Behold… a thing of beauty

[Roberoo]

Another Christmas lockdown and things look pretty awful in the world but I came across this gift from Ed Bickert. I hope you enjoy and all the best over the holidays.

[44lombard]

That's a great clip that I've been meaning to return to.

In the interview at the beginning, he talks about being sort of blindsided by rock and roll. He really did come of age at the very end of the period before rock and R&B transformed popular music. He moved to Toronto around 1952 from rural Western Canada and was gigging pretty soon after that.

It's true that had he been listening closely to late-1940s R&B, or western swing, or even some early electric jazz guitarists like George Freeman, he wouldn't have been caught off guard by, say, Duane Eddy. And he often wasn't terribly precise with his language, so he could have been referring to anything from Elvis Presley to Bitches Brew when he mentioned "the beginnings of rock 'n' roll coming into the music..."

But if he'd been born 10 years later (for example, the age of George Benson and Pat Martino)...the rock / R&B sound would not have seemed so strange to him. Ironic that he's one of the players who makes the lowly Telecaster into a bona fide jazz axe. I love all the seeming contradictions in his life and art.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

That's a great clip that I've been meaning to return to.

In the interview at the beginning, he talks about being sort of blindsided by rock and roll. He really did come of age at the very end of the period before rock and R&B transformed popular music. He moved to Toronto around 1952 from rural Western Canada and was gigging pretty soon after that.

It's true that had he been listening closely to late-1940s R&B, or western swing, or even some early electric jazz guitarists like George Freeman, he wouldn't have been caught off guard by, say, Duane Eddy. And he often wasn't terribly precise with his language, so he could have been referring to anything from Elvis Presley to Bitches Brew when he mentioned "the beginnings of rock 'n' roll coming into the music..."

But if he'd been born 10 years later (for example, the age of George Benson and Pat Martino)...the rock / R&B sound would not have seemed so strange to him. Ironic that he's one of the players who makes the lowly Telecaster into a bona fide jazz axe. I love all the seeming contradictions in his life and art.

Ed grew up in Vernon, BC. I live in the next town south of there.

[pingu]

that’s the actual real deal right there ....

Many moons ago he played on a free
flexi disc that came with a Guitar mag
(Guitar Player probably , the issue featured the work of three prominent Canadian guitarists)

He played a minor 251 to Em with a melodic minor flavour ....
and that was me hooked .... for life

Thankyou Ed

[44lombard]

that’s the actual real deal right there ....

Many moons ago he played on a free
flexi disc that came with a Guitar mag

and that was me hooked .... for life

Same here...a switch was turned on when I heard that record. I think my public television station played the "Talmage Farlow" documentary that same year, and there was no turning back. Miles and Coltrane arrived in my life very shortly after that. Interesting all these years later to realize that Tal and Ed were both "country boys" who learned primarily from the radio, and were real outsiders in terms of jazz. They were my gateway drug. They actually got to jam together in the 1950s, and Tal mentioned Ed in a late-50s magazine article I think I saw in this forum.

That Guitar Player flexi disc is on Youtube here: