# Help Me Choose 2-3 Outstanding Jazz Guitarist CD's **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 3, 2001, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041 "2001-07-03T03:28:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnac_the_Magnificent)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/1 "2001-07-03T03:28:40Z")
I’ve got lots of jazz and classical CD’s, but none by a jazz guitarist. Let me confess, I am not a jazz purist. Highly improvisational jazz doesn’t appeal to me. My tastes run closer to Modern Jazz Quartet, early Quincy Jones (the Stockholm years), early Bill Evans, etc. I don’t mind a little heat, but I’m looking for something generally mellow and pretty. Light or smooth jazz may be okay, but I really want to stay traditional at first–pay my respect to the elders, if you will. I also like Brazilian influences, and once heard Jim Hall play something along these lines, though I’m not sure what CD it was. BTW, if you can recommend really pretty JAZZ FLUTE, by all means, let me know. ---
**Author:** ![mouthbreather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a698b9/32.png) [@mouthbreather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mouthbreather)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/2 "2001-07-03T03:36:29Z")
Well, I don’t know much about jazz gee-tir, so some hepcat will probably come in here and whip my ass, but I always liked: Pat Martino’s “El Hombre”. Very smooth and yummy. ---
**Author:** ![mouthbreather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a698b9/32.png) [@mouthbreather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mouthbreather)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/3 "2001-07-03T03:42:00Z")
Dammit, hit reply too early. Here’s a tiny clip of one of the reviews at amazon: > [@](#): > > \*As its title suggests, El Hombre has a decidedly Latin tinge, employing flute, conga, and bongo for a soulful bossa sound that, while currently out of vogue, proves remarkably winning. …For guitar fans unfamiliar with Martino’s work, El Hombre is a revelation. \*–Fred Goodman ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/4 "2001-07-03T04:36:27Z")
If you can find it, [this album](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000EL4/qid=994134433/sr=1-1/ref=sc_m_1/002-5458974-7107264) by **Larry Coryell and the Eleventh House** , is a jazz guitar masterpiece (IMO). ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/5 "2001-07-03T09:28:23Z")
Anything by Stanley Jordan, but especially his first, _Magic Touch_. ---
**Author:** ![plnnr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/6 "2001-07-03T11:50:47Z")
Wes Montgomery, Wes Montgomery, Wes Montgomery - Pick just about anything and you’ll be happy. I also like Pat Metheny. “Offramp” is terrific, but I’m partial to “Travels,” his live set. As far as jazz flute goes, you can’t go wrong with Rampal’s Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano. ---
**Author:** ![ticker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@ticker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ticker)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/7 "2001-07-03T14:09:41Z")
I agree with **plnnr** , go for Wes. My favorite is [Smokin’ at the Half Note](http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg=A40bsa93gy230), [Full House](http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg=Aan91z87a8yv8) gets played at my house quite a bit too. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/8 "2001-07-03T14:31:42Z")
Your collection would not be complete without a sample from swing jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. [Biography](http://www.downbeat.com/sections/artists/text/bio.asp?from=fans=7104) Album: [The Best of Django Reinhardt (Capitol/Blue Note)](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000005H2Y/o/qid=994170070/sr=2-2/ref=aps_sr_pm_1_2/002-6099657-8725608) (note the reviews posted by listeners of the album) ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/9 "2001-07-03T14:37:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Arnold Winkelried \* > \*\*Your collection would not be complete without a sample from swing jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. > \*\* Abso-friggin–lutely. And if you like that, try any of the Hot Club of Paris recordings (I have a cheap ASV one), and you get Stephane Grappelli’s amazing violin playing to boot… ---
**Author:** ![ndorward](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c2a13f/32.png) [@ndorward](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ndorward)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/10 "2001-07-03T19:25:04Z")
A few suggestions: if we’re sticking to 3 discs, it’d be: 1. **Wes Montgomery** : _The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery_ (Riverside); with Tommy Flanagan, Percy Heath & Albert Heath. 2. **Grant Green** should be towards the top of your list. _Idle Moments_ is the classic; two long slow moody performances in the title track & “Django”; two tough hard-bop numbers. _Street of Dreams_ & the 2-CD set of _The Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark_ are the other places to go. Some of the most atmospheric & compelling music ever released on Blue Note. 3. Bill Evans & **Jim Hall** , _Undercurrent_ (originally on United Artists, reissued by Blue Note/Capitol). The best piano/guitar duets ever recorded; mostly it’s ballads, but there’s an unexpectedly uptempo “My Funny Valentine”. Martino & Coryell are fine players but I’d not really put them at the top of my list; I’d put Stanley Jordan way below (cf. the entry in _Jazz: The Rough Guide_: “all of Jordan’s recorded output is a mix of pearls and gravel”). Reinhardt of course is important, though perhaps a touch overadulated (the music isn’t an exciting _group_ music–Reinhardt & Grappelli are great but the Hot Club is basically chugging along in the background). **Charlie Christian** is an essential reference-point, as the first guitarist of note to use amplification (there’s a disc on Columbia of all his most important recordings with Benny Goodman–this is good). If you want to hear early acoustic jazz guitar, go to Eddie Lang, esp. his duets with the blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson & with the jazz guitarist Carl Kress. One mainstream guitar disc I liked a lot lately was **Howard Alden** ’s _Your Story: The Music of Bill Evans_. The gently latinized version of “Time Remembered” is worth it on its own. It’s got a couple oldtimers here–Frank Wess & Al Harewood–who perform extremely well. Nice to hear them still doing their thing. I guess I should mention **Joe Pass** , though I’m not a big fan. Rather than the _Virtuoso_ series, which are big on technical fireworks, try his backup work on Stephane Grappelli’s _Tivoli Gardens_ live disc on Pablo. – Oh yes: **Kenny Burrell**. I don’t have any of his discs, though know his work; his famous ones are _Midnight Blue_ & _Guitar Forms_. I liked _Blue Lights_, a 2-LP (now 2-CD) set of definitive hard bop with a group including Bobby Timmons, Art Blakey & Tina Brooks. **Lenny Breau** had, even by jazz standards, a remarkably star-crossed career, mostly due to drug addiction. He was one of the most technically astonishing guitarists ever, often creating the illusion of two guitarists playing at once; his music was very much informed by the instance of Bill Evans. Search out the recently reissued _Live at Bourbon Street_, which contains the material previously available on _Quietude_ & _Legacy_ plus previously unreleased stuff. You didn’t ask but: for more contemporary (i.e. harder-edged, often rock- or blues-tinged) guitar styles: **John McLaughlin** , _Extrapolation_–not quite a “fusion” disc, having been cut before his spell with Miles Davis, but instead a contemporary jazz album informed by blues & rock. Very different from his Mahavishnu work of the 1970s. Joe Henderson, _So Near, So Far_: this has **John Scofield** on it, playing “straight” jazz rather than the jazz-rock of his own discs (which increasingly seems to be leaving jazz behind). Some of Scofield’s best work, & one of the few “tribute” albums of the tribute-heavy 1990s that actually is a great disc. Scofield’s own _Time on My Hands_ is also worth getting. **Bill Frisell** , _Have a Little Faith_: Frisell’s gotten rather soft-centred lately, but this is a terrific disc focussing on Americana of all types–jazz renditions of Copland’s _Billy the Kid_, Sonny Rollins’ “No Moe”, Sousa’s “Washington Post March” & Madonna’s “Live to Tell”, among other things. _Live_ on Gramavision is good too, despite the indifferent recording quality. **John Abercrombie** should be in here. Some would also add in **Pat Metheny** (perhaps the recent trio discs), though I’m not a big fan. Exercise caution with Metheny as the music ranges from pop-jazz pablum to howling distorted mayhem (the execrable _Zero Tolerance for Silence_), but there’s some solid straightahead jazz somewhere in the middle. Forewarned is forearmed. Might as well toss in a couple names from the free-jazz/noise end of the spectrum: if you’re looking for background music you’ll hate these with a passion, but these are important artists. **Derek Bailey** –_Drop Me Off at 96th_ on Scatter is a good instance of his acoustic playing (complete with a tribute to Teddy Bunn that has some 1930s-style blizzards of picking); _No Waiting_ is a good instance of his electric guitar. **Sonny Sharrock** –_Ask the Ages_ is a blissful/painful guitar-driven variant on Coltrane’s music, with Pharoah Sanders & Elvin Jones in tow. Oh yeah: Jazz flute? This is an area I’m much less familiar with but a few votes: Lew Tabackin & Frank Wess for straight mainstream styles; Eric Dolphy, Roland Kirk, James Newton, Robert Dick for left-of-centre players (note that Kirk, Dolphy & Wess were multi-instrumentalists so their albums aren’t usually _exclusively_ devoted to flute, except for Kirk’s charming _I Talk with the Spirits_). One of the loveliest flute performances ever committed to disc is on Dave Holland’s _Conference of the Birds_, by Sam Rivers & Anthony Braxton (on the title-track)–the rest of the disc is rather thornier, I should perhaps add in warning. Hope this helps. I’ve tried to signpost the stylistic differences clearly as “jazz guitar” is such a diverse field. There are a lot of other players I could mention but I think that covers the biggies. If you’re seriously interested in jazz you should get a good reference-book: the best out there is Cook & Morton’s _Penguin Guide_, now in a nice big blue updated edition. (edited to fix post formatting) [Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 07-03-2001 at 04:53 PM] ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/11 "2001-07-03T19:43:50Z")
Fucker! Beat me to it. Those were the three musicians I was going to recommend, although I lean toward THE WES MONTGOMERY TRIO, on Riverside, which has one of the finest “Round Midnights” ever recorded, and Jim Hall’s work as a sideman on THE JIMMY GIUFFRE 3, where he’s with the leader on reeds and Ralph Pena on bass. Green’s IDLE MOMENTS is okay though. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/12 "2001-07-03T19:51:55Z")
Oh…for jazz flute, HERBIE MANN AT THE VILLAGE GATE (Atlantic) is a pretty cool 1964 Afro-Latin recording. And almost anything with the recently-deceased Jerome Richardson is worth looking for…he’s on a great 1958 disc called THE BIG SOUND (Prestige) as part of Gene Ammons’ All-Stars…a mega-group that also includes John Coltrane, Paul Quinichette, Pepper Adams, Mal Waldron, and Art Taylor. ---
**Author:** ![Godfrey\_Daniels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Godfrey\_Daniels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Godfrey_Daniels)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2001, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/13 "2001-07-03T22:13:36Z")
Joe Pass & Herb Ellis “Seven Come Eleven”, and another one by the two of them that I think is titled “Live at Monterrey” Also a Duke Ellington album called “Duke’s Big Four” with Joe Pass. ---
**Author:** ![ndorward](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c2a13f/32.png) [@ndorward](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ndorward)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2001, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/14 "2001-07-04T03:06:33Z")
Thought I’d add, since the Lenny Breau disc I mentioned may be hard to get a hold of, that it is on the Guitarchives label, run by Randy Bachman (of Bachman-Turner Overdrive). You can find out about it, listen to a few samples, & order it from their site: [http://www.guitarchives.com/](http://www.guitarchives.com/) I do recommend the recording highly. The earlier _Five O’Clock Bells_ is also worth tracking down–it’s a bit too informal (some false starts included, & a fragile vocal on the title-track) but it’s perhaps the best representation of Breau’s distinctive combination of jazz-piano influences (Bill Evans & McCoy Tyner) with flamenco & country influences, & has a classic performance of Tyner’s “Visions”. & a thankyou to Mr Winkelried for repairing the coding in my last message. --N ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2001, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/15 "2001-07-04T14:46:23Z")
ndorward, thank you for giving me three new albums to add to my purchase list. I hated to see such an excellent post, with carefull formatting, marred by a single missing slash. ---
**Author:** ![Wumpus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8c91f0/32.png) [@Wumpus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wumpus)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2001, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-choose-2-3-outstanding-jazz-guitarist-cds/71041/16 "2001-07-04T16:38:42Z")
You definitely need Kenny Burrell’s MIDNIGHT BLUE. You might call it cool soul jazz. John Scofield’s latest, WORKS FOR ME, is also a good listen (and I’m not much of a Scofield fan, so that’s high compliment!)