Barney Kessel Guitar Tab Books, Instruction DVDs, Solos, Arrangements, Video Lessons

    Although many guitar players were highly affected by Charlie Christian in the 1940s and 1950s, Barney Kessel was the very first to establish his own recognizable voice out of the Charlie Christian style. Like Christian, Kessel was from Oklahoma. Other than three months of guitar lessons, Kessel was self-taught on guitar. He received early experience playing with regional swing groups. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1942, he worked with the Chico Marx Big Band (1942-43), which was a group put together by Ben Pollack. Found by Norman Granz, Kessel was featured in the Lester Young short length film "Jammin' The Blues" in 1944. He worked with the orchestras of Charlie Barnet (1944-45) and Artie Shaw, likewise having fun performing with Shaw's Gramercy Five.

    After the Shaw period, Kessel ended up being a studio musician in Los Angeles while likewise playing bop-oriented jazz in the evening. He made recordings with Charlie Parker in 1947, toured with Jazz at The Philharmonic, and during 1952-53 was a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio. While he left Peterson after a year to stick nearby the studios, Kessel taped his most significant recordings in the 1950s making a string of extremely gratifying record albums for Contemporary Records. While he continued to be a boppish soloist, the styles varied from swing to West Coast jazz. An additional series of recordings teamed him with Ray Brown and Shelly Manne as The Poll Winners, since they frequently won the "Downbeat" and "Metronome" polls of that time period. Kessel also made recordings with Art Tatum and Sonny Rollins.

    Barney Kessel continued to be prominent on the scene during the next couple of decades. He appeared on lots of pop recordings including some with The Monkees and The Beach Boys, regularly developing well-known solos anonymously. He went on tour with George Wein's Newport All-Stars in 1968 and teamed up with Stephane Grappelli on several concerts throughout 1969-70. While his later recordings as a leader typically lack the excitement and enthusiasm of his earlier dates, Barney Kessel still sounded at his intense best when playing guitar with Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd as The Great Guitars during 1974-82.

    Kessel's guitar style was firmly rooted in the jazz music of the late thirties and forties. As one of the crucial transitional jazz guitarists in the period, his approach naturally embodied the lexicons of the swing and bebop eras. Both jazz genres exerted a significant influence on his playing. To a lesser extent, Barney was influenced by the post-bop modal and hard bop movements and contemporary free jazz.

    Barney was an accomplished chord melody stylist and fantastic single-note soloist. His chord playing exuded the harmonic elegance, differing structures, and composing acumen of a pianist and orchestra leader. Barney was fond of the modern polytonal alternatives and chord extensions favored by jazz keyboardists and frequently worked these into his re-harmonizations of standard tunes like "Tenderly", "Misty," and "Spring Is Here.".

    The blues played a large role in Barney's music. Despite the heady bop-inflected lines and vibrant harmonic alternatives infused throughout his improvisations, cool sounding blues licks were also plentiful. Barney used blues elements in both chord and single-note style. His flowing solo passages were regularly punctuated with distinct string bending, grooving riff-like patterns, slurred ninth and 7th chords, and characteristic double stops.

    Barney had numerous noteworthy phrasing techniques that made his single-note improvisations immediately identifiable and individualistic. Prime among these were the rake-picked smeared arpeggio figures that decorated lots of of his bop passages. Another significant Kessel signature was the extended guitar line harmonized in parallel 3rds. Noteworthy was his strong, unflagging sense of swing when rendering long strings of 8th notes like a wind instrumentalist. A major stroke put an end to Barney Kessel's jazz guitar playing in 1992, 12 years prior to his death.

 Barney Kessel Plays "The Shadow Of Your Smile"