I often sit and wonder where are the days of the traditional jazz guitar players? I absolutely love the sounds/style/feel/energy of the old days. Today's jazz guitar is good but it seems to lack something. I know it's not technique and what not because there's tons of a lot of players with great techniques today and knowledge and etc.. I just miss the old feel/sounds you'd hear when listening to a Wes Montgomery/Charlie Christian/Johnny Smith records and more.
Let's bring the old days back!
I love the old days too but that's just what they are.. old.. if jazz is to remain a living, creative, and vital art form it has to grow.. growth means change.. we can always listen to the old days whenever we want to.. but to bring it back? that would be the end.. it could no longer be claeed jazz.. rather classical jazz music.. jazz has always meant experimentation.. the search for personal expression.. to imitate an earlier style is not jazz.. to create your own style is jazz.. if you could bring back any of the old masters they would be disppointed to hear no change since they were playing.. they would have no respect for mere imitation or reiteration.. this is my honest and humble opinion as a creative musician.. peace.. 
When I think of traditional jazz, the one and only - the great Ted Greene is the first one that comes to mind. He was a genius. www.tedgreene.com and www.myspace.com/tedgreene
Truly an amazing human!
Peace ~ Robin
If you listened to Charlie Christian, and then listened to Django and then Grant Green, and then moved on to listen to Barney and Kenny and Wes, and then paid attention to what was cool (and still is) about Pat Martino and George Benson - would there be ONE thing? Or would they all have different kinds of genius that they offered?
To figure out what was genius, and to figure out how to learn from those geniuses, wouldn't it be a good idea to analyze it all?
Every musician was once a student. We all can remember - if we try hard - the experience of experiencing jazz for the first time. Remember being surprised, intrigued, confused and stimulated? Then - because we didn't know what the hell was going on - we were forced to break it down, study, assimilate, learn, compare and contrast it all. Those were creative times in our lives, right?
We didn't have chops to rely on. We didn't have a mastery of the standard changes to fall back on. We didn't know enough to do the usual, to get in our groove. So we had to struggle to see and hear and categorize. We had to open our minds to thoughts and musical concepts that were not ours.
Can't we think like students now?
Actually I'm listening to the ones available for download right now! And I'm totally impressed by mr Eastlee, he sure is a great player, and exactly the bop I love, thanks from me to for the link!
Peace & Bop
Skei (the bop 'til you drop one)
Yeah, Brock, those sounds are near and dear to my heart too... I am extremely fortunate in the LA area to get to be able to hear some greats playing around town - maybe more of them will join us here, wouldn't that be cool? I used to go hear my friend John Collins as much as possible, as he was definitely from that school....he is gone but the memory lingers on - miss him a ton.... have lately been enjoying Ron Anthony, John Pisano, Barry Zweig, Jim Fox, Ron Eschete, and Howard Alden and Bruce Forman when they're in town.
maybe it's that lilting bit of bop that we miss.... I've also been working with a boppin guitarist in town, David Eastlee... have written lyrics to a few of his very catchy tunes.... hoping he will join us here too.... but check his music out @ http://www.davideastlee.com - I think you will enjoy it. He's keepin bebop alive with new & classic compositions ~ and his playing has that style, a clean and lilting sound.
It's great getting exposed to more and more players thru this site, around the world, WOW! I hope others will add links to other players to check out and enjoy as well ~
keep it swingin!
julie
I'll be sure to check that link out... thanks a lot! =)
Yeah, Brock, those sounds are near and dear to my heart too... I am extremely fortunate in the LA area to get to be able to hear some greats playing around town - maybe more of them will join us here, wouldn't that be cool? I used to go hear my friend John Collins as much as possible, as he was definitely from that school....he is gone but the memory lingers on - miss him a ton.... have lately been enjoying Ron Anthony, John Pisano, Barry Zweig, Jim Fox, Ron Eschete, and Howard Alden and Bruce Forman when they're in town.
maybe it's that lilting bit of bop that we miss.... I've also been working with a boppin guitarist in town, David Eastlee... have written lyrics to a few of his very catchy tunes.... hoping he will join us here too.... but check his music out @ http://www.davideastlee.com - I think you will enjoy it. He's keepin bebop alive with new & classic compositions ~ and his playing has that style, a clean and lilting sound.
It's great getting exposed to more and more players thru this site, around the world, WOW! I hope others will add links to other players to check out and enjoy as well ~
keep it swingin!
julie
Well I know maybe they had a rough time as well but I mean bring back the good old days when jazz sounded best (well to me that is) and music was just music you know.. when it was fun. Today it all seems like a rat race between everyone =/
Or not.
Christian had a brief flash of a career before the "high life" did him in. Montgomery labored in obscurity for years when today he would have been an instant star on MySpace or Facebook or YouTube. Tal Farlow labored for gigs - he kept playing, the press just stopped paying attention.
The good old days were never in fact as good as they look from 50-75 years away. These people had hard lives around which they fit music.
If you want to bring bring back the old days, try just forgetting some of the 13000 rules of jazz theory and turn the tap of the "Something Else" that made you play music in the first place.
It is, despite all the literature and educational opportunities, an ART, not a science.
To me, and I strictly limit the opinions I utter by stating 'To me', well, brock, one of the things I notice every time I listen to music these days is what you mention, the DIGITAL element. This does lots of good, it takes away unwanted noise, it takes away sounds from scratches and static clicks from the recording and reproduction, but yeah, it puts your sound into a much tighter frame, the limitation brought by technology itself. And the cleanness of todays sound also takes away some of that feeling of authenticity one can hear in recordings from the 40's or so, just because they were not perfect. But the creativity of the masters can never be reproduced, there has to be new masters bringing their own joy and spirit to the art, to keep it alive. The archtops are as good now as they were then, and there are amps that produce the same sound, heck, if you want it, there are 'hizz' and 'scratch' sounds out there that can add the image of old records too, the ingredients are there, it's a matter of having the player who plays the way you want it to sound, or you simply have to find the style yourself, go through the old masters, see what it is you like about it, and do your own version of the sound/melody/lines.
There are many players with hard stringed archtops around, and such, it's this thing about creating marvels out of your own inner images. About - like for me - to learn bebop, and then, when I know the elements (which might be a while...) to not only copy, but write my own tunes that - to me - sound like I want it to. Which will be like guys playing not guitar, but like the things played on trumpet and sax. When I am able to do my own new tune on a par with 'round midnight, something giving me that same feeling I get when I hear that one, then I know I'll be home safe. And I'll get there, like the band metallica said 'Nothing else matters'. When nothing else matters more, that's when I think you get there. I'll be jammin' with parker and davis and the guys, because nothing else matters, and whatever one wants to do, if nothing else matters, that's when you'll do it.
That's it to me, anyway. But I respect others may think differently, it's a free world.
Peace
Skei (the nothing else matters one)
What WAS the sound/feel/technique/knowledge of the old days? If you can say what it was, then you might teach it to someone. If you can't say what it was, then was it really there?
This brings to mind the question of the usefulness of critics and writers. One of the benefits of having critics - whether they are musicians or not doesn't matter - is that they can answer or at least focus questions like this.
When you have a student who wants desperately to SOUND like some old player, then they have to have some kind of idea of WHAT that old player was doing. The contribution, the personality, the uniqueness of that old player has to be considered and defined before the student is going to be able to approach it. So if you stepped out of the role of player and stepped for a moment into the role of historian or critic, WHAT would be the missing element you long for?
I sometimes wonder that myself but then again maybe it's the freshness of traditional jazz that has gone stale or gone away these days? It's been here and there so long that maybe we forgot about how it used to be in the old days? Muisc to me is nowhere near as good these days as it used to be in the old days. I wish I lived back then and grew up around all the players from the old times. Today music seems more like a job or a chore then what it really should be which is for fun!
To me I think we're missing the innocent structure of what used to be, including sound as well. Todays world is all digital and I believe that's part of what takes the traditional sound out of todays sound.
