SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

SPRING, 2017

VOLUME FOUR NUMBER ONE

JILL SCOTT

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

DAVID MURRAY
(February 25--March 3)

OLIVER LAKE
(March 4–10)

GERALD WILSON
(March 11-17)

DON BYRON
(March 18-24)

KENNY GARRETT
(March 25-31)

COLEMAN HAWKINS
(April 1-7)

ELMORE JAMES
(April 8-14)

WES MONTGOMERY
(April 15-21)

FELA KUTI
(April 22-28)

OLIVER NELSON
(April 29-May 5)

SON HOUSE
(May 6-12)

JOHN LEE HOOKER
(May 13-19)

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/wes-montgomery-mn0000248392/biography

Wes Montgomery
(1925-1968)

Artist Biography by Scott Yanow

Wes Montgomery was one of the great jazz guitarists, a natural extension of Charlie Christian, whose appealing use of octaves became influential and his trademark. He achieved great commercial success during his last few years, only to die prematurely.

The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery

It had taken Wes a long time to become an overnight success. He started to teach himself guitar in 1943 (using his thumb rather than a pick) and toured with Lionel Hampton during 1948-1950; he can be heard on a few broadcasts from the period. But then Montgomery returned to Indianapolis, where he was in obscurity during much of the 1950s, working a day job and playing at clubs most nights. He recorded with his brothers vibraphonist Buddy and electric bassist Monk during 1957-1959 and made his first Riverside album (1959) in a trio with organist Melvin Rhyne. In 1960 the release of his album The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery made him famous in the jazz world. Other than a brief time playing with the John Coltrane Sextet (which also included Eric Dolphy) later in the year, Wes would be a leader for the rest of his life.

Montgomery's recordings can be easily divided into three periods. His Riverside dates (1959-1963) are his most spontaneous jazz outings, small-group sessions with such sidemen as Tommy Flanagan, James Clay, Victor Feldman, Hank Jones, Johnny Griffin, and Mel Rhyne. The one exception was the ironically titled Fusion!, a ballad date with a string section. All of the Riverside recordings have been reissued in a massive 12-CD box set. With the collapse of Riverside, Montgomery moved over to Verve, where during 1964-1966 he recorded an interesting series of mostly orchestral dates with arranger Don Sebesky and producer Creed Taylor. These records were generally a good balance between jazz and accessibility, even if the best performances were small-group outings with either the Wynton Kelly Trio or Jimmy Smith. In 1967 Wes signed with Creed Taylor at A&M and during 1967-1968 he recorded three best-selling albums that found him merely stating simple pop melodies while backed by strings and woodwinds. His jazz fans were upset, but Montgomery's albums were played on AM radio during the period. He helped introduce listeners to jazz, and his live performances were as freewheeling as his earlier Riverside dates. Unfortunately at the height of his success, he died of a heart attack. However, Montgomery's influence is still felt on many young guitarists.

http://www.wesmontgomery.com/about/

Wes Montgomery Official Biography

Universally acknowledged as one of the greatest guitarists in the history of jazz, Wes Montgomery virtually defined modern jazz guitar during the 1950s and ’60s. His unique idiomatic conception to the instrument and the power of his soloing influenced generations of players who followed him; guitar icons such as George Benson, Pat Martino, Larry Coryell, John Scofield, Pat Metheny, Lee Ritenour and Russell Malone.

Wes Montgomery
Photographer unknown Courtesy of Dr. Willis Kirk

Historically, Wes Montgomery’s relatively short career arose in the era after Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt had established the prevailing standard for jazz guitar in the early and mid-twentieth century. Indeed, Wes was heavily influenced by Charlie Christian, in particular. But Wes changed the language of jazz guitar, harmonically, melodically and technically. The way he approached the harmonic structures of tunes, reharmonizing them by implication in the course of his improvisations set the standard for virtually every guitarist who followed him. Typically in his solos, he outlined chords melodically, but the chords he outlined were often different chords than the rhythm section was playing—a kind of subtle chord substitution—which, in effect, extended the overall harmony in an idiosyncratic way that was unique, distinctive and immediately identifiable. Wes’s compelling harmonic approach, his remarkably fluid single note facility along with his trademark octaves and use of sophisticated chord melodies influenced generations of players who followed in his wake.

Montgomery was self-taught. He devised unconventional techniques that involved, for example, striking the strings exclusively with his right thumb instead of a pick. This unorthodox fingers-on-strings approach allowed him to achieve a warm, round sound on the instrument that was instantly recognizable while his delivery was imbued with deep soul and an irrepressible swing feel that set him apart from most other players of his day.

While he emerged on the scene as a solo artist in the late 1950s as a highly regarded exponent of urgently swinging hard bop (later exemplified by such classic recordings as 1960’s The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, 1962’s Full House and 1965’s Smokin’ at the Half Note), Montgomery had success late in his career as a prominent crossover artist whose pleasingly melodic fare caught on with much larger audiences than has his pure jazz efforts. His later recordings like Bumpin’, California Dreaming, Goin’ Out of My Head and Road Song (all lush productions masterminded by Creed Taylor) served as a jumping-off point for the many pop-oriented jazz guitarists who followed him; guitarists such as Ronnie Jordan, Norman Brown, Peter White, Chieli Minucci and Chuck Loeb.

Born John Leslie Montgomery on March 6, 1925 in Indianapolis, Indiana, Montgomery picked up guitar at the relatively late age of 19 and began teaching himself how to play by imitating recordings of his idol, Charlie Christian (particularly his ground-breaking single note choruses on “Solo Flight” with the Benny Goodman Orchestra). He played locally at the Club 440 with his brothers Monk on bass and Buddy on piano before touring the Midwest and South with his own group. In 1948, he began a two-year stint with Lionel Hampton’s big band, a band that included Charles Mingus on bass. Returning to his hometown, for a time, Wes had to make music a secondary part of his life, succumbing to the pressures of supporting a large family, which grew to encompass his wife and seven children. While settling down to a grueling factory job by day, he continued playing guitar by night at the Missile Club and often after-hours sessions at local clubs and other venues.

In 1955, Wes and his brothers began playing regularly around Indianapolis with Sonny Johnson and Alonzo “Pookie” Johnson in the Montgomery-Johnson Quintet (documented on the 2015 Resonance Records release In the Beginning). At the end of 1957, the Montgomery brothers, along with a fledgling trumpeter from Indianapolis, Freddie Hubbard, recorded several tunes that were issued on the Pacific Jazz label. A few months later, Wes recorded in Los Angeles with his brothers’ new group, The Mastersounds, although the guitarist continued to be based in his hometown. In September of 1959, Montgomery was discovered by alto sax great and talent scout Cannonball Adderley, who caught the guitarist at the Missile Room and immediately brought word of the phenomenal new talent to Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews, who signed him to the label. Wes’s debut for Riverside, 1959’s A Dynamic New Sound, was an organ trio outing with fellow Indianapolis native Melvin Rhyne on Hammond B-3 and Paul Parker on drums. But it was 1960’s The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, featuring pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, that established Montgomery as the new six-string king and heir to Charlie Christian’s throne.

Between 1959 and 1963, Keepnews produced a dozen Riverside albums with Montgomery as leader and three others on which he participated as a sideman. Those four years represented Montgomery at his peak. His stints with Verve (1964-1966) and A&M (1967-1968) — both under the direction of producer Creed Taylor — were commercially successful (he won a Best Instrumental Jazz Performance Grammy in 1967 for Goin’ Out of My Head), although these efforts were less highly regarded by jazz critics and guitar aficionados than by the general public or by the popular music press.

The guitar great had just returned home from a national tour when he suddenly died of a heart attack on June 15, 1968 at age 43. Rare recordings of Montgomery’s early years in Indiana, posthumously released on Resonance Records (2012’s Echoes of Indiana Avenue, 2015’s In The Beginning), add significantly to Wes’s rich recorded legacy.

Born John Leslie “Wes” Montgomery – March 6, 1923 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Self-taught musician, learned by ear by studying guitarist Charlie Christian.
Developed an unorthodox playing technique – using his thumb instead of a guitar pick
Known for developing the guitar technique of playing in octaves while soloing.
Toured with Lionel Hampton’s orchestra from July 1948 to January 1950.
Returned to Indianapolis to be with his family, including his brothers Monk Montgomery (bass) and Buddy Montgomery (vibes) who together recorded for the Pacific Jazz Label.
Signed to Riverside in 1959. Released a series of highly acclaimed, small-group recordings in the traditional jazz/bebop style of the day,
November 1964, released the first of ten albums on the Verve Label (including 2 with organist Jimmy Smith)
June 1965, released the classic “Smokin’ at the Half Note“.
Began to crossover into pop/jazz style, where he prospered and gained recognition outside of jazz.
1966: Won Grammy Award for “Best Instrumental Jazz Performance”.
Moved to the A&M Records and recorded 3 albums, consisting mainly of popular songs of the day.
At his height of popularity Wes died of a heart attack on June 15th, 1968, leaving an unprecedented legacy as one of the great jazz innovators and improvisors.

http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/artists/14098-wes-montgomery-the-full-monty

Popular Jazz Artists

Wes Montgomery – The Full Monty

More than four decades after his death, the music of Wes Montgomery continues to illuminate the jazz guitar world like a beacon. Jack Massarik reappraises the Indiana superstar’s life and work

He never used a pick, only the fleshy part of his right thumb. He never stood up but sat back, holding his guitar at a semi-horizontal angle, 45 degrees from his lap. His solos would swell into octaves and block chords, driven more swiftly and cleanly than most players can articulate single-string notes. There never was another guitarist quite like Wes Montgomery, and the appearance of a newly-discovered masterpiece by him just proves it.

His basic stats were simple. John Leslie ‘Wes’ Montgomery was a devoted family man born in Indianapolis on March 6 1925, which astrologically makes him a Piscean Ox, the sign of the contented family man with a hearty mealtime appetite. He raised seven children there and took up guitar relatively late. After an early taste of the road with the Lionel Hampton band he returned home to feed his growing family. On a typical day this would involve an eight-hour shift in a radio-parts factory, from 7am until 3pm. Then he would dash home for a late lunch, some practice and a nap before gigging at the Turf Bar between 9pm and 2am, followed by an all-night session at the Missile Room from 2.30 to 5am. This just left time for breakfast and a shower before returning to the electronics factory. Wes maintained this gruelling schedule for several years, during which the following remarkable album was recorded.

Echoes of Indiana Avenue, released on Resonance Records, reveals the blossoming of a jazz maestro. Originally taped as studio demos and private recordings from live gigs at Indianapolis bars and nightclubs, it comes down to us in nine heavyweight tracks. Witnesses with long memories date them back to 1957-58, some time before Wes was plucked from midwestern obscurity and whisked to international stardom. Digitally remastered by Fran Gala and produced in Los Angeles by Zev Feldman, a keen jazz archeologist currently processing some equally rare Bill Evans tapes, the sound quality is remarkably good. Better still are the performances by Wes and his brothers, pianist Buddy and bassist Monk, alongside other Indianapolis musicians, some of them uncredited.

The opening track, ‘Diablo’s Dance’, is not the kind of theme associated with the Montgomeries. It’s a precise original by Los Angeles trumpeter Shorty Rogers, whom they met during a California sojourn. Wes’ classic waltz, ‘West Coast Blues’, though not included here, also dates from that visit. Other tracks, like ‘’Round Midnight’, ‘Straight No Chaser’ and ‘Nica’s Dream’, reflect close study of cutting-edge New York albums of this period by Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver and the first Miles Davis quintet with John Coltrane. Clearly the Indianapolis jazz scene, where the 17-year-old Freddie Hubbard was also taking his first steps, was strong enough to handle this music with real conviction, and closer investigation is due. Every major city has its forgotten venues and unsung local heroes, and Indianapolis probably had as many as Chicago (Von Freeman, Clifford Jordan), Detroit (Barry Harris, Yusef Lateef), Washington (Shirley Horn, Buck Hlll), San Francisco (Harold Land, Bobby Hutcherson) or Los Angeles (Hampton Hawes, Buddy Collette and many more). These cities deserve their own Bill Birch, the intrepid archivist who gave Manchester its wonderful jazz history, Keeper of the Flame. For historians this Indianapolis recording is an important document, and the first fact it establishes is that even at this stage Wes’ work was the technical and creative equal of anything he would perform in later years.

His ideas are as mature, as personal and distinctive as ever, owing no debt to any other guitarist. Something of Milt Jackson’s funky phrasing and Clifford Brown’s joyful attack are the only discernible influences. And his sumptuous tone, so lustrous on ‘‘Round Midnight’, is fully developed, as is his mellow yet commanding presence and amazing all-round facility. There’s less octave and chordal work than listeners would later come to expect, but it’s all there when he needs it. Contemporary snapshots show that he was already the proud owner of a top-of-the-range Gibson L5 deep-bodied semi-acoustic guitar. His amplifier, too, sounds as good as anything he would use later, though Wes was famous not only for rejecting a plectrum but also for achieving his warm tone without help from the guitar’s tone dial, which he kept on zero.

The only exception to this rule is the final track on the album, a raunchy slow blues which has the feel of a request number ordered at the end of a very long night. Here Wes ramps up the amp to produce a T-Bone Walker-meets-Muddy Waters kind of edge. And why not? Indianapolis, after all, is less than 300 miles south of Chicago. “You can see where he’s goin’!” shouts a happy ringsider at one point. “He sounds like Steve Green!” (No, I don’t know who he is either. Answers on a postcard please.)

‘You shoulda heard me 20 years ago, when I could really play’ – Wes Montgomery

In later life one of Wes’ most intriguing quotes was: “You shoulda heard me 20 years ago, when I could really play.” Fans took this with a pinch of salt, yet his remarkable self-deprecation was probably genuine and rooted in the fact that he was an ear player, entirely self-taught and unable to sight-read music. Many great musicians have found it necessary to conceal this fact, because learning by ear instead of learning by eye remains the last taboo.

When asked if he could read, the great pianist Erroll Garner once replied: “Not enough to hurt my playing.” Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Monty Alexander and Django Reinhardt (in his way every bit as distinctive a guitarist as Wes) did not read music either. All are or were not only wonderful ear players but also magnificent individualists whose recorded work, unlike that of so many conservatory graduates, can be recognised instantly. Guitarist Martin Taylor, who learned to read only after learning to play, once defined jazz as a process of elimination, involving the acceptance of attractive ideas and the rejection of unattractive ones. “In that sense all jazz musicians are self-taught,” he concluded. “Particularly the best ones.”

So while the Montgomery brothers may not have written down their arrangements, the lines were always performed in perfect unison and based on agreed harmonies which were hip, accurate and often complex. Make no mistake, theirs was one of the finest family groups in jazz, ranking right up there with the Jones brothers Hank, Thad and Elvin, and the Heaths, Jimmy, Tootie and Percy, not to mention the trumpet-playing Candolis, Pete and Conte. And Wes’ repertoire reflected a particularly sophisticated grasp of chord theory. Consider his material. Many of his themes were cleverly disguised standards. ‘Four on Six’, for example, is ‘Summertime’, ‘Doujie’ is ‘Confirmation’ and one of his best lines, ‘Twisted Blues’, features an unusual turnaround reminiscent of ‘Limehouse Blues’.

Furthermore some of his original compositions contain passing cadences, such as the bridge on ‘Jingles’, that occur only in Montgomeryland. When soloing on a blues or modular theme such as ‘Impressions’, Wes also used a distinctive minor-to-relative-major transposition, analysed in detail in guitarist-educator Adrian Ingram’s tuition books and videos. Wes’ superb solos on ‘Darn that Dream’ and ‘Body and Soul’ on this newfound album offer further conclusive evidence that he could negotiate the most complex chord progressions with ease. ‘Con Alma’ and ‘Born to be Blue’ on later recordings are other examples of fiendish progressions resolved by a beautiful mind.

Wes liked to tease journalists, however. He told some that playing octaves always gave him headaches, and claimed that he never practised at all, adding: “Occasionally I throw a piece of meat into my guitar case.” In a later interview he explained that this merely meant working on actual tunes and new material rather than practising scales and other dreary drills. Of course a technique as awesome as his had to be earned somehow, and no doubt it was gained during those crazy wood-shedding years when he was holding down three jobs a day and practising with his thumb to avoid waking his children or annoying the neighbours. Certainly all the hard work had been done before Cannonball Adderley’s quintet blew into Indianapolis one night in 1960 and changed Wes’ life.

The great altoist was so taken with the bearlike guitar-man of Indiana Avenue that he called Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews in New York and implored him to check Wes out in person without delay. The rest, as they say, was hysteria. Wes’ first albums for Riverside, which bore unbridled titles like So Much Guitar! and The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, hit the jazz public like a guided missile. Fellow stars immediately accepted Wes as the finished article and embraced him like a long-lost brother.

Soon he was gigging and recording everywhere from New York to San Francisco, where he had earlier remained for a year, this time playing the Monterey festival as part of John Coltrane’s group. He also recorded with Cannonball and others [The Poll Winners] in Los Angeles, with Johnny Griffin [Full House] and Miles Davis’ rhythm section, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb [Smokin’ at the Half Note] and rejoining his faithful brothers, who had been travelling as The Mastersounds, for Grooveyard and other fine sessions.

Europe was also clamouring for him, but Wes had an oxlike fear of flying and refused all offers until a 1965 tour was put together involving two-way travel by ocean liner. In London he played a week at Ronnie Scott’s old club in Gerrard Street, whose small room was tightly packed nightly, mainly by guitarists for whom seeing was not quite believing. Wes also hopped a cross-Channel ferry for a live date in Paris with Harold Mabern, Arthur Harper and Jimmy Lovelace, with Johnny Griffin sitting in. Other after-hours bootlegs from this trip are still occasionally surfacing.

Having known real economic hardship, Wes turned no decent offer down after returning to the States. When not touring and recording with a straight ahead trio featuring two hometown buddies, organist Mel Rhyne and drummer Paul Parker, he was developing a lucrative sideline in seductive guitar for lovers. “Make me sound like Frank Sinatra,” he told record producers, who responded by hiring the likes of Oliver Nelson, Claus Ogerman and Don Sebesky to craft sexy settings for Wes’ mellow octave sound and rich chord voicings.

Well-packaged albums of ballads and latin standards aimed at the sophisticated adult market, they sold very well, irritating certain critics but charming others. Even at his most mellow, as in Tequila, Bumpin’, Goin’ Out of My Head, and California Dreaming, there was always a strand of soulful righteousness to savour. US critic Ralph Gleason nailed it when he wrote of “beautifully melodic solos that border on schmaltz but are so deeply rooted in jazz and blues that they are valid.”

Many more studio and in-person masterpieces were envisaged from Wes when a massive heart attack struck him down in the summer of 1968. He was then only 43, but those hard times back in Indiana would have taken chunks off anybody’s life. A great pity, though, because Wes was otherwise a clean-living, sensible and easygoing individual who had never messed with booze, hard drugs, fast women or slow racehorses. His solitary vice was cigarettes, which were then of course marketed without health warnings. But thankfully his music will never die. New generations of music lovers out there will have so much to enjoy, particularly those who play guitar.

Thumb-driven operators remain extremely rare, but another who has always worked without a pick is the wondrous Jim Mullen, who had never heard of Wes until the age of 17. “I was only eight when I got started and I had no technique at all,” he explains. “When I tried to play, the pick kept flying around the room so I stopped using it. Somehow I also taught myself to play right-handed even though I’m left-handed. I wouldn’t change back now, it’s fine, but unlike Wes I only play downstrokes, whereas it’s clear from his records that he played downstrokes and up-strokes. I read somewhere that he could do this because he had a doublejointed thumb. Apparently he could bend it forwards and backwards.”

Another prominent player proud to admit his debt to Wes is Nigel Price. “If swing, tone, melodic ideas and full involvement in the music matter to you then Wes should matter to you too,” he declares. “Listening to Wes in full flight you always get a sense of good feeling among all the players. He swept them along with those melodic cascades, plus octaves and chunky chordal passages that rhythm sections could really get their teeth into.” No doubt many players will get their teeth into Wes Montgomery’s last-known album, particularly those who never saw or heard him live. For older musicians and fans already familiar with his work, it will just make us miss him a little bit more.

Five must-have Montgomery discs:

The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of Wes Montgomery

Riverside, 1960

The shot heard around the guitar world. Wes meets Tommy Flanagan and the Heath brothers, Percy and Albert, with all the panache of someone who has all his stuff together and knows it.

So Much Guitar!

Riverside, 1961

Different rhythm section, same amazing chordal, octavian brilliance. By now ashen-faced fellow guitarists like Kenny Burrell are fantasizing about catching his right thumb in a taxi door.

Full House

Riverside, 1962

Wes cooking live in a smart Californian club with impish tenorman Johnny Griffin and MIles Davis’ then-current rhythm section: Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb.

Movin’ Wes

Verve, 1964

First of his “make me sound sexy” albums and one of the funkiest. This and "Bumpin’" (1965) are acceptable examples of jazz meeting pop, or the gentle art of swinging over silken strings. Nobody did it better.

Smokin’ At The Half Note

Verve, 1966

All that studio smooching was fine, but straight-ahead neo-bop grooving was always Wes’ game, and never more so that live in New York with Kelly, Chambers and Cobb.

This article originally appeared in the July 2012 issue of Jazzwise.

https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/wesmontgomery

Wes Montgomery

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States (where he also died of a heart attack in 1968), Montgomery came from a musical family, in which his brothers, Monk (string bass and electric bass) and Buddy (vibraphone, and piano), were jazz performers. Although Wes was not skilled at reading music, he could learn complex melodies and riffs by ear. Montgomery started learning guitar in his late teens, listening to and learning recordings of his idol, the guitarist Charlie Christian.

Along with the use of octaves (playing the same note on two strings one octave apart) for which he is widely known, Montgomery was also an excellent “single-line” or “single-note” player, and was very influential in the use of block chords in his solos. His playing on the jazz standard “Lover Man” is an example of his single-note, octave and block chord soloing. (”Lover Man” appears on the Fantasy album THE MONTGOMERY BROTHERS.)

Instead of using a guitar pick, Montgomery plucked the strings with the fleshy part of his thumb, using downstrokes for single notes and a combination of upstrokes and downstrokes for chords and octaves. This technique enabled him to get a mellow, expressive tone from his guitar. George Benson, in the liner notes of the Ultimate Wes Montgomery album, wrote that “Wes had a corn on his thumb, which gave his sound that point. He would get one sound for the soft parts, and then that point by using the corn. That's why no one will ever match Wes. And his thumb was double- jointed. He could bend it all the way back to touch his wrist, which he would do to shock people.”

He generally played a Gibson L-5CES guitar. In his later years he played one of two guitars that Gibson custom made for him. In his early years, Montgomery had a tube amp, often a Fender. In his later years he played a Standel.
Montgomery toured with vibraphonist Lionel Hampton's orchestra from July 1948 to January 1950, and can be heard on recordings from this period. Montgomery then returned to Indianapolis and did not record again until December 1957 (save for one session in 1955), when he took part in a session that included his brothers Monk and Buddy, as well as trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who made his recording debut with Montgomery. Most of the recordings made by Montgomery and his brothers from 1957-1959 were released on the Pacific Jazz label.

From 1959 Montgomery was signed to the Riverside Records label, and remained there until late 1963, just before the company went bankrupt. The recordings made during this period are widely considered by fans and jazz historians to be Montgomery's best and most influential. Two sessions in January 1960 yielded The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, which was recorded as a quartet with pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath. The album featured one of Montgomery's most well-known compositions, “Four on Six.”

Almost all of Montgomery's output on Riverside featured the guitarist in a small group setting, usually a quartet or quintet, playing a mixture of hard- swinging uptempo jazz numbers and quiet ballads. In 1964 Montgomery moved to Verve Records for two years. His stay at Verve yielded a number of albums where he was featured with an orchestra, and during this period Montgomery's music started to shift in to the territory of pop music. One notable exception is 1965's Smokin' at the Half Note, which showcased two memorable appearances at the famous New York City club with the Wynton Kelly Trio. Wes continued to play outstanding live jazz guitar, as evidenced by surviving audio and video recordings from his 1965 tour of Europe.

As a considered founder of the Smooth Jazz school the album “Bumpin'” (1965) represents a model from which many modern recording are derived. In it, a full orchestral type of scoring goes beyond the artist's own ability to riff creating a wholistic concept of music and of Jazz. Longer clips from all of the tracks tracks on “Bumpin'” and other Wes Montgomery albums are found on Verve Records website.

By the time Montgomery released his first album for A&M Records, he had seemingly totally abandoned the straightforward jazz of his earlier career for the more lucrative pop market. The three albums released during his A&M period (1967-68) feature orchestral renditions of famous pop songs (”Scarborough Fair,” “I Say a Little Prayer for You,” “Eleanor Rigby,” etc.) with Montgomery reciting the melody with his guitar. While these records were the most commercially successful of his career, they are now poorly regarded by some fans and critics.

Montgomery's home town of Indianapolis has named a park in his honor.

Many jazz and rock guitarists today list Montgomery among their influences including: Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Pat Martino, Lee Ritenour, Pat Metheny, George Benson, Pete Smyser, Chris Standring, Eric Johnson, Yoshiaki Miyanoue and Joe Satriani.

By some accounts, Montgomery has been the most influential jazz guitarist of all time, whose style has transcended into other forms of music, including Rock 'n' Roll, Soul, and Rhythm and Blues.[citation needed] Many songwriters and composers have written musical tributes to him, including Stevie Wonder and Eric Johnson

Awards

1965; received Grammy Award for Goin' Out of My Head as Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by Large Group or Soloist with Large Group and The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, earned him Down Beat magazine's "New Star" award in 1960

https://jazztimes.com/features/wes-montgomery-the-softer-side-of-genius/

JazzTimes

Wes Montgomery: The Softer Side of Genius

Published 07/01/2005

By Josef Woodard

Wes Montgomery is not only one of the most important guitarists in jazz history, he’s also one of the music’s most inspired natural talents-whatever the instrument. The flowing solos on his early ’60s Riverside recordings feature deep musicality, warm melodies, fearsome chops and a remarkable use of octaves. Instead of a plectrum, Montgomery used his thumb to create a soft attack on his Gibson L-5 without suffering a loss of rhythmic drive, and he’s often cited as the most influential jazz guitarist since Charlie Christian.

A recent reissue of Smokin’ at the Half Note (Verve), a pivotal 1965 album with Wynton Kelly’s Trio, has cast Montgomery’s greatness into the spotlight once again.
But it’s also opened up old debates.

The original version of the 1965 LP had five tracks, though only two were recorded at the Half Note: “No Blues” and “If You Could See Me Now.” The other three tracks, deemed unsuitable by producer Creed Taylor, were recut in Rudy Van Gelder’s studio three months later. But the seven other live tracks did make their way to LP eventually, on the 1969 album Willow Weep for Me, which came out a year after Montgomery’s death-overdubbed with brass and woodwind arrangements by Claus Ogerman.

Naturally, jazz critics howled about Verve’s creative decisions and Ogerman’s sweet accompaniment.

Meanwhile, Willow Weep for Me won that year’s jazz Grammy.

The latest edition of Smokin’ at the Half Note features six of the seven tracks on Willow in stripped-down form. The reissue acts like exhibit A in the standard critical argument depicting Montgomery’s work in “before” and “after” terms, jazz versus pop, art versus commerce. The recording is frequently viewed, on simple terms, as the guitarist’s last blast of genuine jazz before he boarded the commercial gravy train, under the guidance of Taylor, for a series of lucrative but solo-challenged, pop-centric, radio-friendly albums for Verve and A&M that featured brass and string sections padding Montgomery’s octave-warmed sound.

But is it possible that the “sellout” chapter in Wes Mont-gomery’s life has been greatly exaggerated?

Born in 1923 in Indianapolis and based there most of his life, Montgomery had a strange, brilliant and too-brief career, cut short by a fatal heart attack in 1968. He was 45. By the time the guitarist was noticed by the jazz world at large, he was already in his mid-30s.

Montgomery worked as often as he could in Indianapolis clubs to feed his large brood of kids, and his high visibility and inviting intensity made him a local legend. In 1959 producer Orrin Keepnews had a new label, Riverside, and he was looking for talent. Cannonball Adderley urged him to check out an unassuming guitar wizard in the Midwest.

“Prompted by Cannonball’s enthusiasm, I flew out to Indianapolis, checked into a hotel and went straight to the place where he was doing his regular evening gig,” Keepnews says. “Shortly after that, after a short rest period, we all went on to the Missile Room, which was something like a 2 to 6 a.m. situation. As the sun rose over Indianapolis, we signed a contract.” (In honor of the occasion, one of the tunes on the guitarist’s Riverside debut, The Wes Montgomery Trio, was named “Missile Blues.”)

Over the next five years Keepnews guided Montgomery through many recordings. “You have to remember, that was a period in which the normal minimum was for jazz artists to think in terms of two albums a year,” Keepnews says. “With somebody like Wes, it wasn’t difficult to get him into the studio. We recorded at least that frequently and probably a bit more.

“In the first year he’s working, a couple of records come out and attention is paid to him. All of a sudden, he’s the new star on his instrument,” the producer says. “His reaction to that was to complain about the fact that he still wasn’t working very much or making much money. I said to him specifically, ‘Hey Wes, a year ago you were unknown and broke. Now you’re a star and broke. That’s tremendous progress.’

“Literally, we were not working to sell records,” Keepnews says. “We were working to present the artist in the best possible way and to get the most out of the artist as a performer, as a player. Probably, it would have been a nice idea if we had been a more aggressive sales unit. On the other hand, when Riverside disappeared and he went onto his Verve and A&M associations, quite clearly the goal was to turn him into the biggest seller possible. He was handled like a pop artist.”

Financial problems spelled the end of Riverside in 1964, so Montgomery’s manager, John Levy, approached Taylor, who had founded Impulse and then gone to work for Verve. Unlike more hardcore jazz-minded producers, Taylor had an ear, and an appetite, for the marketplace.

Taylor had been an admirer of Montgomery’s playing, but he didn’t necessarily admire the guitarist’s presentation up to that point: “I’d been listening to the Riverside recordings and noticing how great he sounded, and how nondescript the context of the environment that he was playing in was,” he says. “Jazz critics have it that you just let an artist like that loose in the studio and it can’t be anything except absolutely marvelous. But nobody listened to it-well, not nobody, strictly speaking.”

To make people listen, Taylor knew what he had to do: “Even before I was at Verve, even when I started Impulse, I had been totally aware of the fact that you have to get on radio.”

Dividing the guitarist’s career between his Keepnews and his Taylor recordings has long provided a tidy way to judge his career. But the ways the guitarist’s later albums are routinely dismissed are often based more on historical points of view and hearsay rather than modern-day listening and reconsiderations.

Montgomery’s first two albums for Verve, 1964’s Movin’ Wes and 1965’s Bumpin’, set the stage for a series of pop-flavored Montgomery albums to come, including 1965’s wildly successful, Grammy-garnering Goin’ Out of My Head, with Oliver Nelson arrangements.

Smokin’ at the Half Note was also made in 1965, but it wasn’t, as if so often claimed, his last gasp playing the sort of unadorned jazz that he supposedly did only during the Riverside days. In fact, the much-criticized practice of placing the guitarist among horn-and-string arrangements was first presented on the 1963 Riverside album Fusion!, with charts by Jimmy Jones. The Verve albums were merely following up on that idea.

Still, count Keepnews as one of those who isn’t in love with Montgomery’s post-Riverside recordings. The producer claims the guitarist’s Riverside work was “who he was” as an artist. “You heard it,” Keepnews says. “The reason I think that he could tear people apart with his playing was because that was who the man was. I don’t think there’s any question about that.”

Keepnews says, “It’s a damn shame that there wasn’t some middle ground that could have been taken. I just wish there had been an opportunity-either if I’d been able to continue with him or if the people who handled his records thereafter-to have a more middle-of-the-road attitude toward it. It would have been nice if he had done a stepped-up version of what we had been doing. Of course, they didn’t totally get away from what we’d been doing. I think it’s kind of ironic that the very best that Montgomery did after Riverside was the live date at the Half Note.”

In fact, the seeds for Smokin’ at the Half Note were sown by Keepnews. He first put Montgomery together with pianist Wynton Kelly’s trio, which was also Miles Davis’ rhythm section. Joined by tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, the quintet made Full House, a crackling good live album, recorded in 1962 at Tsubo’s in Berkeley, California.

Taylor has a different view of the albums Montgomery did with Keepnews. “Those extended blowing things on Riverside-I’m not criticizing the recordings at all-but they wouldn’t take Wes anyplace,” he says. “I wouldn’t try to do that with Segovia, but here you’ve got a melodic improvising giant with an original sound, and all you’ve had to do was to put him in some kind of a universal context that would communicate with the people. That would mean that radio would recognize that the listeners would like it, and therefore, they played it, even if they might say, ‘We don’t play jazz.’ So the next time Wes comes out with a record, they say ‘Oh, it’s a Wes Montgomery record, it’s not a jazz record per se, so let’s listen to it.'”

Taylor says Montgomery never voiced any objections to the directions his producer was taking him. “No, not at all. Wes never had any complaints about anything. He was going great guns,” Taylor says. “[His manager] John Levy was extremely happy, because Wes’ concert fees were just soaring. He hit his commercial stride about the time he died.”

The contented attitude Taylor describes Montgomery having toward his latter-day musical turn is disputed by Keepnews. “This is not open to discussion,” he says. “Wes was not happy with what he was doing in those ornate settings. That was not what he wanted to be doing, as witness the fact that he never performed in that kind of setting. To the very end, he was out there on the road in a trio or quartet setting. That’s how he always heard himself.”

Arranger Don Sebesky, who worked on many of Taylor’s productions, tells a different story. “Creed had a vision and a way to do these records. Obviously, he knew that they were great musicians, but it came at a time when these musicians were looking to expand their fan base. Wes would play a club and would get his usual amount of patrons. After these records came out, they were lined up around the block three times,” Sebesky says. “Wes welcomed the opportunity to expand his fan base. He would go into a club and stretch out the way he always did. He didn’t hold back when he went into performance. He’d play a lot of things he’d played during his Riverside period.

“They were happy to make more money than they had before,” Sebesky says. “Some people castigated them for ‘selling out,’ but nobody was unhappy about that. Those musicians we did that for were perfectly happy with the arrangement. It worked out pretty well for them.”

As Montgomery told the Associated Press in 1968, after his biggest splashes of the Taylor era, his recording career had started with a pure focus on jazz values and evolved into something very different. “I began by finding things I liked to do and jazz musicians would understand,” he said, but “other people would stare and look with mouth wide open. But I used to feel, this is it; they’ve got to hear it. I was playing for myself for a long time. It was good music, and I recorded it, but it just went to musicians, no further. Then I started to do more melodic things, and I sold more records because the music was more melodic and simplified. And I began to understand that the public will let you know what they want from you by sales.”

But the jazz press wasn’t the public, and they routinely criticized the work of arrangers like Sebesky. Still, Sebesky’s philosophical about the way his work was treated. “Well, I was a hired gun,” he says. “I was asked to do an album within a specific frame of reference, and that was my job. My job was to accommodate and to amplify and to clarify Creed’s intentions and his vision. He was the producer. I would have suggestions, obviously, but ideas would spring up and he would have a reason for doing this and that.

“More often than not, it was a marketing way of looking at things,” Sebesky says. “Left to my own devices, I probably would have done a lot of things differently. It was a time when he found a formula that worked for him.”

Clearly, Montgomery’s Taylor-era discography lacks the raw improvisational grit of the Riverside years, but many of the last recordings the guitarist made boast sophistication on many levels, especially in the elegance of the arrangements-which sometimes envinced more of a lush ’60s-pop sensibility than a big-band aesthetic-and compact solo statements that gained in economy what they lacked in expansiveness.

Plus, compared to what currently passes for pop-jazz, usually under the smooth-jazz rubric, Montgomery’s latter work sounds positively inspired-adventurous even. Guitarist Charlie Hunter says, “That stuff is great, especially when you think about what’s going on today. Back then it was like sellout. Today, it’s like avant-garde. The reason why guitar players love him is that he was the Man,” no matter the musical setting.

Sebesky draws a natural comparison, saying that Taylor’s projects were “in those days considered something like smooth jazz, because it brought in people who normally hadn’t been jazz fans up to that point and brought them into being jazz fans. It gave them something that came down easy. We didn’t really have a formula at the time. The CD 101.9 thing [New York City’s chill-out station] is kind of a formula. You have to conform to certain guidelines in order to get played on that station. I’m not sure that Creed was thinking that way. I think he just wanted to make nice records that people would like to listen to.

“A lot of purists didn’t take kindly to that,” Sebesky says, “because they felt that Wes’ career, up to that point, had been hard-charging. But Wes was very happy to be doing what we were doing. You have to go by that, as well. That’s a pretty good barometer of the way things worked. Nobody went into the studio kicking and screaming, that’s for sure. It was a golden time.”

Creed Taylor brought Wes Montgomery into the studio in November of 1964-a year after his last Riverside sessions-to create what became the pop-and-jazz album Movin’ Wes. On the pop end were tunes like “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” and “People,” the latter featuring some fleetingly lovely ballad playing by Montgomery, who at one point hangs out on a single note, a technique later heard in Pat Metheny’s stylistic bag. On the jazz side were tasty items like “Caravan” and the Montgomery-penned title tune. The album featured Johnny Pate’s arrangements and a new horn-flecked version of the guitarist’s classic “West Coast Blues” in a version that is more suave and to the point (clocking in at just over three minutes), with a brief but appetizing octave- and chord-laden solo.

Movin’ Wes sold 100,000 copies soon after its release-by far the biggest seller the guitarist had made to date-thus ensuring continued efforts in the same vein.

The next release, Bumpin’, featured several Montgomery’s originals, including the bluesy lazy brood of the title song, the swinging “Tear it Down” and the soul vamp “Just Walkin.'” His sweetly lyrical tune “Mi Cosa” can be heard as an impromptu studio outtake, released as the unadorned bonus track called “(Unidentified Solo Guitar)” on the CD reissue of Guitar on the Go. On Bumpin’ it comes padded with silky strings.

At this point Montgomery experimented briefly with an electronic octave-divider effect on his guitar-a sonic redundancy for a guitarist who dispensed octaves with such surreal ease. Bumpin’ though careful not to veer too far from its structural design, also features some genuine jazz interplay between Montgomery and pianist Roger Kellaway.
Sebesky came up with a working process on Bumpin’ to accommodate Montgomery’s discomfort with fitting into preconceived arrangements. Taylor says working with the guitarist was a joy, and that “the only uncomfortable thing we ever encountered was when we had a bunch of string players around one time, and Wes was pretending he was reading his part, and he couldn’t read. It was after that that we decided that we should record Wes with a small group, a rhythm section or whatever, and if we needed the other elements, we would add it later.”

“After that, we just did everybody like that,” Sebesky says. “We started recording all the artists with the rhythm sections, and then putting the backgrounds down later. [Sometimes] I would write the arrangement in a general way, and then I would tell [the rhythm unit] kind of where I was going to do stuff later on so they could stay out of the way. But a lot of the times, after hearing them play the basics, I was let into the creative process. It was back and forth between them and me all the time. It wasn’t like I was just telling them what to do. Herbie [Hancock] would play a little lick, and I would key off of that and do a little background part. Sometimes, it was hard to tell what came first.”

Taylor and the various arrangers also devised a system of getting ideas across to the guitarist that didn’t involve sheet music. “The arranger, whether it was Oliver Nelson or Don Sebesky or whoever, would simply do a Fender Rhodes tape of the structure of the arrangement. They’d make a tape of it, along with vocal instructions: ‘Wes, you play here, da da da…and this is going to be brass figures behind you.’ I would send the tape out to Wes while he was on the road. Of course, he rehearsed in the hotel room all the time. He’d sit there with the headset on and listen to the tape, so when he came back to New York, he was ready to go.”

Montgomery’s playing always featured an innate sophistication, which is especially striking when his lack of formal study is considered. “He’s like Chet Baker,” Taylor says, another famous jazzman with a distinct sound and technique despite a lack of training. “He never dwelled on a G minor 7 or whatever. His ear just took him wherever the song was going.”

It was Montgomery’s third studio album of 1965 that spread his name furthest, and it did so through an unlikely source: the title-track take on the Little Anthony and the Imperials single “Goin’ Out of My Head.” Taylor had the idea for Montgomery to cover the song because, he says, “I knew [songwriter] Teddy Randazzo, and I really respected his musicality and songwriting ability. If you take away the R&B performance and just look at that song, it’s an absolutely marvelous song to improvise on. For that time, it had sophisticated changes and the whole structure was great. I was thinking, ‘This would be perfect for Wes Montgomery. But how am I going to overcome the fact that here’s Wes and his background? He’d be about the last person to listen to Little Anthony and the Imperials.’

“I can remember to this day when I brought that record to him,” Taylor says. “He was actually at the Half Note, in the West Village. He was there with Wynton Kelly and that group. I brought the record by and said, ‘Listen to it. Oliver Nelson is going to write the chart for this, and Oliver can take any kind of a song and mold it into a context that you’re going to be very happy with.’ So he decided, ‘OK, whatever you say,’ more or less.

“During the session, some of which was live and some overdubbed, I walked over to Wes-I have a photograph of it: I’m whispering in his ear, ‘Wes, remember we agreed that you’d play the melody in octaves.’ Of course, the jazz critics would never let go of it. I corrupted this artistic diamond in the rough or whatever and made him do all this tapestry stuff.”

Goin’ Out of My Head garnered a Grammy and immediate airplay friendliness and sales that, by now, have crept up to around a million. Commercial firepower and Grammy-winning accessibility notwithstanding, it’s a classic big-band album, with smart charts by Nelson and stolen moments of Montgomery’s guitar grandeur and romantic truth scattered throughout. The title track that made so much commercial and critical noise is all of 2:12 in duration, but the album also features plenty of jazz fiber, including the Montgomery originals “Boss City,” “Twisted Blues,” with a hip and spidery single-line solo, and “Naptown Blues,” which is suave but also has a nervy swagger, ending on a brash, dissonant chord.

The guitarist then cut the lightly Latin album Tequila-the only album he ever made without a keyboardist-with string arrangements by Claus Ogerman and featuring the talents of bassist Ron Carter, drummer Grady Tate and conguero Ray Barretto. It’s an airy, melodious record, with the standout track being the gently brooding Montgomery original “Bumpin’ on Sunset,” which features him playing double octaves-the same note played in three octaves.

Montgomery, no doubt emboldened by the cachet of success in his commercial ventures, recorded blowing albums in September 1966, with organist Jimmy Smith: The Dynamic Duo and Further Adventures of Jimmy and Montgomery. These sessions were one way to satisfy his jazz urges, which he was also able to engage, in some measure, on gigs so long as he fed his newly configured audiences the hits they craved.

Though his commercial prospects were brightening by the day, Montgomery reserved some of his greatest admiration for instrumentalists other than guitarists, especially jazz musicians who were busy pushing the envelope rather than riding a commercial groove. In a “Blindfold Test” in Down Beat with Leonard Feather in 1967, Montgomery paid polite respects to the various guitarists Feather played for him, including George Benson, Howard Roberts, Joe Pass, Gabor Szabo and Grant Green.

Feather finally asked him, “Can you think of any albums you’d give five stars to?”

Montgomery replied “…that’s pretty weird-can’t think of any five-star records! Oh, this new thing by Miles, Miles Smiles, Now that’s a beautiful thing. He’s beginning to change his things all the time, but he hasn’t gone all out, and Wayne Shorter’s playing a little different. It’s nice. Joe Henderson’s got a thing I think would be five stars, too. I think it’s Mode for Joe-he and McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Richard Davis.”

Montgomery’s choices reveal that he had his ear trained toward the day’s challenging sounds-not veering all the way to the avant-garde but certainly separate from the commercially oriented middle ground he was then locked into. At one point, Montgomery did some West Coast dates with John Coltrane’s group, and he was even offered an invitation to join Trane’s band. “John was among the people very impressed with Wes,” Keepnews says. But the guitarist declined Coltrane’s invitations, partly due to his insecurity about playing with the saxophonist, whom he revered. (Montgomery plays a beautiful version of Coltrane’s “Impressions” on the expanded Smokin’ at the Half Note.)

Just as that “Blindfold Test” came out in June of ’67, Montgomery was riding a wave of three Sebesky-arranged albums that lean heavily on pop: 1966’s California Dreaming, ’67’s Down Here on the Ground and A Day in the Life-the best-selling jazz LP of 1967. Yet Down Here on the Ground is one of the finest (if least popular) of the more romantic Taylor-era recordings.

Down Here on the Ground takes its title from the Lalo Schifrin tune heard in The Cincinnati Kid, and the LP closes with a lushly orchestrated take on Schifrin’s romantic movie theme song “The Fox,” over which Montgomery’s octaves sound heaven-sent. The set showcases the guitarist’s melodic instincts in an agreeable way on “Georgia on My Mind,” “I Say a Little Prayer for You” and the chilling, poignant “When I Look in Your Eyes,” with its brief solo chordal interludes. Montgomery’s own “Up and At It” is a saucy little vamp, and “Goin’ on to Detroit,” with its simple, inspired melody combined with the guitarist’s customary twists tucked into the seamless flow, should be a standard. The album also features two members of the very band involved in Miles Smiles: pianist Herbie Hancock and bassist Ron Carter.

In that 1968 interview with the Associated Press, Montgomery talks about his success, then at its pinnacle. He said that when Goin’ Out of My Head became such a hit, “I got scared. I wanted the doors open, but you got to be careful because the next album can close them…. My direction before was hard jazz. But it began to dawn on me that I might understand what I’m doing, but if I can’t project to the point where I can communicate, it doesn’t mean anything.

“Since everybody has to survive, economics forced musicians out of jazz,” Montgomery said. “And what is playing music for anyway? People to enjoy themselves. That is my direction now. But I still don’t have a commercial mind for picking tunes. ‘A Day in the Life’ wouldn’t have crossed my mind at all. I let somebody else think of the commercial tunes, and I try to adapt myself to the material they pick and get inside of it.

“I always panic at every record I do,” he said. “I walk in the studio-the material is ready and everybody is ready. The lights go on and I start playing. I don’t have confidence in the material, myself or anything. The first two sets I’m not geared up. Then the last two or three, everything begins to come right.

“The secret of recording is, if in two minutes and 45 seconds with a tune, you can get into it, identify yourself, put some guts into it and get out, you’ve got something.”

Many photographs of Wes Montgomery find him with a cigarette. Ironically, one of his most infamous LP covers is that of A Day in the Life, a decidedly unglamorous, close-up view of an ashtray with snubbed butts. The image suggests, at least through contemporary eyes, fatalistic self-destruction, keeping in tune with the sullen existential bent of the Beatles’ title tune.

“I tell you, Philip Morris must not have been happy,” Taylor says. “It was totally unromantic in its message. It was a feeling that went with the title. It could have been ‘Don’t Smoke in Bed’ or ‘The Blues Get Me Upset When I’m Upset Anyway.’ The typical movie storyline where the guy is grinding out cigarette after cigarette was the idea for the cover of A Day in the Life. Obviously, it had nothing to do with health or anything else. I thought it was just a great Pete Turner photograph. I didn’t have anything particular in mind. Pete Turner was just shooting whatever he found interesting, and we’d review his portfolio from time to time. That’s the way we got all of those photos.

Montgomery’s last album, Road Song, is another Sebesky-arranged date that was heavy on the pop, with sweet but by-the-book versions of “Yesterday,” “Greensleeves,” “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Scarborough Fair.”

“That last album cover is another beautiful Pete Turner photo-a 22 millimeter shot of a white fence that goes down the road,” Taylor says. “It turned out it was Wes’ road song-of course, nobody expected anything like that. It was kind of ironic.”
Road Song was another hit, but Montgomery didn’t live long enough to enjoy it. On June 15, 1968, he died of a heart attack at his home on West 44th Street. He passed in the arms of his wife, Serene. (A ballad named after her appears on Road Song.)

A crowd of 2,400 showed up at the memorial service at the Puritan Baptist Church in Indianapolis. In the crowd were Cannonball Adderley and the entire Montgomery family. His children-daughters Charlene Grayson, Sharon, Sandra, Frances and Toni and sons John L. Jr. and Robert-and Serene were joined by sister Lena and his ever present brothers and frequent musical collaborators, Buddy and Monk, who served as pallbearers.

Montgomery’s body was taken to the New Crown Cemetery, where you can find his headstone by the row of graves close to a sign reading “Montgomery Rd.” It is set apart from the other headstones by its warm, reddish tint and the prominent image of a Gibson L-5 guitar, the defining feature of his life.

The Indianapolis Star report on the funeral commented, “The thoughts of many of the friends there could almost be read on their faces. He’ll be remembered to them and many more as a hard worker, an honest man, a rare individual both as a performer and a man with no pretensions about his accomplishments….”

http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/wes-montgomery-a-players-perspective-622741

Wes Montgomery: a player's perspective

By Denny Ilett (Guitarist)

June 15, 2015

Guitars

Steve Howe, Martin Taylor and more on the jazz legend

With the recent release of In The Beginning, a double-album set on Resonance Records that features newly discovered 'live' recordings and studio sessions, we ask: what makes Wes Montgomery so special? Why is he still relevant today? And what can all guitarists, regardless of style, learn from this humble genius?

Throughout the 1930s and 40s, guitarists were faced with a major challenge: how to adapt the 'language' of jazz on to the fretboard. From its seedy beginnings in the Red Light District of New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century, jazz had been a horn players' music. So much of the basic vocabulary centred around the way trumpets, saxophones, clarinets and trombones slid, bent, glissed and sustained their phrases.

For years, the humble guitar languished in the rhythm section, where it thumped along with the bass and drums while horn players wailed out front.

Early solo pioneers such as Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson and Django Reinhardt paved the way for the single-string genius of Charlie Christian who, blessed with the new-fangled electric guitar, was able to forge its place in the 'front line' of jazz ensembles.

Christian's contribution started a revolution. Guitarists were finally liberated - and among them was Wes Montgomery.

The Thumb

Wes was entirely self-taught and early on decided to sacrifice speed for tone by using the right-hand thumb instead of a plectrum. The fat, warm sound he was able to produce with the thumb created a very vocal, soulful 'voice' that's very difficult to obtain with a pick.

"His technique seemed to allow him to play anything he wanted" - Steve Howe

Most players who try this technique find it stifling, as upstrokes are so difficult to articulate. Jim Mullen, himself a thumb player, points out that Wes "had a double-jointed thumb, which meant he could play both up- and downstrokes like a pick player".

Ultimately, Wes became so good with the thumb that any drop in speed became irrelevant, as Steve Howe points out: "His technique seemed to allow him to play anything he wanted."

Listening now, over 50 years after some of his most celebrated recordings were made, the velocity Wes could generate when needed is still astonishing. A prime example is his solo on the John Coltrane tune Impressions, which he takes at a breakneck speed. In fact, there isn't a single moment in any Wes recording where you would think he'd do better with a pick!

Picky about picks

"His technique shouldn't have allowed him to play fast, but... he could play fast!" says John Etheridge, although speed-for-speed's-sake was the last thing on Wes's mind. He always seemed to play exactly what was right in any given musical moment and was much more interested in generating a 'mood'.

The tone produced by his magic thumb was a prime ingredient in Wes Montgomery's emotional arsenal. On top of this, Wes had his own way of emulating the horn style of jazz phrasing by, in the words of Nigel Price, "constructing a huge vocabulary of slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs and slurs, which set him apart from all the other guitarists of the day".

Herein lies a major component of what makes Wes so great. He was, arguably, the first jazz guitarist to fully incorporate the legato approach of the horn players, and we can speculate as to how much the thumb approach contributed to that.

Adrian Utley makes the point that the thumb gave Wes "a great 'connection' with his instrument... no plastic pick to get in the way". This also played a large part in his beautiful, relaxed phrasing, which, coupled with his innate musicianship, produced playing that is as moving as it is awe-inspiring.

The 'Formula

"I was immediately struck by the energy, sophistication and sheer joy in his playing" - Martin Taylor

"I first saw Wes on a BBC TV show in the 60s," recalls Martin Taylor. "I was immediately struck by the energy, sophistication and sheer joy in his playing."

It's difficult to imagine the impact that Wes had when he first came to prominence. As Steve Howe says: "The newness of the sound that Wes brought to us in the 1960s was so refreshing."

What was it, then, that set him apart from other great guitarists of the day? The answer, perhaps, lies in his unique approach to soloing, which became something of a 'formula' and ultimately defined his art.

The formula itself? Single-line passage, octave passage, block-chord passage was a beautifully simple way of building subtle intensity as the solo developed and yet another indication of his genius. Horn players - having a broader palette of range, dynamics and tonal colours - were able to build their solos by introducing those elements as the solo developed.

Thick solos

Certainly in those days, guitarists had just one sound at their disposal, making it more difficult to maintain interest and intensity when they played. Wes found a brilliant and simple way round this problem by, as John Etheridge points out, "reinforcing" and "thickening" his lines as his solo progressed.

After a passage of fluid, bluesy, always relaxed single-string licks, Wes would move onto octaves for the next stage, and play them so effortlessly that you would hardly notice the transition. Yet, the line is now doubled and intensity is added to the solo.

The last phase of the solo would see Wes move from octaves to full chords - known as 'block' chords - which would further increase the drama and excitement. John Etheridge elaborates:

"All three were used strictly melodically, the single line reinforced with octaves, essentially thickening the line. Then, his chord improvisations - and this is very important - were also used melodically. It wasn't like, 'Look, I can do this harmonic inversion of this substitution.'"

Each device follows as a natural progression from the other. There are countless examples of Wes employing the 'formula', although West Coast Blues epitomises the technique.

The key, as Jazz player Jim Mullen points out that Wes had a double-jointed thumb, enabling him to play both up- and downstrokes Etheridge points out, is melody and melodic drive. Jim Mullen adds:

"His octave playing was an imitation of the trumpet-tenor sax frontline and his improvised chord solos were beautiful, melodic inventions."

Steve Howe describes Wes as a "brilliant, naturally gifted improviser", and Nigel Price emphasises how one "rarely gets the feeling that Wes is forcing through pre-learned patterns, unlike many jazz guitarists today".

Natural is a key word. Wes played in a way that is increasingly absent from jazz these days. He sounds like he doesn't care about scales, modes, substitutions or clever little 'guitaristic' devices. His playing exists solely in the pursuit of melody. As Adrian Utley says about another Montgomery masterpiece, D-Natural Blues: "You can sing the whole thing: it's so melodic, perfect and succinct."

The Blues

Wes Montgomery was a master of the blues. Regardless of how complicated the chord changes or melody of the tune he was playing, it was always laced with the blues. Wes recorded many variations on the 12-bar throughout his career: the aforementioned D-Natural Blues, as 'down-home' as it gets; and the loping waltz time of West Coast Blues, with its lovely 'twist' in the chord pattern.

"Wes sounded so effortless, his rhythmic feel was so 'in the pocket', relaxed and flowing --John Etheridge

Other prime examples are Blue 'N' Boogie, a medium-up-tempo swinger, and Cariba, a minor blues with a Latin feel. Then there's the unusual 16-bar Twisted Blues, which features some fabulous alterations to the standard sequence, as its title suggests.

Regardless, Wes played real blues on everything - meaning 'blues, the attitude' rather than 'blues, the pentatonic scale'. John Etheridge reminds us that Wes "sounded so effortless, his rhythmic feel was so 'in the pocket', relaxed and flowing. Everything he did was beautifully played and phrased, it was so sensitive... he makes you 'feel' the song, which is very important... he really does tell a story."

A musician first

Of course, telling a story has its roots in the blues. When you listen to old live recordings of, say, BB King, you can hear the crowd responding vocally to phrases he plays - call and response - and you can hear the jazz equivalent with Wes.

He'll put a 'full stop' on a phrase at the perfect moment before picking up the next idea. Subtle use of space was as powerful a tool in Wes's hands as all the blistering single lines, octaves and chord melody he'd mastered.

Knowing when not to play, creating momentum with subtle but brilliant rhythmic devices, holding back, pushing forward. There's such a vocal quality to Montgomery's playing that you could almost fit lyrics to his lines - "you can sing the whole thing!"

In some ways, he was the most un-guitar- like of guitar players. His musicianship transcended his chosen instrument. Martin Taylor reinforces this point when he says:

"Django has gone down in history as a great guitarist but I always think that Wes was a musician first, a guitarist second. Wes would have been a great musician whatever instrument he chose to play."

Transcribe a Wes Montgomery solo for a sax player and what you will hear is a great jazz solo, exactly as Taylor describes. Nigel Price adds: "Wes played everything for the music. His improvisations were always in keeping with the vibe of the material." This was most apparent when Wes played his beloved blues.

The Guitar

Wes owned and played a variety of Gibson archtops over the years that would have us all drooling. A Gibson L-4 with a 'Charlie Christian' pickup, an ES-175 and an ES-125 are all guitars he was photographed with in the early days. The instrument he'll be forever associated with, though, is the L-5.

Later in his career, Gibson made him a 'custom' model with a single neck humbucker and a metal tune-o-matic bridge to replace the traditional wooden one. This was Wes's request, as the metal bridge brightened the tone, offsetting the dark sound produced by his thumb. At some point, Wes had the pickup reversed.

Contrary to popular belief, he was constantly looking for ways to brighten the sound. His strings were, in the words of Russell Malone, "cables!" - 0.014 to 0.058. His choice of amp fluctuated between Fender Super Reverbs and Twins, before he switched to a Standel Super Custom in the mid 60s.

Regardless, Wes never cared too much about gear and saw his equipment as nothing more than a tool to get the job done, once saying, "I got a standard box. I don't never want nothing special. Then, if I drop it, I can borrow someone else's."

He also dabbled with a Fender electric bass. His brother Monk Montgomery is credited with being the first to play jazz on a bass guitar, so it was close to Wes all along. He even recorded some solos on bass for the Movin' Wes album, which Steve Howe describes as a "hidden gem in his crown".

The Legacy

For someone who was quite content honing his craft in jazz clubs around Indianapolis while supporting his wife and seven children by also holding down a full-time day job, Wes probably wasn't as ready for the limelight as much as the jazz world was ready for him to be there.
He was 37 years old when he was 'discovered' and signed to Riverside Records but had been quietly "reinventing jazz guitar" for over a decade, as Jim Mullen says, with nightly gigs on his local scene.

"I don't practise. Every now and then I open the guitar case and throw a piece of raw meat in!" - Wes Montgomery

The recordings just released by Resonance come from these times. Here, we can get close to the 'real' Wes, playing effortless jazz to a relative handful of clubgoers. We can hear him in a relaxed and informal setting playing for the sheer joy of it and clearly having the time of his life. The "relaxed but ferocious energy" that Adrian Utley describes is in evidence on these amateur recordings.

The years in the clubs meant that Wes arrived on the international scene fully formed, making him seem even more incredible when his albums first appeared. The fact that he lived fewer than 10 years between his first major album and his death only serves to add to the intensity.

That he chose, admirably it would seem, to 'sell out' to a major label and become a Grammy Award-winning 'pop' act toward the end allows us an insight into his philosophy on music and the guitar. He only ever saw it as "a hobby" and remained humble and down- to-earth while blowing everybody away with his incredibly joyous music.

Boundary pusher

He claimed not to practise, saying, "I don't practise. Every now and then I open the guitar case and throw a piece of raw meat in!" On another occasion, he elaborated: "If I know it, I don't need to practise it. If I don't know it, I ain't risking it!"

The fact is, Wes Montgomery was a man who genuinely did play for the love of it. He never allowed himself to be tortured by any technical shortcomings or threatened by the new generation of great players coming up in the 60s, such as Joe Pass or George Benson. He merely turned up at a gig or a studio and played heartfelt, honest, soulful and beautiful music before going home to his beloved family.

Guitarists of all genres have repeatedly acknowledged their admiration for Wes Montgomery. From Jimi Hendrix to Eric Johnson; from Steve Vai to Stevie Ray Vaughan; from Joe Satriani to Steve Lukather... Wes has never been just a jazz guitarists' favourite. His music has, and always will, defy categorisation and transcend musical boundaries. Perhaps this should serve as the ultimate lesson taught by this great man.

Many thanks to John Etheridge, Steve Howe, Jim Mullen, Nigel Price, Martin Taylor and Adrian Utley.

http://www.npr.org/2007/09/26/14687657/wes-montgomery-the-unmistakable-jazz-guitar

NPR's 'Jazz Profiles'

Wes Montgomery: 'The Unmistakable Jazz Guitar'

53:42

EMBED: <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/14687657/14655714" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>

September 26, 2007
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

Wes Montgomery poses in studio.

Chuck Stewart

The jazz guitar of Wes Montgomery, deemed "the biggest, warmest, fattest sound on record," still reverberates today, nearly forty years after his death. The most influential, widely admired jazz guitarist since Charlie Christian's heyday, Wes re-invented the instrument with his thumb-plucking technique, his innovative approach to playing octaves, and his inventive, masterful execution of complex lines. In the short span of a 9 year recording career as a leader, his name became synonymous with the jazz guitar.
Despite the sophistication of his technique, Wes had no formal musical education. Born on March 6th, 1923 in Indianapolis, Wes grew up making music with his brothers, several of whom also became professional musicians. Electric bass guitarist Monk Montgomery recalls buying his brother his first guitar, a four-string tenor, on which 12-year-old Wes demonstrated immediate proficiency. Wes learned by jamming with his brothers and by emulating Charlie Christian, who inspired Wes to pursue jazz guitar professionally.

After his first big-time gig, touring with Lionel Hampton's band, Wes returned home to Indianapolis, where he worked days to support his growing family and played guitar in local bars all night. Meanwhile, Wes' brothers were enjoying some degree of success with their group, the Mastersounds, and they invited Wes to record with them to gain the gifted guitarist greater exposure. Sure enough, word spread and soon musicians like Cannonball and Nat Adderley were flocking to the Missile Room to witness the new sensation. Riverside Records producer Orin Keepnews was blown away by Wes' virtuosity and signed him on for 25 sessions. Wes' second album, The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, earned him Downbeat magazine's "New Star" award in 1960.

Wes' lush, inimitable sound was a product of his unusual stylistic approach. Guitarist Lee Ritenour explains how Wes played with his thumb as opposed to a pick, freeing himself from rhythmic constraints and typical phrasing. According to Wes, thumb-plucking and his technique of "playing two notes at the same time an octave apart" were both accidental revelations. While Wes was not the only guitarist to utilize the octave approach, he did so with incomparable "freedom and fluidity," and the technique "became one of his trademarks."

When Riverside Records went bankrupt, Creed Taylor of Verve Records signed the acclaimed guitarist, steering his career in a different direction. Although Wes recorded a few straight jazz albums with Verve, including his triumphant Smokin' at the Half Note, Taylor sought to bring Wes' music to a broader audience, convincing him to cover the R&B hit, "Goin' Out of My Head." The album, which earned Wes a Grammy Award, was his ticket to "crossing over" and made a name for him on the pop scene, enabling him to support his wife and seven children.

To the chagrin of jazz purists, Wes did not record another jazz album after 1965. However, in concert, as critic Gary Giddins attests, Wes continued to improvise stunning solos until his death of a heart attack in 1968. In a remarkably brief time frame, Wes Montgomery, a kind, modest man and a magnificent musician, left a legacy of enormous distinction to the jazz community

Click here to view the playlist.

September 27, 2016

Wes Montgomery: Interview '68

People in Jazz was a TV show that aired briefly in 1967 and '68 in Detroit and was hosted by Jim Rockwell, a local jazz radio disc jockey on WABX-FM. In early 1968, shortly before Wes Montgomery's death in June from a fatal heart attack, the guitarist appeared on Rockwell's TV show for a relaxed and revealing interview and to play two songs with his brothers—Buddy Montgomery (p) and Monk Montgomery (b). The drummer and conga player are unknown. The group performed Windy and California Nights—easily the finest Montgomery recording of this Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Liebling song written for Lesley Gore, who recorded it in 1967.

Here's Rockwell's interview with Montgomery in full, courtesy of reader Jimi Mentis...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4uqd62_wes-montgomery-tv-interview-1968_music

Wes Montgomery TV Interview 1968:

A very rare 1968 Wes Montgomery interview on the TV show “People in Jazz” presented by Jim Rockwell and taped at the studios of Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. Two tunes are performed in the studio, 'Windy' and 'California Nights' accompanied by his brothers Buddy on piano and Monk on bass plus an unaccredited drummer and percussionist come as an extra bonus.

http://www.guitar-muse.com/wes-montgomery-accidental-genius-of-the-electric-guitar-6735

Wes Montgomery: Accidental Genius of the Electric Guitar

If any player truly continued Charlie Christian’s legacy through the bebop period and beyond, it’s Wes Montgomery.

Wes has long been named as one of the three titans of jazz guitar, standing alongside the likes of Django Reinhardt and electric guitar trailblazer Charlie Christian.

Wes’s playing has influenced: George Benson, Grant Green, Joe Satriani, Jimi Hendrix, and Pat Metheny (to name a few). Wes even jammed with John Coltrane himself—and Coltrane offered him a job.

Wes turned Coltrane down, though, because he wanted to continue leading his own band in a time when guitarists almost never led bands.

Charlie Christian’s Influence

Wes Montgomery

“I don’t know whether it was his melodic lines, his sound or his approach, but I hadn’t heard anything like that before. He wasn’t the first electric guitarist I’d heard because Les Paul was around at that time, but I didn’t get much from him. Maybe Christian stuck out because he was so different. He sounded so good and it sounded easy, so I said maybe the big thing of it is just to buy an instrument!

I had a good job as a welder so I bought me a guitar and amplifier and said now I can’t do nothing but play! But I found out it’s not that easy. Really welding was my talent, I think, but I sort of swished it aside!” — Wes Montgomery, interview with Valerie Kilmer for Jazz Monthly magazine, 1965.

Wes grew up playing a four-string tenor guitar, but didn’t buy his first true six-string electric until age 20.

Armed with his new Gibson L5-CES, Wes sat for hours learning to play Charlie Christian’s solos note for note from recordings. He became such a skilled mimic of Christian’s work that one of Christian’s former bandmates, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, eventually hired Wes to play those solos in live shows.

At first, those cover tunes were all Wes knew how to play. Within a few months of buying his first guitar, though, Wes caught the attention of a local club owner and found himself billed as a featured performer. The crowd loved him.

“One day I got a hand so big they wouldn’t let me off the stage. But I couldn’t play nothing else! It was so embarrassing, so I said I’ve got to go back and start practicing.” —Wes Montgomery, interview with Valerie Kilmer for Jazz Monthly magazine, 1965.

Beyond just playing Christian’s solos note for note, though, Wes also came to embody the spirit of his favorite guitarist’s work by practicing until he could hold his own against horn players—proving that guitarists can match other jazz players for speed, technique, lyricism, and fluidity of thought.

And that’s no small accomplishment in a style of jazz that worshiped musical monsters like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. What with guitar being such a tough instrument to learn, most guitarists weren’t (and still aren’t) up to the challenge of bebop. Nonetheless, Wes carved himself a well-deserved name as one of very few bebop guitarists active in the 1950’s. And—as you’ll see in part two of this series—he did it with a playing technique that most players only resort to when they drop their picks.

THE MUSIC OF WES MONTGOMERY: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. MONTGOMERY

The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery (full album)--Riverside label, 1960:

Tracklist:

Airegin 00:00
D Natural Blues 04:28
Polka Dots and Moonbeams 09:50
Four on Six 14:32
West Coast Blues 20:48
In Your Own Sweet Way 28:11
Mr. Walker 33:05
Gone with the Wind 37:37

Bags Meets Wes ! Milt Jackson & Wes Montgomery:

Released 1962--Riverside label

Recorded December 18–19, 1961 Milt Jackson – vibraphone Wes Montgomery – guitar Philly Joe Jones – drums Sam Jones – bass Wynton Kelly – piano "S.K.J." (Jackson) – 5:17 "Stablemates" (Golson) – 5:45 "Stairway to the Stars [Take 3]" (Malneck, Parish, Signorelli) – 3:38 "Blue Roz" (Montgomery) – 4:46 "Sam Sack" (Jackson) – 6:06 "Jingles [Take 9]" (Montgomery) – 6:55 "Delilah [*]" (Victor Young) – 6:12 "Stairway to the Stars [*]" (Malneck, Parish, Signorelli) – 3:47 "Jingles [*]" (Montgomery) – 6:54 "Delilah" [*] (Young) – 6:18

Wes Montgomery live in England 1965:

Wes Montgomery (Guitar), Rick Laird (Bass), Stan Tracey (Piano), Jackie Dougan (Drums)

Tracklist:

1. Four On Six
2. Full House
3. Here’s That Rainy Day
4. Twisted Blues
5. West Coast Blues

Wes Montgomery ♠ Very Best ♠ Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones & Percy Heath (1995 Remastered Full Album):

John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (March 6, 1923 – June 15, 1968) was an American jazz guitarist. He is widely considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others, including George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Bobby Broom, Royce Campbell, Grant Green, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Howe, Russell Malone, Pat Martino, Pat Metheny, Lee Ritenour, Mark Whitfield, Joe Diorio, Tuck Andress, David Becker, Randy Napoleon, Larry Coryell and Emily Remler.

According to jazz guitar educator Wolf Marshall, Montgomery often approached solos in a three-tiered manner: he would begin a repeating progression with single note lines, derived from scales or modes; after a fitting number of sequences, he would play octaves for a few more sequences, finally culminating with block chords. He used mostly superimposed triads and arpeggios as the main source for his soloing ideas and sounds.

The use of octaves (playing the same note on two strings usually one octave apart) for which he is widely known, became known as "the Naptown Sound". Montgomery was also an excellent "single-line" or "single-note" player, and was very influential in the use of block chords in his solos. His playing on the jazz standard "Lover Man" is an example of his single-note, octave- and block-chord soloing. ("Lover Man" appears on the Fantasy album The Montgomery Brothers.)

Instead of using a guitar pick, Montgomery plucked the strings with the fleshy part of his thumb, using downstrokes for single notes and a combination of upstrokes and downstrokes for chords and octaves. Montgomery developed this technique not for technical reasons but for his neighbors. He worked long hours as a machinist before his music career began and practiced late at night. To keep neighbors from complaining, he began playing more quietly by using his thumb.[8] This technique enabled him to get a mellow, expressive tone from his guitar. George Benson, in the liner notes of the Ultimate Wes Montgomery album, wrote, "Wes had a corn on his thumb, which gave his sound that point. He would get one sound for the soft parts, and then that point by using the corn. That's why no one will ever match Wes. And his thumb was double-jointed. He could bend it all the way back to touch his wrist, which he would do to shock people."

Montgomery played a Gibson ES-175, later playing exclusively a Gibson L-5CES guitar. In his later years he played one of two L-5CES guitars that Gibson custom made for him, with only one bass pickup instead of two pickups. In his early years, Montgomery had a tube amp, often a Fender. In his later years, he played a solid state Standel amp with a 15-inch (380 mm) speaker.

Tracklist

01. Twisted Blues (0:00)
02. Airegin (5:38 )
03. Cotton Tail (10:08 )
04. One For My Baby (13:49 )
05. I'm Just A Lucky So And So (21:33 )
06. Polka Dots And Moonbeams (27:30 )
07. Four On Six (32:14 )
08. D-Natural Blues (38:31 )
09. I Wish I Knew (43:56 )
10. West Coast Blues (49:26)
11. Something Like Bags ( 56:53 )
12. Days Of Wine And Roses (1:01:41 )
13. Blues Riff (1:05:30)

Personnel:

Bass – Percy Heath, Ron Carter
Congas [Conga D] – Ray Barretto
Drums – Albert Heath, George Brown, Jimmy Cobb, Lex Humphries
Organ – Mel Rhyne
Piano – Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan
Guitar – Wes Montgomery

Year Of Release: 1995
Label: Giants Of Jazz[CD 53239]

Wes Montgomery live in 1965:

Wes Montgomery plays three European concerts in 1965:

Live in Holland - April 2, 1965

Personnel:

Wes Montgomery, guitar
Pim Jacobs, piano
Rudd Jacobs, bass
Han Bennick, drums

Set List:

1 "I Love Blues"
2 "Nica's Dream"
3 "The End of A Love Affair"

Live in Belgium - April 4, 1965

Personnel:

Wes Montgomery, guitar
Harold Mabern, piano
Arthur Harper, bass
Jimmy Lovelace, drums

Set List:

1 "Impressions"
2 "Twisted Blues"
3 "Here's That Rainy Day"
4 "Jingles"
5 "The Girl Next Door"

Live in England - May 7, 1965

Personnel:

Wes Montgomery, guitar
Stan Tracey, piano
Rick Laird, bass
Jackie Dougan, drums

Set List:

1 "Four On Six"
2 "Full House"
3 "Here's That Rainy Day"
4 "Twisted Blues"
5 "West Coast Blues"

Wes Montgomery - Full House:

From the Album: Full House
Year: 1962
Label: Riverside

Wes Montgomery - guitar
Johnny Griffin - tenor sax
Wynton Kelly - piano
Paul Chambers - bass
Jimmy Cobb - drums

Wes Montgomery - Guitar On The Go-1963- [Full Album]:

Guitar On The Go (1963) / Riverside Records:

Wes Montgomery -- Guitar
Mel Rhyne -- Organ
George Brown -- Drums
Paul Parker -- Drums on track *
Jimmy Cobb -- Drums on track **

1. The Way You Look Tonight [Alt take] (Kern/Fields) 0:00
2. The Way You Look Tonight (Kern/Fields) 5:54
3. Dreamsville (Mancini) 15:05
4. Geno (Montgomery) 18:56
5. Missile Blues* (Montgomery) 21:54
6. For All We Know (Coots/Lewis) 27:58
7. Fried Pies** (Montgomery) 32:30
8. Unidentified Solo Guitar (Montgomery) 39:14

Wes Montgomery - Bumpin'--1965:

Wes Montgomery - "Bumpin' On Sunset"--1966:

Wes Montgomery Trio - "Bésame Mucho"

From: Boss Guitar, Riverside label, 1963:

Wes Montgomery Documentary (Part 1 of 4):

Part 1 of 4: The Life and Music Of Wes Montgomery:

The audio commentary by The Great Jazz Singer Nancy Wilson is produced and brought to us by NPR Jazz Profiles. The graphics and short videos throughout the documentary are edited by your's truely. Stay tuned for the following 3 parts of this wonderful profile of the Genius that was Wes Montgomery!

Other Commentary from:

Serene Woods ( Wes's Widow)
Buddy Montgomery
Monk Montgomery
Melvin Rhyne
John Levy
Jim Fergueson
Orrin Keepnews
Creed Taylor
George benson
Lee Ritenour
Emily Reemler
Nat Adderly
Gary Giddins and more...

Wes Montgomery Documentary (Part 2 of 4):

Wes Montgomery Documentary (Part 3 of 4):

Wes Montgomery Documentary (Part 4 of 4):

Wes Montgomery - A Day In Life -(Full Album):

1967-A & M Records

1. A Day In The Life (Lennon-McCartney)
2. Watch What Happens (M. Legrand, N. Gimbel)
3. When A Man Loves A Woman (Wright, Lewis)
4. California Nights (Liebling, Hamlisch)
5. Angel (Wes Montgomery)
6. Eleanor Rigby (Lennon-McCartney)
7. Willow Weep For Me (Ann Ronnell)
8. Windy (Ruthann Friedman)
9. Trust In Me (Schwartz, Ager, Wever)
10. The Joker (Newley, Bricusse)

Bass – Ron Carter
Cello – Alan Shulman, Charles McCracken
Drums – Grady Tate
Flute [Bass] – George Marge, Joe Soldo, Romeo Penque, Stan Webb
French Horn – Ray Alonge
Harp – Margaret Ross
Percussion – Jack Jennings, Joe Wohletz, Ray Barretto
Piano – Herbie Hancock
Viola – Emanuel Vardi, Harold Coletta
Violin – Gene Orloff, Harry Glickman, Harry Katzman, Harry Urbont, Jack Zayde, Julius Brand, Leo Kruczek, Lewis Eley, Mac Ceppos, Peter Buonconsiglio, Sylvan Shulman, Tosha Samaroff
Woodwind – Phil Bodner, Stan Webb
Arranged By, Conductor – Don Sebesky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Montgomery

Wes Montgomery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wes Montgomery
Wes Montgomery, 1965
Background information
Birth name	John Leslie Montgomery
Born	March 6, 1923 Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
Died	June 15, 1968 (aged 45) Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
Genres	Jazz, bebop, jazz blues, hard bop, mainstream jazz
Occupation(s)	Musician, composer
Instruments	Guitar, bass guitar
Labels	Pacific Jazz, Riverside, Verve, A&M
Associated acts	Montgomery Brothers, Lionel Hampton, Paul Chambers, Freddie Hubbard, Cannonball Adderley, Harold Land, Nat Adderley, Jimmy Smith, Don Sebesky, Jimmy Jones, Milt Jackson, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb, Percy Heath, Tommy Flanagan
Website	www.wesmontgomery.com
Notable instruments
Gibson L-5 CES

John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (March 6, 1923 – June 15, 1968)^[1] was an American jazz guitarist. He is widely considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt^[2]and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others. Montgomery was known for an unusual technique of plucking the strings with the side of his thumb which granted him a distinctive sound.

He often worked with organist Jimmy Smith, and with his brothers Buddy (piano and vibes) and Monk (bass guitar). His recordings up to 1965 were generally oriented towards hard bop, soul jazz and post bop, while circa 1965 he began recording more pop-oriented instrumental albums that featured less improvisation but found mainstream success. And his guitar style is the roots of fusion and smooth jazz.

Biography

Montgomery was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. According to NPR Jazz Profiles "The Life and Music Of Wes Montgomery", the nickname "Wes" was a child's abbreviation of his middle name, Leslie.^[3] He came from a musical family; his brothers, Monk (double bass and electric bass) and Buddy (vibraphone and piano), were jazz performers. The brothers released a number of albums together as the Montgomery Brothers. Although he was not skilled at reading music, he could learn complex melodies and riffs by ear. Montgomery started learning the six-string guitar at the relatively late age of 20 by listening to and learning the recordings of his idol, guitarist Charlie Christian; however, he had played a four string tenor guitar since age twelve. He was known for his ability to play Christian's solos note for note and was hired by Lionel Hampton for this ability.^[1]

Montgomery toured with Lionel Hampton early in his career; however, the combined stress of touring and being away from family took him back home to Indianapolis. To support his family of eight, Montgomery worked in a factory from 7:00 am to 3:00 pm, then performed in local clubs from 9:00 pm to 2:00 am. Cannonball Adderley heard Montgomery in an Indianapolis club and was floored. The next morning, he called record producer Orrin Keepnews, who signed Montgomery to a recording contract with Riverside Records. Adderley later recorded with Montgomery on his Pollwinners album. Montgomery recorded with his brothers and various other group members, including the Wynton Kelly Trio which previously backed up Miles Davis.

Following the early work of swing / pre-bop guitarist Christian and gypsy-jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, Wes joined Tal Farlow, Johnny Smith, Jimmy Raney, and Barney Kessell to put guitar on the map as a bebop / post-bop instrument. While these men generally curtailed their own output in the 1960s, Montgomery recorded prolifically during this period, lending guitar to the same tunes contemporaries such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis were recording.

John Coltrane asked Montgomery to join his band after a jam session, but Montgomery continued to lead his own band. Boss Guitar seems to refer to his status as a guitar-playing bandleader. He also made contributions to recordings by Jimmy Smith. Jazz purists relish Montgomery's recordings up through 1965, and sometimes complain that he abandoned hard-bop for pop jazz toward the end of his career, although it is arguable that he gained a wider audience for his earlier work with his soft jazz from 1965 to 1968. During this late period he occasionally turned out original material alongside jazzy orchestral arrangements of pop songs. In sum, this late period earned him considerable wealth and created a platform for a new audience to hear his earlier recordings.

To many, Montgomery's playing defines jazz guitar and the sound that students try to emulate. Jazz guitarist Bobby Broom, in a video history of Montgomery's impact on musicians and guitarists in Jazz, notes:

Much has been made of the year 1959 in the history of Jazz music. It's been called its most prolific year. It's been called the year Jazz died... One figure that is grossly ignored... is the iconic Wes Montgomery, the Jazz guitarist from Indianapolis who emerged in 1959 with his first trio record... The name of the record was "A Dynamic New Sound." It ushered in a figure that became one of the most celebrated, if not the most celebrated, on the instrument in Jazz music. Wes introduced a brand new approach to playing the guitar. Techniques that were really unexplored before him. The octave technique... and his chord melody and chord soloing playing still is today unmatched, and definitely a revelation to Jazz guitar playing.^[4]

Montgomery is the grandfather of actor Anthony Montgomery.^[1]^[5]

Recording career

Montgomery toured with vibraphonist Lionel Hampton's orchestra from July 1948 to January 1950, and can be heard on recordings from this period. Montgomery then returned to Indianapolis and did not record again until December 1957 (save for one session in 1955), when he took part in a session that included his brothers Monk and Buddy, as well as trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who made his recording debut with Montgomery. Most of the recordings made by Montgomery and his brothers from 1957 to 1959 were released on the Pacific Jazz label.^[1]
From 1959 Montgomery was signed to the Riverside Records label, and remained there until late 1963, just before the company went bankrupt. The recordings made during this period are widely considered by fans and jazz historians to be Montgomery's best and most influential. Two sessions in January 1960 yielded The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, which was recorded as a quartet with pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath. The album featured two of Montgomery's most well-known compositions, "Four on Six" and "West Coast Blues".

Almost all of Montgomery's output on Riverside featured the guitarist in a small group setting, usually a trio (and always with his organist from his Indianapolis days, Melvin Rhyne), a quartet, or a quintet, playing a mixture of hard-swinging uptempo jazz numbers and quiet ballads. The lone exception, Fusion, telegraphed his post-Riverside career: it was his first recording with a string ensemble. One of the more memorable sets involved a co-leadership collaboration with vibraphone virtuoso and Modern Jazz Quartet mainstay Milt Jackson, whom producer Orrin Keepnews has said insisted on a collaboration with Montgomery as a condition for signing a solo recording deal with Riverside.

In 1964 Montgomery moved to Verve Records for two years. His stay at Verve yielded a number of albums where he was featured with an orchestra—brass-dominated (Movin' Wes), string-oriented (Bumpin', Tequila), or a mix of both (Goin' Out of My Head, California Dreaming).^[1]

Montgomery never abandoned jazz entirely in the Verve years, whether with a few selections on most of the Verve albums, or by such sets as 1965's Smokin' at the Half Note, showcasing two appearances at the New York City club with the Wynton Kelly Trio, or a pair of albums that he made with jazz organist Jimmy Smith, Jimmy & Wes: The Dynamic Duo and Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes. He continued to play outstanding live jazz guitar, as evidenced by surviving audio and video recordings from his 1965 tour of Europe.

As a considered founder of the smooth jazz school, the Verve album Bumpin' (1965) represents a model from which many modern recordings are derived: as the liner notes to the CD remaster issue note, after being unable to produce the desired results by the guitarist and orchestra playing together, arranger Don Sebesky suggested Montgomery record the chosen music with his chosen small group, after which Sebesky would write the orchestral charts based on what Montgomery's group had produced. The orchestral parts were then recorded separately from Montgomery.

By the time Montgomery released his first album for A&M Records, he had seemingly abandoned jazz entirely for the more lucrative pop market, though as in his Verve period he played his customary jazz in small group settings in live appearances. The three albums released during his A&M period (1967–68), under longtime jazz producer Creed Taylor (Bethlehem Records, ABC-Paramount Records, Verve Records, CTI Records), feature Sebesky's orchestral arrangements of famous pop songs ("I Say a Little Prayer", "Windy", "A Day in the Life", "Eleanor Rigby", etc.) with Montgomery using guitar octave technique to recite the melody. The A&M recordings feature all-star rhythm sections, including Herbie Hancock on piano, Hank Jones on harpsichord and piano, Ron Carter on bass, Grady Tate on drums, and Ray Barretto on percussion. Hubert Laws also appears on Down Here on the Ground (1968), the first of the A&M albums, playing flute and oboe. These were the most commercially successful records of his career, although AllMusic Guide's Michael G. Nastos wrote of Down Here on the Ground:

Much to either the delight or chagrin of urban or traditional jazz fans, the music changed, and Montgomery was in the middle, though his delightful playing was essentially unchanged. ... In many real and important ways, this is the beginning of the end for Montgomery as a jazz artist, and the inception of bachelor pad lounge/mood music that only lasted for a brief time. ... It does fall in that category of recordings where the musicians chose to produce, rather than create their personal brand of jazz, and is at the very least an historical footnote.

Wes and younger brother Buddy, along with Richard Crabtree and Benny Barth, formed "The Mastersounds", and recorded "Jazz Showcase Introducing The Mastersounds" and a jazz version of "The King and I", both released by World Pacific Records. They first played together at Seattle, particularly working up the set for "The King and I", at a club called Dave's Fifth Avenue. The composers were so impressed by the jazz version of "The King & I" that they pre-released the score of "Flower Drum Song" to the quartet to allow simultaneous release with the soundtrack album.
Resonance Records began a series of live albums from archival recordings in 2016 with the 1959 performance One Night in Indy.

Death

On the morning of June 15, 1968, while at home in Indianapolis, Indiana, Montgomery awoke and remarked to his wife that he "didn't feel very well." He soon collapsed, dying of a heart attack within minutes. 45 years old at the time of his death, Montgomery had just returned from a tour with his quintet and was at the height of his fame, having attained a degree of popular acceptance that few jazz artists in that era achieved.^[6] Montgomery's home town of Indianapolis later named a park in his honor.

Influence

Montgomery had a wide influence on other noted guitarists who followed him, having also earned the respect of his contemporaries.

Dave Miele and Dan Bielowsky claim,

Wes Montgomery was certainly one of the most influential and most musical guitarists to ever pick up the instrument... He took the use of octaves and chord melodies to a greater level than any other guitarist, before or since... Montgomery is undoubtedly one of the most important voices in Jazz guitar that has ever lived—or most likely ever will live. A discussion of Jazz guitar is simply not thorough if it does not touch upon Wes Montgomery.^[7]

"Listening to [Wes Montgomery's] solos is like teetering at the edge of a brink," composer-conductor Gunther Schuller asserted, as quoted by Jazz & Pop critic Will Smith. "His playing at its peak becomes unbearably exciting, to the point where one feels unable to muster sufficient physical endurance to outlast it."

Many fellow jazz guitarists consider Montgomery the greatest influence among modern jazz guitarists. Pat Metheny has praised him greatly, saying "I learned to play listening to Wes Montgomery's Smokin' at the Half Note." Metheny told the New York Times in 2005 that the solo on "If You Could See Me Now", from this album is his favorite of all time. Joe Pass said, "To me, there have been only three real innovators on the guitar—Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, and Django Reinhardt", as cited in James Sallis's The Guitar Players and in his Hot Licks instructional video. Kenny Burrell states, "It was an honor that he called me as his second guitarist for a session." In addition, George Benson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Johnson, Joe Satriani, Jimi Hendrix, David Becker, Joe Diorio, Steve Lukather, Larry Coryell, Randy Napoleon, and Pat Martino have pointed to him numerous times as a great influence. Lee Ritenour, who recorded the 1993 album Wes Bound named after him, cites him as his most notable influence; he also named his son Wesley. Guitarist Bobby Broom chartered the group Deep Blue Organ Trio to carry on the pioneering sound that Montgomery broke open his career with in 1959: "A Dynamic New Sound for Guitar, Organ and Drums", and formed The Bobby Broom Organi-Sation in 2014 to continue that work.^[8]

In 1982, Bob James and Earl Klugh collaborated on a duet album and recorded the song "Wes" as a tribute to the late Montgomery on their "Two of a Kind" album. Pat Martino released his tribute recording to Wes on Blue Note Records in 2006 titled "Remember: A Tribute To Wes Montgomery".^[9]

Those influenced by Montgomery include George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Bobby Broom, Royce Campbell, Grant Green, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Howe, Russell Malone, Pat Martino, Pat Metheny, Lee Ritenour, Mark Whitfield, Stevie Wonder, Joe Diorio, Tuck Andress, David Becker, Randy Napoleon, Larry Coryell and Emily Remler.

Technique

According to jazz guitar educator Wolf Marshall, Montgomery often approached solos in a three-tiered manner: he would begin a repeating progression with single note lines, derived from scales or modes; after a fitting number of sequences, he would play octaves for a few more sequences, finally culminating with block chords. He used mostly superimposed triads and arpeggios as the main source for his soloing ideas and sounds.^[1]

The use of octaves (playing the same note on two strings usually one octave apart) for which he is widely known, became known as "the Naptown Sound". Montgomery was also an excellent "single-line" or "single-note" player, and was very influential in the use of block chords in his solos. His playing on the jazz standard "Lover Man" is an example of his single-note, octave- and block-chord soloing. ("Lover Man" appears on the Fantasy album The Montgomery Brothers.)

Instead of using a guitar pick, Montgomery plucked the strings with the fleshy part of his thumb, using downstrokes for single notes and a combination of upstrokes and downstrokes for chords and octaves. Montgomery developed this technique not for technical reasons but to for the benefit his neighbors. He worked long hours as a machinist before his music career began and practiced late at night. To keep neighbors from complaining, he began playing more quietly by using his thumb.^[10] This technique enabled him to get a mellow, expressive tone from his guitar. George Benson, in the liner notes of the Ultimate Wes Montgomery album, wrote, "Wes had a corn on his thumb, which gave his sound that point. He would get one sound for the soft parts, and then that point by using the corn. That's why no one will ever match Wes. And his thumb was double-jointed. He could bend it all the way back to touch his wrist, which he would do to shock people."

Montgomery played a Gibson ES-175, later playing exclusively a Gibson L-5CES guitar. In his later years he played one of two L-5CES guitars that Gibson custom made for him, each with a single neck pickup instead of the customary two. In his early years, Montgomery had a tube amp, often a Fender. In his later years he played a solid state Standel amp with a 15-inch (380 mm) speaker.

Awards and accolades

Montgomery received many awards and accolades: nominated for two Grammy Awards for Bumpin', 1965; received Grammy Award for Goin' Out of My Head as Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by Large Group or Soloist with Large Group, 1966; nominated for Grammy Awards for "Eleanor Rigby" and "Down Here on the Ground", 1968; nominated for Grammy Award for Willow, Weep for Me, 1969. Montgomery's second album, The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, earned him Down Beat magazine's "New Star" award in 1960. In addition, he won the Down Beat Critic's Poll award for best Jazz guitarist in 1960–63, 1966, and 1967.^[11]

Discography

Main article: Wes Montgomery discography

Wes Montgomery "Tear It Down" (1965)

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Sample from Wes Montgomery's "Tear It Down", from the album Bumpin'

Problems playing this file? See media help.

Riverside (1958–1964)

Wes' recordings for Riverside/Milestone Records, including those made with The Montgomery Brothers are on the 12-CD box set Wes Montgomery: The Complete Riverside Recordings.^[12]

1958: Fingerpickin'
1958: Far Wes
1959: The Wes Montgomery Trio
1959: Yesterdays
1959: Pretty Blue
1960: The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery
1960: Cannonball Adderley and the Poll-Winners
1960: Movin' Along
1961: So Much Guitar
1961: Wes and Friends
1961: Bags Meets Wes! (with Milt Jackson)
1962: Full House
1963: Fusion!: Wes Montgomery with Strings (strings arranged by Jimmy Jones)
1963: Boss Guitar
1963: Portrait of Wes
1963: Guitar on the Go
1963: The Alternative Wes Montgomery (alternate takes for previously issued albums)
1964: Panorama (Produced by Orrin Keepnews)

Verve (1964–1966)

1964: Movin' Wes
1965: Bumpin' (arranged and conducted by Don Sebesky)
1965: Smokin' at the Half Note
1965: Goin' Out of My Head (arranged and conducted by Oliver Nelson)
1966: California Dreaming (arranged and conducted by Don Sebesky)
1966: Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes (with Jimmy Smith)
1966: Tequila (arranged and conducted by Claus Ogerman)
1966: Jimmy & Wes: The Dynamic Duo (with Jimmy Smith)
1969: Willow Weep for Me (unused takes from the Smokin' at the Half Note session; overdubbed woodwinds and brass arranged and conducted by Claus Ogerman)
1970: Eulogy

A&M (1967–1968)

1967: A Day in the Life (arranged and conducted by Don Sebesky) (A&M Records/CTI Records)
1968: Down Here on the Ground (arranged and conducted by Don Sebesky) (A&M/CTI)
1968: Road Song (arranged and conducted by Don Sebesky) (A&M/CTI)

As sideman

1958: Kismet, The Mastersounds
1960: Cannonball Adderley and the Poll Winners (leader: Cannonball Adderley)
1960: West Coast Blues! (leader: Harold Land)
1960: Work Song (leader: Nat Adderley)

References

Allmusic Biography
http://www.discogs.com/Django-Reinhardt-Django-Reinhardt/...
"NPR Jazz Profiles the Life and Music of Wes Montgomery". Youtube.com. 2010-12-08. Retrieved 2012-06-25.
BobbyBroom.com - Bobby's Blog - "Bobby Broom on Wes Montgomery's 1959 Jazz Guitar Impact"
"Wes Montgomery Biography". Musicianguide.com. Retrieved 2012-06-25.
"WES MONTGOMERY Obituaries". Gould68.freeserve.co.uk. 1968-07-25. Retrieved 2014-07-28.
(Jazz Improv Magazine, vol 7 # 4 p. 26).
Bobby Broom Organi-Sation to Open for Steely Dan Jamalot Ever After Tour 2014
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/remember-a-tribute-to-wes-montgomery-pat-martino-blue-note-records-review-by-john-kelman.php
Yanow, Scott (2013). The Great Jazz Guitarists. Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books. p. 140. ISBN 978-1-61713-023-6.
(NPR.org, September 26, 2007).

Allmusic overview

External links

Official Wes Montgomery site
"Wes Montgomery Unedited" by Jim Ferguson, compiled from his Guitar Player Magazine article on Wes Montgomery (August 1993), his JazzTimes article "The Genius Of Wes Montgomery" (August 1995), and his essay in his liner notes to Wes Montgomery—The Complete Riverside Recordings (1992).
Wes Montgomery discography
GP2 – Guitar Player Magazine Interview – June 1973
Wes Montgomery guitar tabs
Wes Montgomery Park (Indianapolis)
Allmusic.com review of Down Here on the Ground (1968) by Michael G. Nastos
Billy Taylor interviews Mark Whitfield: "Wes Montgomery and Me" (plus performance of Miles Davis's "Freddie Freeloader") from official Billy Taylor Jazz YouTube channel.
Biography and tribute by grandson Anthony Montgomery
Find-A-Grave profile for Wes Montgomery

Sound Projections

Welcome to Sound Projections

Saturday, April 15, 2017

Wes Montgomery (1923-1968): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, and teacher

Artist Biography by Scott Yanow

Wes Montgomery

Awards

Wes Montgomery: The Softer Side of Genius

Published 07/01/2005

By Josef Woodard

The Thumb

Picky about picks

The 'Formula

Thick solos

The Blues

A musician first

The Guitar

The Legacy

Boundary pusher

Wes Montgomery: 'The Unmistakable Jazz Guitar'

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THE MUSIC OF WES MONTGOMERY: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. MONTGOMERY

The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery (full album)--Riverside label, 1960:

Tracklist:

Airegin 00:00D Natural Blues 04:28Polka Dots and Moonbeams 09:50Four on Six 14:32West Coast Blues 20:48In Your Own Sweet Way 28:11Mr. Walker 33:05Gone with the Wind 37:37

Bags Meets Wes ! Milt Jackson & Wes Montgomery:

Wes Montgomery live in England 1965:

Wes Montgomery (Guitar), Rick Laird (Bass), Stan Tracey (Piano), Jackie Dougan (Drums)

Tracklist:

1. Four On Six2. Full House3. Here’s That Rainy Day4. Twisted Blues 5. West Coast Blues

Wes Montgomery ♠ Very Best ♠ Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones & Percy Heath (1995 Remastered Full Album):

Bass – Percy Heath, Ron Carter Congas [Conga D] – Ray Barretto Drums – Albert Heath, George Brown, Jimmy Cobb, Lex HumphriesOrgan – Mel Rhyne Piano – Hank Jones, Tommy FlanaganGuitar – Wes MontgomeryYear Of Release: 1995Label: Giants Of Jazz[CD 53239]

Wes Montgomery live in 1965:

Wes Montgomery - Full House:

From the Album: Full HouseYear: 1962Label: RiversideWes Montgomery - guitarJohnny Griffin - tenor saxWynton Kelly - pianoPaul Chambers - bassJimmy Cobb - drums

Wes Montgomery - Guitar On The Go-1963- [Full Album]:

Wes Montgomery - Bumpin'--1965:

Wes Montgomery - "Bumpin' On Sunset"--1966:

Wes Montgomery Trio - "Bésame Mucho"

From: Boss Guitar, Riverside label, 1963:

Wes Montgomery Documentary (Part 1 of 4):

Part 1 of 4: The Life and Music Of Wes Montgomery:

Wes Montgomery Documentary (Part 2 of 4):

Wes Montgomery Documentary (Part 3 of 4):

Wes Montgomery Documentary (Part 4 of 4):

Wes Montgomery - A Day In Life -(Full Album):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Montgomery

Wes Montgomery

Contents

Biography

Recording career

Death

Influence

Technique

Awards and accolades

Discography

Riverside (1958–1964)

Verve (1964–1966)

A&M (1967–1968)

As sideman

References

External links

Editor's Bio

Blog Archive

Labels

Airegin 00:00
D Natural Blues 04:28
Polka Dots and Moonbeams 09:50
Four on Six 14:32
West Coast Blues 20:48
In Your Own Sweet Way 28:11
Mr. Walker 33:05
Gone with the Wind 37:37

1. Four On Six
2. Full House
3. Here’s That Rainy Day
4. Twisted Blues
5. West Coast Blues

Bass – Percy Heath, Ron Carter
Congas [Conga D] – Ray Barretto
Drums – Albert Heath, George Brown, Jimmy Cobb, Lex Humphries
Organ – Mel Rhyne
Piano – Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan
Guitar – Wes Montgomery

Year Of Release: 1995
Label: Giants Of Jazz[CD 53239]

From the Album: Full House
Year: 1962
Label: Riverside

Wes Montgomery - guitar
Johnny Griffin - tenor sax
Wynton Kelly - piano
Paul Chambers - bass
Jimmy Cobb - drums