Theme from Tear It Down ///// A funky kind of solo from 'In and Out' //// Typical solo of Wes from West Cost Blues //// Theme from Cariba ///// Theme from Movin Wes
"A giant!" one declared. "Like being hit by a thunderbolt,' another exclaimed."Even greater than I expected!" a third shouted, swooning. Montgomery fever soon spread through the jazz community at large, and the fans outdid the critics. Thousands declared that Wes was the greatest of all guitarists to the implied detriment of such worthies as Kenny Burrell, Jim Hall, Jimmy Raney, Tai Farlow, Barney Kessel and, one supposes, Andres Segovia and Hank Garland. But jazz fans -and critics- are like that, always looking for kings, the "best", whatever that means.
DISCOGRAPHY
Full House (Riverside)
Dynamic Duo with Jimmy Smith (Verve)
Further Adventures (Verve)
Movin' Along (Riverside)
Far Wes (Pacific)
Tequilla (Verve)
A day in the life (Verve)
Bumpin' (Verve)
California Dreamin' (Verve)
Compact Jazz (Verve)
Wes Plays the Blues (Verve)
Goin' out of my Head (Verve)
Silver Collection (Verve)
Movin' Wes (Verve)
Smokin' at the Half Note (Verve)
The first recordings under his own name turned thousands of guitar players all the way 'round. Octaves, octaves, octaves. Never before had a jazz guitarist used octaves as much or so well, as Wes. In his early work, much of it heard in this album, he employed octaves judiciously, thickening his lines with them, alternating them with chorded and single-note passages, never stepping outside the bounds of good musical taste. The excesses came later, when the big-money boys turned Wes into a highly marketable commodity.
In an interview with Ralph Gleason done a couple years after Wes had left Indianapolis, he recalled that "playing octaves was just a coincidence. And it's still such a challenge....I used to have headaches everytime I played octaves, because it was extra strain, but the minute I'd quit I'd be all right. I don't know why, but it was my way, and my way just backfired on me. But now I don't have headaches when I play octaves. I'm just showing you how a strain can capture a cat and almost choke him, but after a while it starts to ease up because you get used to it."
Wes was self-taught (as is every jazz musician, no matter how much he studies formally) and never felt comfortable using a guitar pick. He preferred his right thumb instead.
"That's one of my downfalls, too,'he told Gleason. "In order to get a certain amount of speed you should use a pick, I think. A lot of cats say you don't have to play fast, but being able to play fast can make you phrase better. But I just didn't like the sound. I tried it for about two months. Didn't use the thumb at all. But after two months I still couldn't use the pick, so l said I'd go ahead and use the thumb. But then I couldn't use the thumb either, so l asked myself which are you going to use? I liked the tone better with the thumb, but the technique better with the pick, but I couldn't have them both."
That he chose tone is obvious, for his dark, mellow sound is one of the most fetching aspects of his work.
But tone, technique and musical devices are mere means. It is the end, the music-its shape, the ideas underlying it, the response it evokes-that matters.
Wes Montgomery was a master of his art. His improvisations, especially in the early days, were compositions in miniature. Each note sounds as if Wes tore it from the instrument, buffed it a bit and hung it carefully in just the right spot on his ever-moving musical line Wes Montgomery was a man who knew what he was about.
The performances with tenor saxophonist Harold Land were recorded in April 1958. The tenor-guitar voicing is strikingly similar to that of the Stan Getz Quintet of 1951-52, the group with Jimmy Raney, whom Wes once listed among his favorite guitarists. ( One can hear occasional snatches of Raney and Tal Farlow, another Montgomery favorite, in some of Wes' playing on this date. ) Even Wes' originals have something of the flavor of compositions the Getz hve favored.
The similarity ends there, though. Land and the Montgomervs were their own men and held no truck with imitation. Land, a Dro of the first water who never has got the acclaim he deserves, is in hne form, never at a foss for ideas, never hesitant or obscure, always to the point and cogent. Buddy shines on piano. He sometimes indulges in Tatumesque flights, but mostly he snarls in the best Bud Powell manner.
Though Wes was more or less a sideman on the date, as he was on the other sessions represented in this album, he clearly is the outstanding soloist. "Old Folks" is astonishing a summation of his approach to his instrument and to music. He displays great respect for Carson Robinson's melody, stating it fairly straight in the opening chorus and embuing it with that deep, dark tone. Then after Land and Buggy have had their ways, Wes builds a flowing, sculptured improvisation that is almost conversational, like a man pleading, crying for love. It is amcng his finest recorded work.
Something of the Getz-Raney sound carries over to the session with altoist Pony Poindexter made a year and a half later. Though the performances were not quite up to the extremely high level of the Land tracks, Wes seems to have been in a warm, mellow mood. For example, in his utterly relaxed "Falling in Love with Love" solo he evokes a feeling-just a whisper, really-of one of his early favorites, Django Reinhardt, the romantic Belgian gypsy. It is one of the few times on record that Wes used a Reinhardt-like vibrato ("Leila" is another).
This collection is valuable not only because it shows the recorded beginnings of an important musician but also because the music is of high order. If Wes Montgomery had recorded nothing more than these performances, he would have deserved the critics' praise if not their hyperbole. After all, how does one proceed after being called the greatest thing since Charlie Christian? West reaction to that is not recorded-or is it?
-DON DeMICHAEL 1975