Eddie Lang (stage name; his real name is Salvatore Massaro - wiki link), was one of the early pioneers of jazz guitar. His translation of Dixieland-style jazz banjo chords to the newly-innovated jazz guitar of the 1920’s paved the way for all the jazz guitar coming after it. **Carl Kress **was someone who emerged right after Lang; this is one of the few duets they played, Picking my Way.
This track is great - Lang is playing single note stuff, with Kress playing chords. At first, Lang is playing the melody line - a cool like boogie/swing melody. Kress is behind him playing really great jazz chords and swinging hard. But about 45 seconds in, Lang switches to single-note bass/rhythm work and Kress steps forward, playing “chordal melodies” - i.e., he owns the melody but is using full chords and superfast fingering changes to play it - so Kress is still the one filling in the musical space AND owning the melody, while Lang anchors the bottom end.
This type of jazz interplay became far less common but has come back quite a bit, just like there are many folks who try to emulate 30’s/40’s French/Romani jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. But the weaving back and forth of Lang and Kress is wonderful - not quite the same type of guitar weaving that Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood practice
Second of all - oh, sure, they have the sheet music, but it might as well be Sanskrit given the technique required to play like Lang and Kress ;):D. I can get the sheet music to Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto, too - but I would still end up sounding like that guy from *Shine *if I tried to play it…
That’s just beautiful playing, hearing them swinging without sweating.
For sheet music, there’s also the Mel Bay classic collection ‘Masters of the Plectrum Guitar’. I brazenly asked Bucky Pizzarelli to autograph my copy when he played in Toronto in 2010. He took one look at the book and joked “I can play about three pages of that, and that’s all!”
There’s a great chain linking Eddie Lang to Carl Kress to Dick McDonough to George Barnes to Bucky Pizzarelli. That’s Dick McDonough (with his head cut off) in most of the video slideshow to that recording - he and Carl Kress did a number of duets after Eddie Lang passed away.
And I will link to another youtube clip - Danzon, featuring Carl Kress and Dick McDonough. Just wonderful - they get a Latin-feeling drone bass and then toss these really sophisticated jazz chords on top…these guys are so talented…
