Kenny Burrell tone and gear (Midnight Blue)

[curbucci]

I've been listening to his "Tenderly" live solo guitar record religiously lately. On that record he is using (according to liner notes) a Yamaha compass guitar on some of those songs. Does anyone know if he is known to run that through a amplifier or direct to the PA with his flattop acoustic guitars?

[Burrellesque]

I believe the Kenny Dorham was recorded in 1956, so it would probably be an ES-175 w/P90s through a tweed amp.

[teleman3726]

I would love a jacket like that one!

[whiskey02]

Yeah I hear tweed amps and a big fat guitar when I hear Kenny. I don't want to own or play a fat guitar at this point, but I do enjoy hearing them.

[Mccolalx]

In the photo of him with the CC equipped L5, is there ribbon threaded over the E strings to act kind of like Van Eps string damper?

[Drumbler]

True but...I think most of their sound comes from the fingers, and is also colored by the recording techniques. Midnight Blue was a Rudy Van Gelder recording and reflects among other things his judicious use of mic placement, space and reverb.

I'm not saying the pickup isn't important to the sound, but I really think KB could have gotten wonderful and probably similar results if he had recorded with a half-dozen different pickups.

From his interview in Vintage Guitar magazine:

"When I was in New York from 1958 to ’63, I did an average of six sessions a week. That’s a conservative estimate – I sometimes did two or three a day – at least 1,560. Those are just the sessions; my name was on maybe 10 percent of them. Usually, at a session we made four records. I’m not counting jazz records or my own albums. I was like a doctor, constantly on call. After ’63 it tapered off; I did less studio work and more of my own recordings. Still, I enjoyed the studio work; it made me feel I was good at my craft. But it did hurt in some ways because I didn’t have enough time to practice and concentrate on my music. That’s why I took the jobs in Bye, Bye Birdie and other shows. It was steady work and after a couple of weeks you hardly need to look at the music. It allowed time to practice, think conceptually, and write music for albums like Midnight Blue and Guitar Forms."

Wow!

An incredible amount of activity. Boggles the mind.

[Alter]

The hippest guitar player ever!

[Marty Grass]

It's so odd that we look back almost 70 years for the best tones. In that period of time we've established a space station, have powerful computers in our phones, and have thousands of movies on tap in most households.

It's true though that those single coil pickups on a large archtop with throughput with a old school tube amp is just hard to beat. The CC, Dearmond, P-90 and McCartney pickups are so clear and responsive that they may never be forgotten.

I wonder, but certainly don't know, whether a large part of the beautiful sounds from the guys back then was the result of them playing their asses off long hours on a daily basis. I listen to those who transitioned to humbuckers in the late 50s and early 60s and they still sound fab.