Box sets prey upon my built-in laziness, a condition that intensifies exponentially with the torpidity-inducing onset of winter. It’s not that much more effort to pull one of their number from a shelf and extricate a disc for play, but for some reason I’m far more predisposed to fetching a single from the stacks to spin. To combat this condition I’ve taken to picking one set a month to revisit. November’s choice is The Complete Roost Johnny Smith Small Group Sessions and I’m marveling anew at both the set and its historically inconspicuous subject.
Simple and to the point, Johnny Smith is a magician. A guy prone to wearing gray-flannel & starched collars, bespectacled, with a receding hairline and soft-putty mug, he looks more like a C.P.A. than a jazz guitar virtuoso. But few, if any, are more deserving of that superlative honorific. One of Smith’s most pertinent traits is his quiet improvisatory genius and it saturates the hundred odd tracks in the box. Big names like Stan Getz and Zoot Sims grace the first disc. But the bulk of the exhaustive program is devoted to Smith’s own largely anonymous combos, including a particularly sympathetic teaming with vibraphonist Johnny Rae. There are fleet bebop numbers, genteel swinging standards, solo improvisations, pop tunes and the occasional smattering of originals, among them “Walk Don’t Run” so famously covered by The Ventures years later. Smith’s tone is usually clean as polished crystal, but he can shape slashing bop-informed runs with the best. Rapid-fire single notes, shimmering chords, rippling octaves- they’re all within easy reach of his enterprising fingers. I’ve used the Clark Kent analogy before with other musicians, but it seems to fit Smith flawlessly, a mild-mannered fellow who dons an invisible red cape & blue leotard when he picks up his hollow-body and begins a piece.
Tracks like “Little Girl Blue” and “Black is the Color (Of My True Love’s Hair) [both disc 3] are masterful miniatures of individual creative invention. I had to cue my stereo’s repeat function on the latter and replay it a half dozen times before moving on to properly drink it all in. Hauntingly indelible doesn’t even describe the half of it. The set’s customarily lavish booklet describes the details of Smith’s career --one spent surprisingly often skulking in the studio shadows-- a guitarist’s guitarist whose impeccable phrasing and articulation was seen by some segments of the jazz public as too pretty, even saccharine. I guess I can fathom the logic behind such swipes; digesting the discs in succession brings Smith’s penchant for graceful playing into sharp focus. But there are voluminous examples in the box go a long way toward discrediting such summary dismissals. Even heard back-to-back the jam-packed discs have an uncanny ability to monopolize the ears. What’s also a treat is how you can hear slivers of other guitarists in Smith’s method and execution (especially Charlie Byrd). And I’d wager that the flow influence is outward rather than in reverse.
Tal Farlow, the subject of another priceless Mosaic box, is often touted as a paragon of post-Christian plectral skill. No argument from me on that point. But I actually prefer this Smith set, both for its variety and the unprecedented aperture it opens into the career of a figure far often overlooked in discussions of modern jazz guitar. On to Disc Five as the winds whistle frigidly outside my window…
Posted by derek on November 16, 2005 8:29 PMYes, truly a magician, the way he keeps a chord ringing halfway into the next run. Still he's oh so very clean. I often wonder how it is that the 40s have such a wealth of electrifying guitarists following Christian, like Oscar Moore, Chuck Wayne, Remo Palmieri, even that 4-string joker Tiny Grimes (though no match for Parker he still conjures up visions of what rock'n'roll should have been) or Barney Kessel (who later must win a prize for most impatient guitarist constantly tripping over his own fingers...) Seems like in the 40s you couldn't say a wrong note on a guitar. Around 50 (some recording ban, too, at the time?) there's a kind of watershed, even for Django who reached his ultimate greatness when he turned electric in 47 or so. After 52 (that's after Farlow in the Norvo 3 and Kessel with Shaw?), say hi to HiFi, the electric guitar sounds hollow as in hollowbody, and though there are feats of greatness by Billy Butler within the Tristano circle or Barry Galbraith with George Russell, and yes Johnny Smith, I feel Jim Hall is the only consistently challenging guitarist until the rock influence kicks in (Sharrock and whoever else worked under Miles, and deny it, Scofield was jazz guitar in the late 80s, early 90s). How come? these were also the years when bebop lost its urgency, or when Hawkins lost his infallibility. So perhaps its not just about the hardware. And though I sometimes enjoy the fluency of Wes Montgomery, or the dryness of Grant Green (don't wanna know how many sessions where spoilt by Kenny Burrell), it seems a guitar is about as upfront as a french horn until 69. So how come?
Posted by: Lutz at November 17, 2005 10:17 AMThat's Billy Bauer not Butler with Tristano.
I'm sorry, all these players are cut from the same cloth. Straightahead/trad jazz guitarists bore me to tears. They generaly are the most faceless, personality free instrumentalists in the genere. But than again, thats just me. My loss perhaps.
Great annotated timeline, Lutz. But I must to respectively disagree on Burrell. Some of his later stuff (70s onward) suffers from a fair share of schmaltz, but the 50s Blue Note dates, especially his first few collected on the Connoisseur two-fer Introducing… are brilliant, both for his own presence & the stellar bands on hand. Likewise Blue Lights and Midnight Blue. Back to Smith, it’s precisely his spic-and-span approach that I find so entrancing. Cloying? Maybe, but damn beautiful in the bargain. Sal Salvador seems to me to be another under his spell.
Butler was a marvel too, master of the “singing” guitar tone with a similarly prolific career path in a menagerie of anonymous, but lucrative, studio bands. This might be a reason behind the post-69 decline you surmise- bread to be had as a freelance commercial session man- but guys like Charlie Byrd, Joe Pass & Herb Ellis had decent careers playing the earlier styles outside fusion’s reach.
Biv, are you out there? Curious if a.) you have this set & b.) if you dig Smith.
Dohol, I doubt it’s just you. I think there are lots of folks who could do without the bulk of mainstream guitar stylists past and present. It’s a population and tradition of playing I find much solace in though.
Posted by: derek at November 17, 2005 12:54 PMYou might perhaps also place Billy Bauer's (sorry for that slip) only solo date, Plectrist from 56, into the sub-Johnny-Smith-genre. Almost no Tristano-style lines, lots of arpeggios, sad record, if perfectly executed, at least compared to my expectations from it. Yes, the studio hack jobs, George Barnes springs to mind who played some of the greatest guitar solos ever when he cut loose, but he seldom cut loose, though always blessed with a sound (the one that Django should have had on his 53 comeback sessions?)
Posted by: Lutz at November 18, 2005 4:29 AM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................