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I agree with Derek above. Wes has gotten more credit for his style, technique, octaves, etc. I feel than almost any other guitarist. When I started playing jazz many years ago, I tried to listen to anything that was not Wes or Wes influenced (not that I do not love the heck out of him and his playing) because his style was much emulated by every player after him and he was always given as an example of top jazz guitar playing.
Guitarist like Grant Green, Rene Thomas, even Johnny Smith and Django Reinhardt get far less credit for their contributions compared to Wes.
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05-13-2010 02:11 PM
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Reading this thread all over again, I guess what the thread starter was asking is why he did not get more credibility for his technical proficiency - not that he did not get any. I've read several books and articles about Wes, and it's mostly about octaves and thumb picking. I guess the best way to answer the question is: it's not that people don't recognize how he played over changes, or his sense of time, or his chops (I've read several which studied his style in detail), but it becomes overshadowed by the uniqueness of his thumb playing, and the distinct tone of it, especially when playing octaves. This is what made Wes special. Eventually, when someone credit someone, it's not about what most people already have (it was not only Wes who had some serious chops), but what most people did not have.
It's like Joe Pass mostly being credited for his improvisational talent with chord melody, not that he did not play in a band and had some serious chops to show for, but the skill he showed in his solo guitar playing is something unique to other guitar players.
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Yes, but am I alone in saying that even without his octaves and inventive use of chord soloing, his single note soloing alone still set him apart from most if not all other Jazz guitarists in this respect. The effortlessness, the groove, the playful daring. It's not just the note choices, but the exuberant expression. George Benson is another I feel this from, and of course in another style altogether, Django had these traits in spades.
Sure there are another hundred (at least) players you can say this for, but just as Bird and Trane set the bar impossibly high for sax players, Wes remains the benchmark for Jazz guitar, whether we're comfortable with comparisons or not.
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I would say that in his time Wes was considered awe-inspiring among his fellow guitarists. His bluesy, yet largely cliche-free single note lines, and fluency with octave and chord melody playing was virtually inimitable at the time. In MHO, there are still very few if any jazz guitarists who equal Wes' musical content "signal-to-noise" ratio. Almost everything he played displayed an uncanny degree of musicality and compositional sense. The way he would build a solo from single notes to octaves to chords and tremolo chords was groundbreaking. Wes could manipulate tension and release like few players before or since to the point that it was almost physically thrilling to hear. George Benson is an amazing player but he had Wes and Johnny Smith to build upon. I admire their work tremendously but if you put a gun to my head, I'd say artistically speaking, there's Django & Wes and then everybody else.
Personally, I adore Wes Creed Taylor pop records. It's one thing to play chorus after brilliant chorus and a whole 'nother skill to craft a perfect gem of a solo on a pop tune. His solos on cuts like "More and More Amor", "Bumpin on Sunset", "Tequila", etc. transcend their source material and are burned in my brain in a way that countless, Benson, Pass, Ellis, etc. solos I've heard many times still float away from memory.
My all-time favorite Wes solo is from his European tour with Harold Maybern on piano. He did a number of versions of "Here's that rainy day" but my favorite one begins with multiple choruses of double octaves (1st & 6th string). Wes plays such an incredible solo that one's heart nearly stops when you consider that for all intents and purposes, he played it on one string. He eventually goes into regular octaves and chords before turing it all over to Maybern. Absolute genius. He would get very uncomfortable when legions of guitar players asked him how he did it. He'd say, "I don't know. I just do it."
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I'm pretty sure he alternated too. I remember reading an interview w/ John
Originally Posted by princeplanet
Actually, I find it very hard to believe Wes didn't alternate his thumb on those quick passages. It'd be impossible to use consecutive downstrokes that quick. Try it with thumb or pick. I'm sure I've heard Wes get up around 300 bpm doing long quaver lines. Even on just one note, if he got every upbeat in as well that is 600 bpm! I'm pretty sure that is humanly impossible
Abercrombie who was lamenting that he couldn't do the alternate thumb thing like Wes did because his upstrokes didn't sound as good as his downstrokes and Wes got them both to sound good.
PJ
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Wes did indeed alternate pick with his thumb as a look at some of the videos available on YouTube will confirm.
Some of the greatest jazz musicians have found Shadow of Your Smile to be an excellent platform for improvised solos. To each their own.
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partial list of jazz artists who have recorded mandel's movie masterpiece:
dexter gordon
stan getz
sarah vaughan
lou rawls
modern jazz quartet
gene bertoncini
nancy wilson
astrud gilberto
earl klugh
carmen mcrae
johnny hartrman
scott hamilton
brother jack mcduff
oscar peterson
ella fitzgerald
chariman of the board
eddie harris
sonny stitt
king curtis
blossom dearie
herb ellis
royce campbell & phil woods
bill watrous
ron carter
benny bailey
woody herman
jay mcshann
bucky pizzarelli
bob florence
clare fischer
bill harris
ron eschete...
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The greatest can get away with anything. I remember Barney Kessel, tongue very firmly in cheek, playing "Brazil", for example, and it being absolutely brilliant. I couldn't do it, though, not in my wildest dreams, those of us with only minimal talent have to be more careful, and anything suggestive of Perry Como is risky. Originally Posted by AndyV
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I'm mystified that of all the truly lame tunes in the world to pick on a beautiful standard like "Shadow" is even being considered as remotely not worthy of a jazz interpretation. Barney Kessel did a great trio version of "The Merry Go Round Broke Down." Tal Farlow recorded "The Love Nest" - the theme from the Burns & Allen TV show. It's all in what you do with whatever material you've got. Gabor Szabo made magic from some of the most banal pop tunes ever.
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I like the theme from the Flintstones:
Maybe because it reminds me of watching the cartoon.
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I wouldn't argue with that, or dispute the quality of The Shadow of Your Smile as a composition, it's an immaculately crafted work. It was, though, crafted for a purpose, which was not to serve as a jazz tune - it's a soundtrack song for an otherwise forgotten film, probably specifically designed to gain a relatively effortless (and cheap) Oscar nomination (it did better, it got the award, as you all know). I don't know whether that was the intention, but there's a long list of songs from the sixties and fifties and earlier that performed that function, of which only one or two like Moon River (which I, personally, wouldn't play in front of a jazz audience, either) really stand up today. And even if The Shadow of Your Smile is on the same plane as Moon River as a standard, it's still schmaltz. I'm not denying you can make great jazz out of schmaltz or anything else, but it's easier to make restaurant fare. Originally Posted by AndyV
We're talking personal tastes, here, of course, and I don't want to suggest that anyone who doesn't share mine is in any way wrong (I'll have to beg your pardon for using a loaded word like "schmaltz," I can't think of a more neutral one). But on the whole and to my ears, this kind of late-fifties, early-sixties pop was something of a nadir, however well made it may have been. Perhaps it was the most commercial side of the music industry kicking back vainly against the rising tide of rock, I dunno, I do know that while I may admire it for its quality, even its slickness, I find the syrupiness and phoniness of the whole Andy Williams-Barbara Streisand-Television Symphony Orchestra thing immensely off-putting, and I'm far from alone in this (it isn't the compositions so much as the production, that awful strangulation-by-string-section approach). And when sixties jazz drew on that current of pop, it associated itself with it, sometimes at least - you may be able to play jazz with any material, but you don't normally choose to play a particular song unless you sympathise with it at least a little (would anyone here play Feelings because they like it? I doubt it). Perhaps I'm mistaken in this particular case, perhaps Wes Montgomery was bigger than that, perhaps I've picked a poor example - randalljazz's list would certainly suggest that I am, he was and I have - but it's still how I feel about that song and others like it.
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DAMN IT!!! I just started playing a CM of Shadow and I thought I sounded good and all the time I was just being "schmaltzy." Originally Posted by JohnRoss
I should have known something was wrong when my wife said "ooh, that's pretty."
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LOL, for what it's worth, I think it's a great song. :-) And my GF hates it (but she'll listen to Abba or the Bee Gees all day). Go figure.
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that's usually the kiss of death isn't it? Originally Posted by Goofsus4
DAMN IT!!! I just started playing a CM of Shadow and I thought I sounded good and all the time I was just being "schmaltzy."
I should have known something was wrong when my wife said "ooh, that's pretty."
i was screwing around, plucking out the melody to the "dancing with the stars theme" the other night, and it was the first time in months she pops in and says "that sounds good!"
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I think Shadow is a great tune as well. Many standards we love to play to this day were never intended to be jazz songs, many just pop musical numbers, but in the hands of jazz musicians have been crafted into art. MASH, another great Mandel tune, was transformed into something very personal when Bill Evans played it. Heck, jazz musicians can take practically any song and make it there own. Just my opinion though.
Great version by Philippe Nedjar playing on a selmer w/ stimer pick up. https://shoppingcart.djangobooks.com...ar_shadow.html
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John, for what it's worth, I pretty much agree with your thoughtful and lucid argument though I would argue that much of Louis Armstrong's revered early material (as just one arbitrary example) wasn't intended primarily as jazz music but was masterfully interpreted as such and has in fact stood the test of time. The whole jazz-with-strings notion rarely works for me as it seems so against the spirit of the genre though I have a soft spot for Charlie Parker's recording of Just Friends.
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Broadway and motion pictures in the 30s, 40s, and 50s contributed a huge amount of material to the repertoires of jazz players. Many of Charles Parker's compositions were based on earlier pop tunes. One of the reasons that jazz was so popular circa 1934-1945 was that people could dance to it and the majority of the repertory was pop tunes.
Regards,
monk
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Mmmm, nice. Originally Posted by Gambrosius1984
Originally Posted by AndyV
Gorgeous guitar. But those vocals... and those backing vocals...
Of course. Tell me about it, I started playing jazz with a trad band, resolutely mainstream, there's nothing wrong with pop in jazz, or with getting people to dance to it (which is one of the greatest pleasures a musician can have, especially when you're playing for a bunch of kids who are not expecting to enjoy it). But perhaps the pop of the decades you mention (and that of Louis Armstrong's real jazz career, before he dedicated himself to things like Hello Dolly) was better than that of the early sixties, fresher, less contrived, less overtly commercial, more spontaneous, more gutsy... Sixties pop (the kind we are talking about) was tired, played out, washed up, it needed new impetus, a new language; in retrospect t was waiting for the rock revolution to happen (and I don't think it can be a coincidence that sixties jazz was waiting for fusion to happen). Originally Posted by monk
Mandel wrote the MASH theme? I didn't know that - OK, I surrender, I'm wrong about The Shadow of Your Smile. Originally Posted by Gambrosius1984
(But I still think Wes Montgomery was too schmaltzy too much of the time.)
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Wes didn't hit me that way at all. i thought it was the strings and arrangements that were schmaltzy.
i loved his playing through that tune, tequila, bumpin' etc. he always put his personal stamp on it...
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Wes wasn't schmaltzy. Producer Creed Taylor was schmaltzy but he also had a sixth sense about how to sell jazz musicians to pop audiences. Wes took a lot of unfair heat at the time and posthumously so from critics in the years since. Wes had a family to feed and was finally making some money after years of scuffling through one-nighters. He played the stuff Taylor gave him to play, improvised on it to the best of his ability, and took home a hefty check for the first time in his career. When he played the hell out of a ten min. solo on Coltrane's Impressions, there were often just a few people in the club.
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good endorsement for shadow
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Nothing starts a fight faster than a jazz player earning decent money or recording with strings.
Regards,
monk
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I hung out with Wes and was a big fan as well, and I don't recall him getting less than full credit for his ability to play at any tempo over any changes. Coltrane wanted him in his group, fercryinouttloud.
Having said that, i still haven't run across too many performers with the aura that he filled a room with. He would glow when he played. It was pretty impressive, on top of the incredible sound he got live.
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I envy you Ron to have heard Wes live. I at least had the good fortune to heard Tal Farlow live in a club playing beautifully despite a killer head cold. The poor guy should have canceled the gig and stayed home in bed. Sick, Tal blew away most other jazz guitarists I've heard. He played about three choruses on Body & Soul all in harmonics. It was awe -insipiring.
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