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The other day I was looking for help with "Six Appeal," the Benny Goodman tune that features a great Charlie Christian solo. I wanted help comping the changes. I posted about that and someone mentioned material about that very tune on Jonathan Stout's website. Cool stuff, very helpful.
Swing Guitar Blog — Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five featuring Hilary Alexander
Also, he's a member of this site.
Here's a clip of him doing a block chord solo for "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea." I could listen to stuff like this all day....
Last edited by MarkRhodes; 10-15-2019 at 05:15 PM. Reason: Spelled name wrong
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08-14-2014 01:33 PM
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Excellent Mark.
I'm just following this guy now..
Amazing job keeping the early days alive...
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Chordal Solos....
Love'em
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I discovered Jonathan (aka campusfive)'s blog about a year ago, and promptly read every post -- including his old legacy blog. Awesome stuff. There are still a whole bunch swing guitar lessons that he's posted that are sitting on my To Do List. As far as I'm concerned, Jonathan is the man when it comes to all things swing, and lucky for us he chimes in with his opinions where they are needed on the JGF.
He is also a self-proclaimed "vintage lifestyle enthusiast", and I hope he'll pop by and tell us a bit more about that!
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What does "JGO" stand for?
Thanks in advance.
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Look up... waaay up.
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JGO stands for Jazz Guitar Online. That's the name of this place, Also! (Many of us--me included--tend to call it the Jazz Guitar Forum, but the name of this place is Jazz Guitar Online, and the Forum area is one part of that.)
Originally Posted by AlsoRan
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That's a new one on me, "vintage lifestyle enthusiast." I'd like to hear more about that too! Originally Posted by Jehu
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This guy is killing. Awesome!
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What makes it more amazing is that Jonathon started out as a dancer. (Swing dance, Lindy hopper) At least that is my understanding from the following skype interview. (It's not about playing guitar so much as it is about the swing dance community.(That's my term; I don't know that it would be his.) Originally Posted by ecj
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Here's a clip of the orchestra doing "Man From Mars," an Artie Shaw tune discussed in the interview posted above.
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JGO - Jazz Guitar Online with the Jazz Guitar Forum. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
OK. I got it now.
Sometimes I just have to say, "God bless me!"
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You know, my email folder for reported posts I need to hang on to is titled "JGF." I always called this place Jazz Guitar Forum until a) I notice the Jazz Guitar Online logo on the home page and I heard back from guitarists I emailed and that's how they referred to this place. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
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Here's Jonathon doing "Diga Diga Doo."
One cool thing about his swing guitar blog is that he posts play-alongs (soundcloud) for some essential swing tunes. And I mean cool-swing-rhythm-guitar-comping play-alongs (often with charts to match if you need 'em, and I generally need 'em.)
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Since someone (ehem, Mark) was nice enough to start a thread about me, I thought I'd share here the first official news that we have a new album coming out 6/20. It's been 10 years since my last record, so this is long overdue.
- Honeysuckle Rose "ala Basie" (Razaf/Waller)
- Tunis In (Thompson)
- Just About Right for Me (Alhert)
- You've Got Me Voodoo'd (Armstrong/Lawrence/Russell)
- Cheek to Cheek (Berlin)
- Mill House Stomp (Stout)
- Limehouse Blues (Furber/Braham)
- Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me (Swanstone/McCarron/Morgan)
- Sunday (Miller/Cohn/Stein/Krueger)
- Spreadin' Rhythm Around (McHugh/Koehler)
- Rose Room (Hickman/Williams)
- Sweets (Basie/Edison)
- Miss Brown to You (Robin/Ranger/Whiting)
- Undecided (Shavers/Robin)
The album is very much a show of swing guitar in context. There's always rhythm guitar, but some cuts feature Charlie Christian-style electric solos, and others more Allan Reuss-style acoustic chord melody solos. For the guitar gear geeks (like me), the tracks are cobbled together from several sessions 2013-2016, so you'll hear my Eastman 805 and my old fake-Charlie Christian guitar, as well as my 1932 L-5 and 1937 ES-150.
It'll be available on CD, as well as Bandcamp, iTunes, CDBaby, and all the rest of the usual sources.
I'll put up links as soon as I have them - Cheers!
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Wow!!! That's really great news!!
Looking forward to hear.
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I hope the jazz police don't find this thread.
Great stuff! I've followed Jonathon for a while here, but I don't know there was such a great collection of his playing online.
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I want to know more about this vintage living too! When you come home from work, do you loosen your tie and smoke a pipe before the pot roast and gelatin "salad" hit the table?
Joking aside, I really enjoy your playing. You seem to "get it" as far as how this stuff is played better than just about anybody I hear.
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Well, I tell ya, that was a lot more true when we started the band, because those were the days where Hilary and I both dressed vintage most of the time. But, of course, the realities of modern life (and those insane dry cleaning bills) made it so we couldn't really do that as much any more. But, if you're going to try to be an expert in something, I think there is "something" to having a broader context. If you're going to try to be an expert at 1930's-1940's music, it helps to know the history, the style, the whole thing. But, that's just what I found helpful. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
And joking aside, thanks man.
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Just got back from lunch break, spent the 1/2 hr on Youtube listening to Campus Five... AWESOME! I especially liked As Long As I Want To! Thanks for heads up!
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I didn't know Chloe had played with the Campus Five. Although better known as a clarinetist, she's no slouch on sax. There have been, and are, some fine musicians in the Jonathon Stout Orchestra.
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Exciting news! Our new album is available for pre-sale now.
PRE-SALE at Bandcamp Available NOW - Spreadin' Rhythm Around | Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five
ALBUM RELEASE 6/20/17
Enjoy!
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Hello all,
I'm excited to announce my solo CD is done and out for production!
It'll be released next Tuesday, 12/18 on Bandcamp, but you can check it out now here: Pick It and Play It | Jonathan Stout
The CDs won't arrive until 12/21, so I can't guarantee Christmas delivery, but with bandcamp you do get an immediate digital download with every CD purchase. And it'll be on all the other digital services within a month.
I managed to get 15 tunes recorded - 4 historic swing-era arrangements, 2 original tunes, and 9 of my own chord melody arrangements of classic tunes:
1. Pickin' for Charlie - Jonathan Stout, 2018
2. Stompin' at the Savoy - Goodman/Sampson/Webb, 1936
3. Moonglow - Hudson/DeLange/Mills, 1934
4. Cheek to Cheek - Irving Berlin, 1935
5. Apartment G - Allan Reuss, 1938
6. It's Only a Paper Moon - Harold Arlen, 1933
7. Sunday - Miller/Styne/Cohn/Kreuger, 1926
8. Charlie's Lullabye - Jonathan Stout, 2018
9. Georgia on My Mind - Hoagy Carmichael, 1930
10. Itching Fingers - Roy Smeck, 1928
11. Ain't Misbehavin' - Waller/Brooks/Razaf, 1929
12. Pet Shop - Allan Reuss, 1938
13. Pick It and Play It - Frank Victor, 1936
14. Somebody Loves Me - George Gershwin, 1934
15. Over the Rainbow - Harold Arlen, 1938
I used a Waterloo WL-14L on "Itching Fingers", and the rest was about evenly split between my 1932 L-5 and 1939 L-5.
We used 6 ribbon mics (though 90% of what you hear is just a stereo pair of Ribbons) for a nice fat sound.
I'm very proud of it, and I hope you'll dig it.
Lastly, I'm planning to spend as much of January as it takes to finish writing a companion folio that will contain my original arrangements and tunes.Last edited by campusfive; 12-13-2018 at 11:35 PM.
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Brilliant!
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Alright the bandcamp store is OPEN:
Pick It and Play It | Jonathan Stout
And you can preview all the tracks!
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Damn, Jonathan, what a nice sound on the recording! Ribbon mics have that wonderful smooth warm sound. I feel like I'm sitting next to you in the studio- and that's on my iPad!
Also, I like the recommendations towards the bottom: "if you enjoy Jonathan Stout, you may also enjoy:" which is followed by five albums, four of which are Sun Ra.
As I was listening to "Cheek to Cheek," the similarity to Sun Ra's ouvre was striking. 
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Thanks!
And yeah, for some strange reason Sun Ra is listed in the "Swing" Genre - it's so weird, but whoever the rightsholder is for that music seems to think it's appropriate. I... don't see it.
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Sounds great - also LOOKS great, digging that design
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Clearly it’s big band music and big band = swing, right? Originally Posted by campusfive
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Though I certainly hear the swing era in Sun Ra’s work....
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Hey, so, I goofed actually published the album already instead of merely initiating a pre-sale.
So, yeah, feel free to buy it NOW. Oops.
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Jonathan,
from wikipedia
Those of us who have seen Sun Ra and his band perform, know that he would often inject Fletcher HendersonIn Chicago Blount quickly found work, notably with blues singer Wynonie Harris, with whom he made his recording debut on two 1946 singles, Dig This Boogie/Lightning Struck the Poorhouse, and My Baby's Barrelhouse/Drinking By Myself. Dig This Boogie was also Blount's first recorded piano solo. He performed with the locally successful Lil Green band and played bump-and-grind music for months in Calumet Citystrip clubs.In August 1946, Blount earned a lengthy engagement at the Club DeLisa under bandleader and composer Fletcher Henderson. Blount had long admired Henderson, but Henderson's fortunes were fading (his band was now made of up middling musicians rather than the stars of earlier years) in large part because of his instability, due to Henderson's long term injuries from a car accident. Henderson hired Blount as pianist and arranger, replacing Marl Young. Ra's arrangements initially showed a degree of bebop influence, but the band members resisted the new music, despite Henderson's encouragement.
In 1948, Blount performed briefly in a trio with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and violinist Stuff Smith, both preeminent swing-era musicians. There are no known recordings of this trio, but a home recording of a Blount-Smith duet from 1953 appears on Sound Sun Pleasure, and one of Sun Ra's final recordings was a rare sideman appearance on violinist Billy Bang's Tribute to Stuff Smith.
tunes into their set. While it understandable how incongruous it may seem on the surface to characterize his music
as swing, he did have a lot of cred, arranging and performing experience, including with Fletcher Henderson,
the progenitor of the swing big band.
Congratulations and best luck with your various product releases.
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More swing than bebop for sure.... in Sun Ra’s case that was the music of his formative years...
I think a lot of the free guys/avant garde were referencing earlier jazz in oblique ways.
As a sidebar to this some of the most committed early jazz specialists I know also have a background in free playing.
It’s an interesting zone of cross over. Sort of yin and yang.
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Just for fun, here's a little freebie.
A friend of mine asked about using one of my songs as the theme to his podcast - oddly, he'd heard me play "On the Sunny Side of the Street" many times such that he didn't realize it wasn't on my solo guitar CD.
Well, I told him I could probably whip something up, so here's the demo I made for him using my 1932 L-5 for the melody, and the 1939 for rhythm guitar, and just my demo rig of a Blue Yeti mic into Garageband.
It was just gonna be a demo, but he decided to use it as is, so there you go.
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Listen to hard he picks on the electric, kids.
That's the secret to tone. No wishy washy legato
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And all or mostly down picking. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Listen to hard he picks on the electric, kids.
That's the secret to tone. No wishy washy legato
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Jeff - wait, what electric are you referring to? My playing in general? Some specific example? Because there isn't any electric on that "Sunny Side" example. Sorry, I'm just confused.
But, yeah, I started favoring downstrokes for my Charlie-style electric single note playing a while back, and it carried through to my chord-melody playing as well. I assume its essentially the same thing as "gypsy"-picking, but I'm not expert enough on that style to know.
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Dig a diga doo?
Weird, my phone earlier didn't show any of the posts after that one...I thought my reply would be next in line...I can see how that would be confusing!
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Oh, that's funny. That's an old one too. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Here's a couple more recent electric examples:
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Originally Posted by campusfive
I'm not an expert too but I have a some friends around here that really can play gypsy and I think that the main difference is that gypsy players usually rest the pick on the string bellow and they pick in a more angular way that we play in swing. Something like this...
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Not that it matters a jot, but watching your right hand, it doesn't look like gypsy picking, your wrist is closer to the guitar, and you appear to start some strings with upstrokes... hard to tell if you are doing rest strokes... Originally Posted by campusfive
The best description of rest stroke technique I have heard comes from Van Eps - use the next string as a 'pick stop.'
I think many of the older players had a technique that was a bit like Gypsy picking but different maybe in a couple of ways. I think a lot of this is convergent evolution... If you learn how to play on an acoustic guitar and amplification comes in later you naturally end up using a heavy down-strokey technique.
(IIRC) Django actually learned his technique from a plectrum banjoist, which itself I think was an adaptation of classical mandolin technique...
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Yeah, back in the day, they called it "playing the guitar." Originally Posted by christianm77
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And this is why I listed Stout with Benson and Montgomery as my favorite tones of all time. He's a modern day master of Swing guitar.
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Yeah, it's not exact. I just try to favor downstrokes. But sometimes, I start to get the full rest-stroke thing happening, perhaps most often when I'm playing acoustic single notes and having to really whomp. Originally Posted by christianm77
But I think that carrying over acoustic technique to electric is a big part of Charlie's phrasing and technique, and ALSO for being able to play proper swing rhythm guitar on electric. I wrote a whole blog post on tips for playing swing rhythm on electric, but the truth is that actually knowing how to do it on an acoustic and simply carrying over the same technique as much as possible is the biggest trick.
Anyway, thanks for the kind words everybody. Cheers!
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Hey all, if you're at all interested in Swing rhythm guitar, I just did a video/talk for the "All Guitar Network".
I basically went in with a loose list of stuff to talk about, and dropped two hours of talking/playing that was cut down to about an hour.
It's not the most organized thing, but there's a ton of good info here, so check it out:
Archtop Crazy with Jonathan Stout: Episode 3: Freddy Green Style Comping. / All Guitar Network
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Hey Jonathan. Video not found here with your link. This one works.
Episode 3: Freddie Green Style Comping. Jonathan explains the dark art of acoustic rhythm comping, often referred to as the "Freddie Green" style of big band rhythm playing. / All Guitar Network
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Originally Posted by clebergf
Thanks for that, Cleber! I started watching the video at the previous link last night but the connection was lost and I couldn't get it back. (Not my connection to the Internet; I was getting a "connection lost" message about the video itself.)
What I saw was really good. Hope to see the rest tonight.
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I’m about 1/3 through. Nice job! Your discussion of the evolution of the jazz beat is fascinating. It would have saved me some confusion and dirty looks if I’d been able to watch that a few years ago, when I started accompanying an elderly trad-jazz through swing-era reed player. Originally Posted by campusfive
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Nice video Jonanthan. I think that they will release the next part of your talking about the electric guitar.
There are two other videos with Jonanthan playing with the great Nick Rossi too.
Episode 2: Moonglow & Sunday / All Guitar Network
Episode 1 - I Can't Give You Anything But Love / All Guitar Network
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Hey all,
Since some of you might be in Europe, I should mention that I will be there again later this year. I was just in Heidelberg, Germany and met up with some lovely folks:
Oct.18-19 - Bordeaux Swing Festival (France)
Nov. 1-3 - Lindy Shock (Budapest, Hungary)
And in between I should be in Spain playing with Enric Piedro at various things. I'll update as I know more. Cheers!
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