More Ed Bickert

**Tal_175** · 05-06-2025, 01:57 PM

Ed Bickert and Wes Montgomery are types of players who are difficult to learn from. You can imitate their sounds and technique but not their content. They heard endless great melodies in their heads and played them. Neither really played licks.

They are also known for their chordal phrasing. I find learning from their chordal ideas to be much easier than learning from their improvisation. Chordal phrases live in a more predictable universe than single notes.

**AllanAllen** · 05-06-2025, 03:44 PM

Originally Posted by Tal_175

Ed Bickert and Wes Montgomery are types of players who are difficult to learn from. You can imitate their sounds and technique but not their content. They heard endless great melodies in their heads and played them. Neither really played licks.

Yeah… no… you’ve got some transcribing to do. They’ve got licks.

**Tal_175** · 05-06-2025, 04:09 PM

Originally Posted by AllanAllen

Yeah… no… you’ve got some transcribing to do. They’ve got licks.

Yes, everybody plays licks to some extend. You can even hear bebop cliches in Ed Bickert's playing here and there. But if you want to get inside of what made Ed Bickert or Wes Montgomery sound they way they did, that's in all the other stuff they played. That other stuff made them sound like they were playing a tune, rather than running the changes.

**sgcim** · 05-06-2025, 05:17 PM

Originally Posted by AllanAllen

Yeah… no… you’ve got some transcribing to do. They’ve got licks.

Yeah,I steal Ed and Wes licks whenever i can. No one ever catches you.
The only guy I ever caught was Lenny Breau. He stole some Tal thing once.

**Picker** · 05-07-2025, 12:34 AM

Originally Posted by sgcim

Yeah,I steal Ed and Wes licks whenever i can. No one ever catches you.
The only guy I ever caught was Lenny Breau. He stole some Tal thing once.

Take a bow; at last, a mention of Lenny Breau; well done! If limited to only two jazz guitarists to listen to, Breau and Bickert woud be a fine choice.

PS: Don't ask me how or why my computer font changed to a bold typeface....must be some arcane form of cyber space improvisation gone wild.

**Cunamara** · 05-07-2025, 02:22 PM

Originally Posted by KRosser

In a perfect world we would have at least one Ed Bickert solo guitar recording, he just seems a natural for that format. Barring that, I'd settle for a murky audience recording, but I've never heard of any surfacing

Maybe the closest thing we have is him in a duo with Jane Hall, Jim Hall's wife. She recorded an album's worth of songs to give him as a Valentine's Day present and had Ed provide the backing. Jane is not a professional singer but the music is clearly heartfelt. And Ed is frankly sublime.

There is a video that occasionally appears on YouTube of Ed doing a solo version of, I think, Night Mist Blues. It's available, it gets taken down, it gets reposted, gets taken down again, etc. There's a brief interview in that video, too.

**BMoore** · 05-08-2025, 12:22 AM

I think that footage of Night Mist Blues is in a trio with Neil Swainson and Barry Elmes. It's great, part a documentary about Ed filmed for Canadian TV. The solo guitar cut from that documentary is Embraceable You. That's the only solo guitar recording of Ed's I've ever come across. Wish there was more!