the sound of old recording techniques that could possibly be seen as inferior? Or are we just charmed by the playing?
I totally get it when someone has issues with early recordings. For example, as much as I love Jim Hall, there are some of his early studio stuff I can't take.
These guys were pioneers in the universe of electric guitar. Many times they were just concentrating on their playing and left the sound to the studio engineer. Recording techniques advanced rapidly in the 60s and 70s. Many legendary guitar tones are as much products of the audio techs as the players.
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The thing is Wes already owned at least one if not two L-5's when he made those early records. I'm assuming he drove to NY for the sessions since he was afraid of flying, but why he borrowed guitars instead of bringing the L-5 I don't know.
I doubt he used a 175 beyond that session, he alway used an L-5 a couple years before and exclusively afterwards.
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Can anyone point me to good instruction materials for me to learn some of Wes chord style ? Originally Posted by sgcim
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If you learn the Barry Harris sixth-diminished block chord stuff (especially the drop-2 chords on the top 4 strings) you will basically have the essence of it. Bear in mind the maj6 chords can also translate to min7 chords (e.g. Fmaj6 = Dmin7) and it covers a lot of possibilities. Originally Posted by pingu
Also when Wes needed to play a more complicated line in chords (e.g. something with chromatics) he often just harmonised the whole phrase in diminished chords without worrying too much about what was ‘musically correct’ on each chord. With his speed and fluency it sounds fine.Last edited by grahambop; 03-09-2023 at 05:54 AM.
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I once spent about 3 months learning a Wes solo in octaves, it didn’t give me a headache but it sure as hell made my left hand ache! But at the end of it I could sort of do it reasonably ok, and that facility has remained ever since. So it was worth the effort! Originally Posted by wintermoon
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Originally Posted by JCat
Interesting, I recorded testing some stuff some years ago a django thing using the mono 8 bit in the daw and it sounded so.....oldy but so 40 's that I was thinking "that's cool" !
To stay on the post, I would say that Wes is so tasty while using most of the minor approach (single notes , chords or octave), he can phrase blues, dorian (blues héhé), harmonic minor melodic minor but melodic patterns all around, chromatism approach, few notes & rythm pattern cause great maturity, few chords pattern and the mix with the diminshed chord approach.
Wes is an ocean of music.
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Great, I sometimes use a cocked wah to mimic the honky midrange of an old radio. "Horn like" they say. Originally Posted by itsmyname
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Yes, and now that the Pim Jacobs videos have surfaced we finally know that Wes wasn't a total ear musician as so many assumed. But I bet he couldn't name most of what you cited in jazz terms though he could certainly play it, hah. Originally Posted by itsmyname
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There's a nice summary here by guitarist Shawn Purcell, I got this from his website a few years ago. Originally Posted by pingu
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It’s a good thing he wasn’t holding an L-5 on the cover of TIJG. If that 175 was an L-5, I’d have had to pawn my sister’s belongings to get one. It took me almost 2 years after the album came out to find a used 175 I could afford and earn enough to buy it Originally Posted by wintermoon
Last edited by nevershouldhavesoldit; 03-09-2023 at 09:42 AM.
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I like Jim Bastian’s 3-volume Chordal Bebop Lines Originally Posted by pingu
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Thanks Grahambop , that's spot on ! Originally Posted by grahambop
I'll give that a good shed tonight
(Yes I can see it has echoes of Barry Harris' ideas)
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Bruce Forman calls that kind of block-chord soloing ‘big band’, so that gives an idea of where it comes from, or what it’s trying to emulate.
(On one of his videos he says that when he played with Ray Brown, Ray would shout at him ‘Big band! Big band!’ whenever he wanted Bruce to play a chord solo!)
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Can we credit that to Creed Taylor? Originally Posted by sgcim
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Rudy Van Gelder, more like. He was the engineer (and his studio was used) on many of the Verve/A&M recordings. Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
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Coincidentally, I’ve just been reading John Duarte’s book on Segovia, and he describes Segovia’s reaction to a Wes Montgomery record JD played to him. Given Segovia’s extreme dislike of the electric guitar, it was quite positive, which is nice to hear!
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Shocking, particularly since A&M had its own studio. But then again NY is closer to Indy. Also RVG was the man, and had come into his own long before those recordings. Originally Posted by grahambop
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Also I don’t think Riverside records had a big budget, as I recall they eventually went bust when Orrin Keepnews’ business partner/accountant (Bill Grauer) died, and Keepnews discovered that he’d been concealing losses or something. So maybe they couldn’t afford the best studios.
Last edited by grahambop; 03-11-2023 at 04:19 PM.
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Our Alan Kingstone did a fine book on Barry Harris’ chordal approach. I got a lot out of it and I’m not even a guitar player!
“The Barry Harris Harmonic Guitar Method”.
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Even so, there were a lot of advancements in recording right around that time. Better tape machines, off board gear etc. And I think it's safe to assume that they took a lot more care with the recordings for A&M, as they were selling tons of them! Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
But I can also buy in to Wes' improving techniques before he passed. He just got better and better, and more effortless. The story may be a little bit of both.
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Agree with…..
But I can also buy in to Wes' improving techniques before he passed. He just got better and better, and more effortless.
I may have told this story before. I was 18, ready to graduate from high school in 1966. On 10 April (57 years ago) I attended a Wes Montgomery concert in a small concert venue in Minneapolis. It was he and the Wynton Kelly trio. I’ll never forget the experience! I found him in a back room afterwards, got his and the trio’s autographs and talked for awhile. The concert program and autographs are still with me, I asked him if he liked the L-5CES that he was using. His answer is something I still remember…”it’s not what you use but what you do with what you use.”
He died in June 1968 and my son was born in Sept. 1968. His middle name is Montgomery.
I have (23) of his albums and just bought another, since I just decided to fire up my turntable set-up. I also have (6) of his CD’s that I keep in the car.
At the time I was using an ES-175D. After hearing that concert, I decided I wanted a “fatter” (wider) guitar, so I eventually (1967) ordered a new L-5C with a single Johnny Smith pup. That was sold in 1982 when I stopped playing out. But a year ago I bought a 1952 L-5C and recently had a Pete Biltoft single Charlie Christian replica pup installed. Odd, I have a guitar with a pup but no amp. But I’m watching for an older Gibson GA-50 amp. Might be tough to swing it, being retired and on a fixed income. We’ll see…
Tom
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