The 11 Ten-Best Acoustic Jazz Guitar CDs
The 11 Ten-Best Acoustic Jazz Guitar CDs
(Update: 2/98)
The September 1996 Acoustic Guitar features a list of "100 Essential CDs" of acoustic guitar music, divided into ten categories. I was asked to do the folk section, but while I was working on it, I kept thinking about one of my other enthusiasms, acoustic string jazz, which some other lucky contributor (Josef Woodard, as it turned out) was doing. So I decided to make up my own jazz list, just for fun.
Woodard's list seems way too "modern" to me--the oldest item is a compilation of Django's 1947 sessions--and any list that ignores the first quarter century of jazz guitar, and that pretty much snubs swing and standards, is seriously unbalanced. Take my list as a corrective, then. Or an example of moldy-figgery.
For the magazine's list, the recordings were supposed to be currently available on CD, and no more than one should be a compilation album. I've stuck to those rules, and added one, that everything had to be in my library--though I've bent that in one case. I also decided to make it eleven, just because I couldn't squeeze everything into ten.
Since there's no strict set of principles at work here, I suppose my list really ought to be called "the eleven most historically/musically important albums that I also happen to listen to a lot"--you will notice a bias in favor of swing, gypsy jazz, and collaborations with violinists, sometimes all at once. I'll leave it to a more musicologically sophisticated lister to come up with a "best" based on influence, historical significance, or whatever.
1. Eddie Lang, "Jazz Guitar Virtuoso," Yazoo [Smuggles in Lonnie Johnson and Carl Kress by way of duets.]
2. Django Reinhardt, "Djangology/USA," Disques Swing #8424/6 [Hot Club classics; the one with the yellow cover--there's another Disques Swing double set, #8421/3, with the same title and a blue cover, but most of my favorites are on the yellow set.]
3. Django, Oscar Aleman, and the Ferret Brothers, "Special Guitares," Vol. 1, EMI JazzTime 51 [1930s Euro-swing, with a substantial chunk of hard-to-find Aleman, plus nice swing waltzes by Django contemporaries and sidemen Matelo and Baro Ferret. Late note: Fremaux et Associes has released "Oscar Aleman: Buenos Aires-Paris 1928-1943," and Hot Club Records of Norway and Grisman's Acoustic Disc have both announced multidisk Aleman sets for 1998.]
4. Laurindo Almeida: The only Almeida jazz CD in my library I'm not that keen on; I'd suggest one of the 1950s proto-bossa-nova "Brazilliance" albums with Bud Shank.
5. Charlie Byrd, "Quintet Du Hot Club de Concord," Concord
6. Baden Powell, "Tristeza on Guitar," MPS [There's also available a double CD with this and two other albums.]
7. Joe Pass, "Songs for Ellen," Pablo
8. Stephane Grappelli, Larry Coryell, Phillip Catherine, Niels- Henning Orsted Pederson, "Young Django," MPS [Gets both Coryell and Catherine playing acoustic.]
9. Lenny Breau and Brad Terry, "The Living Room Tapes," Dos Jazz.. [Wonderfully inventive guitar and clarinet duos.]
10. Johnny Frigo with Bucky and John Pizzarelli, "Live from Studio A in New York City," Chesky [Ditto #8 on the Pizzarellis, plus a fine Grappelli-esque fiddler.]
11. Martin Taylor, "Spirit of Django," Linn. [Or, if you're tired of the Django bias, try "Portraits," Linn/Honest.]
The Annex: Beyond the 10 (or 11) limit, in no particular order:
(This is why ten-best lists are dumb.)
David Grisman and Martin Taylor, "Tone Poems II," Acoustic Disc
Guy van Duser, "Guy and Billy," Daring
Frank Vignola, "Let It Happen," Concord
John Jorgenson, "After You've Gone," Curb [The Hellecaster whiz can really play Hot Club-style swing--on a Selmer Maccaferri and clarinet. David Grisman on mando and Darrel Anger on fiddle, too.]
Cats and Jammers, "Too Close for Comfort," Tuxedo [Swing vocal trio with Sylvia Herold and ex-Cheap Suit Tony Marcus on guitars; a bit like the Twin Cities' late lamented Rio Nido with the gender balance reversed.]
The Rosenberg Trio, "Caravan," Verve [They also play some stunning stuff on Grappelli's 85th-birthday concert CD.]
Birelli Lagrene, "Routes to Django," Antilles
Larry Coryell, "The Dragon Gate," Shanachie
Al Casy, " Jumpin' with Al," Black & Blue [Fats Waller's guitarist in a mostly-acoustic setting--including tapdance accompaniment. The notes say that on some cuts (#6-8, I'd say), Casey plays Matelo Ferret's guitar. I found this in the bargain bin at a Tower in the Chicago suburbs (!).]
Boulou and Elios Ferre, "Gypsy Dreams," and "Homage to Django," Steeplechase [The sons of Matelo Ferret, who, like the post-adolescent Birelli, go way beyond gypsy jazz.]
Sinti, "Sinti," Columbia [Yet another trio of ferociously gifted gypsy kids, starring then-16-year-old Jimmy Rosenberg. Think of the teenaged Birelli Lagrene on amphetamines.]
Then there are all the gypsy-jazz players, whether or not they're actually gypsies: Christian Escoude, Romane, Moreno, Paul Mehling of the Hot Club of San Francisco, Raul Reynoso, Ian Cruikshank, Pearl Django . . . .
Players who should be listed but are so under-recorded I can't find CDs (or, in Green's case, too hard to hear over the band):
Joseph Reinhardt [There is a Sixities recording available from Hot Club Records out of Norway, but I haven't heard it yet.]
Carl Kress and Dick McDonough [They're on the Yazoo "Pioneers of Jazz Guitar" compilation, but no entire CDs that I know of. Kress also did some electric work with George Barnes in the Seventies, including "Two Guitars (and a Horn)," with Bud Freeman, and an album of Music Minus One duets that has been CD'd but that I haven't managed to track down.]
Freddie Green [Though there's a 1974 Concord quintet recording with Herb Ellis ("Rhythm Willie") and a mid-1950s album with Ruby Braff ("Braff!")--and you can still barely hear Green comping away. Ditto for the Savoy reissue of "Opus in Swing" with Frank Wess and Kenny Burrell.]