“VINTAGE” HERB ELLIS

While out on my appointed rounds a couple of days ago—picking up dog food, redeeming my wife’s shoes from the cobbler . . . the sort of tasks that fill up the “Honey Do” list—I treated myself to a copy of the latest issue of Vintage Guitar Magazine. “Guitar porn,” my brother-in-law calls this sort of glossy pictoral publication (as the owner of more than 100 guitars himself, he might speak with some authority on the matter)—and I have to admit that my eye was drawn by the sensuously curvaceous form on the cover: a to-die-for two-tone (light green body with avocado pickguard) Gretsch tenor guitar, circa 1960.

But what prompted me to buy the magazine (I really should subscribe) was the promise of an article on jazz guitarist Herb Ellis, who died in March at the age of 88. Written by guitar historian Jim Carlton, the piece is more a general appreciation than a full-scale retrospective, but it prompted me to spin the dial on my iPod and tune in appreciatively to Ellis’s signature style, which is summarized neatly by fellow jazz legend Mundell Lowe at the end of Carlton’s article: “In his music he loved two things—Charlie Christian and playing those Texas blues. He was the king at that.” Naturally enough, then, I started by cuing up a pair of his early albums—first Nothing But the Blues from 1957 and then Thank You Charlie Christian from 1960, the titles of which speak volumes about their content.

Inevitably, those two albums affirm an observation made by Barney Kessel that Carlton also quotes in his article: “He signed his work. You could always tell when it was Herb playing.” Indeed you can—and that is the basic reason why I find that so many of his albums as frontman sound pretty much alike . . . which is the basic reason why I find much more satisfying his albums where he is either sharing the marquee or else performing as sideman. In the first category, I have a particular fondness for the two albums he recorded in an extended session with Duke Robillard in 1999—Conversations in Swing Guitar and More Conversations in Swing Guitar: the two six-string swingers truly complement each other stylistically, and it seems to me that Robillard really encourages Ellis, pushing 80 years old at the time of the recording, to push himself “conversationally.” Ellis also recorded several albums with guitarist Joe Pass that stretch him beyond “nothing but the blues” and ongoing homage to the iconic Charlie Christian, who brought electric guitar to the forefront in jazz during his all-too-brief stint with Benny Goodman between 1939 and 1941. In contrast, Rhythm Willie, an album that Ellis recorded in 1975 with four-to-the-bar rhythm guitar legend Freddie Green and which features only Ellis playing solos, has a lot of “sameness” despite the winningness of those solos individually. (Coincidentally, this issue of Vintage Guitar Magazine also includes under its Fretprints rubric a piece by Wolf Marshall entitled “Freddie Green: Rhythm-Guitar Engine of Jazz,” which explains and illustrates Green’s singular technique—for five decades the foundational pulse of the Count Basie Band; this piece makes no mention of Green's collaboration with Ellis.)

As Carlton observes, one of Ellis’s true claims to fame was his long hitch in the drummerless Oscar Peterson trio, which featured Peterson on piano and included Ray Brown on bass. Most of the recordings that I’ve heard of the trio per se really showcase the prodigious Peterson—Ellis plays a distant second fiddle (as it were). But as Carlton also notes, the trio served essentially as the house rhythm section for the Verve record label, backing up myriad household names of jazz in the 1950s. At times, on an album like Stan Getz & Oscar Peterson Trio, Ellis is relegated to primarily a rhythmic role, and his presence is literally much more felt than heard in backing up tenorman Getz. For my money, tenorman Ben Webster’s Soulville is a more satisfying album with regard to Ellis’s presence—right from the opening plucked notes of the title tune. But perhaps my favorite of all of his sideman appearances on my iPod is on Anita O’Day’s Anita Sings the Most. Giving Ellis several solo spots as well as putting his expressive comping on display, this album is a “vintage” classic by virtue of not only O’Day’s vocals but also the sympathetic backing and the subtle interplay of Peterson, Brown and Ellis.