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there's wes then there's everyone else
one of my favourite jazz stories is the one in which ray brown is harassed into answering the question 'who is the best guy you've played with?' - his answer - so the story goes - was: 'charlie parker and wes montgomery are the two most musical players i've played with'
that's not the way to make the point however (though ray brown is some authority)
this is:
i usually find his ballad playing a bit hard to work out. but this is not a chord-melody treatment.
what makes him the best (it strikes me) is that he has a better (hipper/sweeter/cooler) time feel than anyone else and he relies on it with unwavering confidence. his way of phrasing a melody is just sublime - at once down-home and hip as hell (down-home in the time-feel maybe and hip as hell in the harmony???). he knows how well it all works and he never flinches from it for a moment.
i hear this most clearly in his playing of the melody itself - the tiniest modifications make ALL the difference. - he knows this very well - and he doesn't flinch (by adding all sorts of shit that doesn't make it swing more). but its totally evident in everything he does.
the other thing he has the musical courage to rely on with amazing consistency is his sound. to my ear he instantly sounds a good deal better than everyone else (and i do love the other guys too). his tone is silver and wood - it combines sparkling metal string-tones with rich woody body tones. without this sound how could he have the courage to play so little - to let everything stand-out so clearly? you can almost see him letting the things he's playing present themselves to the audience - standing back from them and letting them shine (is this because you can almost imagine the endless things he's hearing but NOT playing - because they'd crowd out the stuff he wants to get across).
and of course the things he says are just more interesting, illuminating and beguiling than the things the other guys tend to say. the notes he picks are - more often than with the other guys - the pretty ones.
part of the point here is that its conceivable that other guitarists could develop this sort of assurance and play as musically as wes. pete bernstein has some of the restraint i've been going on about here.
Last edited by Groyniad; 09-14-2015 at 01:56 PM.
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09-14-2015 01:40 PM
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HECK, YES! Or, should I say HECK, WES!
Although Wes was apparently _never_ satisfied with his amps, his tone was immediate and sublime. Although he didn't play a ton of notes (Benson really pours it on, by comparison), he _could_ have--if he chose to. The man had chops to burn and COULD BURN when he chose to do so.
His run through charts--head, single line improvisation, octave improvisation, chord melody improvisation--really built, or baked a cake, when he worked through a song.
Like Django, Wes did all this with one hand tied behind his back: Django only used two left-hand fingers to articulate single-note runs because of his Romany caravan accident; Wes only used a right-hand thumb and three left-hand fingers to play the guitar (except for octaves and some chords, when his pinky came into play). Yet, while leaving some digits out of play he would routinely blow the rest of us away. He was really using his noggin', I think.
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"The man had chops to burn and COULD BURN when he chose to do so."
tune in @ 1:24 for such an example.....fastest thumb in the Wes
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Damn you Groy, you shoulda put this in the favorite musician thread I started
Anyway, I love your explanation of Wes. Too often, we say we love "so and so's" playing, but we don't take the time to really figure out the nuts and bolts of why. Yes Wes is a true BOSS, I mentioned him on another thread as a guitarist who was all about getting that pocket. Wes never played a note that didn't mean something rhythmically. To me, even above note choice, rhythm and pocket are king. Grant Green came from the same camp. Then we lost our way... until Bobby Broom and Peter Bernstein (Pete B) came around.
Last edited by Irez87; 09-14-2015 at 04:49 PM.
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Wes is my hero. The most creative musician ever.
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Wes is the Boss
Originally Posted by Irez87
Damn you Groy, you shoulda put this in the favorite musician thread I started Anyway, I love your explanation of Wes. Too often, we say we love "so and so's" playing, but we don't take the time to really figure out the nuts and bolts of why. Yes Wes is a true BOSS
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Man, that's one of my favorite solos. I had it marked up in the audipo app on my phone before it died. Real, horn-like bop phrasing to my ears. He doesn't really rely on much conventional vocab (idiomatic to guitar) in that one, even though Wes was so strong in that category as well. Really, just a great improvised solo. Originally Posted by wintermoon
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But seriously, I can't disagree with the high praise.
He he was truly, truly great wasn't he? Great as he was though, he was human. Through his recording career you can hear him improve. Much like a guy who came up just behind him... George Benson. You can hear it in his recordings too. 1965-1976. Phenomenal.
That should give us all hope. Work hard, in other words.
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Alright my Wes peeps (raise your hand if you started off playing jazz guitar with your thumb, oh the shite I got for that
)
Here is the question now:
What is your favorite Wes Album.
Mine is Smoking at the Half Note. The energy and telepathy between everyone on that record is ineffable!
Yours?
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My first real effort to learn jazz guitar was in '68 with a Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method book. It was VERY slow going. I had only finished the first several Mel Bay books the year before. What a jump. My father owned most of Wes' records, so I knew the charts by ear--couldn't play them, but I knew what they sounded like. I was trying to play Wes' slurs on a classical guitar--sort of like Jerry Reed, I guess.
The conversion to Hendrix, Page, and Clapton seemed easy, by comparison. But I kept at the jazz guitar the entire time.
Thanks, Wes. Thanks, Dad.
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Originally Posted by Irez87
Alright my Wes peeps (raise your hand if you started off playing jazz guitar with your thumb, oh the shite I got for that)
Here is the question now:
What is your favorite Wes Album.
Mine is Smoking at the Half Note. The energy and telepathy between everyone on that record is ineffable!
Yours?
And, in the '60's, the guy who first turned me on to jazz - -' Trane, Miles, all the Blue Note etc etc didn't particularly like guitar player music, even jazz guys - but he really liked that one too !!!
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Wes is the reason I play jazz guitar. His music is a lantern shining a musical path that I have followed since I first heard him 42 years ago. He told a story with a groove in every improvisation. His music displayed happiness, a deep connection with the heaviest and most spiritual parts of this existence.
Thank you Wes. For me, you are the greatest guitar player of all time
(My favorite Wes Albums are:
Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery
So Much Guitar
Bags Meets Wes
Poll Winners (with Cannonball)
Smokin' At the Half Note
And all the rest!)
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"Most creative musician ever?" "There's Wes and there's everyone else?" Seriously?
Wes was great. Was he the most creative musician ever? I wouldn't even attempt to defend that. Wes had a huge influence on other jazz guitarists, but was he really head and shoulders above Joe Pass, Pat Martino, Jim Hall, etc. (just to pick peers from roughly his generation)? I wouldn't attempt to defend that either. I hope no one is pretending that hyperbole like this is objective. Wes's playing clearly speaks deeply to a lot of people and Wes has had and continues to have a monumental influence on other players (Pat Metheny, for example).
I think that Groyniad's point about Wes's musical judgment and restraint is a really good one. While we may think of the Wes of octaves and block chords and exciting, building solos (listen to my two favorite Wes albums- Half Note and Full House) the Wes of soft ballads and restraint is equally important. Few guitarists or jazz musicians in general have the guts to let a line just hang out there on a note or two and let the world judge it- were those just the right notes? Can I trust the rest of the band deal with it properly and not tromp all over beauty? Jim Hall, Miles, Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Charlie Haden, Gene Bertoncini, Peter Bernstein, Art Farmer... probably a few more, but jazz musicians tend to treat silence and suspense as something to fill up with chops and brio and noise. Sometimes that's fun too!
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I said the same thing about Miles Davis and silence being a color, not an absence
Silence is an entity that deserves the control, attention, finesse that we give to playing notes (quarters, 8ths, 16ths) and chords. Without silence there is no... we could get philosophical up in here...
Anyway, there is truth to controlling the silence. Try keeping silent for 2 bars and come in on the "and" of the one of the 3rd bar. Don't always default to the downbeat. There's a TON to practice with silence, that's what listening to Miles taught me!Last edited by Irez87; 09-14-2015 at 10:54 PM.
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miles, giuffre, hall, zawinul, don cherry..they knew space…you can be busy and still know space..or you can leave space between…every…note…but perfectly
listen to eric satie
cheers
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Gymnopedie? Man, it'd be so much cooler to all get together and talk about this over drinks. Besides the guys I play with in Bk and Hep over here, I can't talk about this shite with anyone. It's like, a whole nother language talking about this music that drives us
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#1-that's why we are here
#2-if you could talk this bit to everyone, anytime, we wouldn't go near it
the artist leans toward the arcane
use your (feelings of) isolation to get in touch with your own soul
cheers
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Wes is in my list of favorites and may possible rise to the top of jazz guitar improvisors for me. But not to the top guitarist or musician.
I also value arranging and composition, I actually value that more than improvisation in a musician. I don't think of Wes as having a strong body of work in those elements. So overall he doesn't compare for me to:
Mingus
Chick
Monk
Pat Metheny
Wayne Shorter
and many others
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Wes is in my list of favorites and may possible rise to the top of jazz guitar improvisors for me. But not to the top guitarist or musician.
I also value arranging and composition, I actually value that more than improvisation in a musician. I don't think of Wes as having a strong body of work in those elements. So overall he doesn't compare for me to:
Mingus
Chick
Monk
Pat Metheny
Wayne Shorter
and many others
Taking cover now.
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to say anyone is the best or greatest really kind of cheapens it
no sound is bad to the finely tuned ear
(except maybe that thumping bass heavy car cuttin up the street in the middle of the night) haha
wes was soul stirring and technically marvelous..was he the best or greatest?..silly…and ultimately just a measure of where you yourself are at...
keep movin
he did!
cheers
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Wes, daylight, everyone else. Obviously a subjective view, but held by so many, there must be strong reasons for it. The reasons mentioned in the OP as well as many, many more. But it's almost pointless trying to find words to describe what he did that others did not. Sure, any analysis can show note choices, harmonic treatments or rhythmic preferences, but music amounts to more than that, far more.
What makes us prefer one painter over others? Or one writer or film director? Some obsess over technique, but technique in art isn't everything, as we all know, it's just a vehicle for expression. For me, what makes great artists stand out is their taste. And that is something you can't reduce to a formula. Great taste is inexplicable and truly wondrous and remains mysterious no matter how much we try to decode it. Wes has busloads of it whereas most of us have a teaspoon full, or maybe a shovel...
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best?
he's certainly my favorite and I'm guessing a few others as well
but really it's what catches your ear.
Christian was obviously Wes main inspiration, and even if he hadn't said so, you can obviously tell. Wes is the modern extension of CC. go back and listen to the Minton's jam sessions, just as amazing and almost 20yrs prior.
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09-15-2015, 05:39 AM #23destinytot Guest
Thanks for this great post and appreciation of Wes, Groyniad!
Like others here, I've gone to great lengths to get my hands on as many of his recordings I could lay my hands on. I love 'em all. There's only one I don't enjoy, despite Wes's fantastic playing; much as I admire Stan Tracey, I don't think his style was a good match for Wes's, but I'll have another listen, in case I hear it differently now.
In some ways, the recording with Stan Tracey is the most special to me, because it was made at Ronnie's, which will always be special due to fond memories spanning forty years. (Fifteen years ago, my sextet played there for a week opposite Elvin Jones Jazz Machine, after which I treated myself to a complete boxed set of Wes's Riverside recordings on CD.)
A friend very kindly drew and presented me with this pencil sketch, on which she thoughtfully copied some wise words from Wes. It occurs to me that imitation of Wes shouldn't be a matter of 'mimicry'- but of 'doing what Wes did':
"The player build his confidence by working out his problems himself." (Wes Montgomery)
Last edited by destinytot; 09-15-2015 at 10:05 AM.
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awesome sketches! So, jazz machine, was that when Elvin was on the oxygen machine? I'm not saying that as an (mocking voice) "look at that old fart trying to play jazz..." HECK NO! I'm saying that as "look at that guy up their, still playing his god damn heart out (literally) because music is so compelling to him that he can't live without the drumset. The drum and Jones are one, and the drum is his 'life support'"...
Anyway (I love Elvin's playing, and Connie Kay's, and Max Roach's , Pete La Roca, Ed Thigpin, and many more) but that's not the point. The point is that you shared the stage with a force, a power, a drive... I woulda be crapping my pants if I had to play after Elvin. That must of been some gig, eh?
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i was always struck by ray brown's (reported) remark. for an obsessive jazz guitarist i'm pretty down on jazz guitar in general - i still listen to horn players and piano players more than guitar players. but its always struck me that wes has a feel and a sound that really is a significant contribution to jazz in general - not just to jazz guitar. think of all those great heads and hip turnarounds - they don't sound like anyone else's heads and turnarounds... and i really don't think you can say that about any other guitarist. how many piano players do you know who listen to barney kessel and joe pass a lot?
my original proposal was that he is miles ahead of all the other guitarists - not that he is miles ahead of all the other (great) musicians. that's probably taking things a bit far (though ray wasn't afraid to accord him that status).
i think if you played a representative selection of his ideas (or 'lines') and you put them next to a representative selection of raney's or pass' or kessels or bensons ideas - and played them all at the same medium tempo in a kind of jazz-lecture sort of way - it would be obvious who was making the most music.
and that involves abstracting the 'content' of his ideas from their 'style' - focusing on what he said and ignoring the way he said it (his sound and feel - roughly).
when i get some joe pass down and play it in tempo it feels fine - when i do the same with wes i feel like i'm pretending to be about a thousand times cooler and hipper than i really am (this makes me feel awkward - i don't want to pretend).
thank god for this happy genius.
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