Everything about Wes Montgomery totally explained
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (
6 March 1925 -
15 June 1968) was an
American jazz guitarist. He is generally considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as
Django Reinhardt and
Charlie Christian and influencing countless others, including
Grant Green and
Pat Metheny.
Biography
Montgomery was born in Indianapolis, Indiana,
United States. He came from a musical family, in which his brothers,
Monk (
string bass and
electric bass) and Buddy (
vibraphone, and
piano), were jazz performers. Although he wasn't skilled at reading music, he could learn complex melodies and riffs by ear. Montgomery started learning guitar at the age of 19, listening to and learning recordings of his idol, the guitarist
Charlie Christian. He was known for his ability to play Christian solos note for note and was hired by Lionel Hampton for this ability.
Montgomery is often considered the greatest of modern jazz guitarists. Following the early work of
swing/pre-bop guitarist Charlie Christian and
gypsy-jazz guitarist
Django Reinhardt, Wes arguably put guitar on the map as a bebop or post-bop instrument. Although
Johnny Smith was the guitarist in the original New York Bebop scene, and both
Tal Farlow and
Jimmy Raney made significant contributions in the 1950's to bebop guitar, each of these men curtailed their own output in the 1960s, creating a vacuum that Montgomery naturally filled with virtuousic playing. While many Jazz players are regarded as virtuosos, Montgomery was unique in his wide influence on other virtuosos who followed him, and in the respect he earned from his contemporaries. To many, Montgomery's playing defines jazz guitar and the sound that many try to emulate.
Montgomery toured with
Lionel Hampton early in his career, however the combined stress of touring and being away from family brought 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. He helped sign Montgomery to a recording contract and recorded with him 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.
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 towards the end of his career, although it's arguable that he gained a wider audience for his earlier work with his soft jazz from 1965-1968. During this late period he'd occasionally turn 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.
Technique
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'd play octaves for a few more sequences, finally culminating with arpeggiated chords.
The use of
octaves (playing the same note on two strings one octave apart) for which he's 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. 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'd 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 solid state Standel amp with a 15 inch speaker.
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 didn't 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---brass-dominated (
Movin' Wes), string-oriented (
Bumpin',
Tequila), or a mix of both (
Goin' Out of My Head,
California Dreamin')---and during this period Montgomery's music started to shift in to the territory of
pop music.
But he 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 memorable appearances at the famous
New York City club with the
Wynton Kelly Trio) or a pair of albums he made with jazz organ titan
Jimmy Smith,
The Dynamic Duo and
The 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 album "Bumpin'" (1965) represents a model from which many modern recording 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. Longer clips from all of the 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'd seemingly abandoned jazz entirely 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. These records were the most commercially successful of his career.
He didn't have very long to live to enjoy his commercial success, however; in 1968, he woke one morning, remarked to his wife that he "Didn't feel very well," and minutes later collapsed, dying of a
heart attack within minutes. Montgomery's home town of Indianapolis has named a park in his honor. He is the grandfather of actor
Anthony Montgomery.
Wes and 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 sound track album.
Samples
Discography
Further Information
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