Recommend me some great jazz guitar albums please!

oh my bad...missed out guitar jazz

 

Wolfgang Muthspiel and Brian Blade - Friendly Travelers. Wolfgang Muthspiel has recorded many excellent albums, this is one of his best!

 

In a more fusion style, I'd also recommend these favourites of mine:

Jeff Beck - Blow By Blow and Wired
Frank Zappa - Shut Up And Play Yer Guitar, Guitar, Trance-fusion
Return To Forever - Hymn To The 7the Galaxy, Where Have I Known You Before, No mystery

 

Derek Bailey

 

Bill De Arango

 

Larry Coryell

 

Tal Farlow

 

Whoops, a few corrections. Paul Bley is a piano player, not a guitarist. I was thinking of a John Scofield guitar performance on Bley's album, but wrote Bley by mistake there.
Also, Robin Ford should be Robben Ford (with 8-10 of his albums, you'd think I'd know that by now).
Somehow I left off the great Johnny Smith from my list too, another giant. There are many others too, but these are the majority of my favorites.

 

Great suggestions guys thanks!

 

A duo of guitarrist that I enjoy a lot: Acoustic Alchemy...some may tag them as "smooth jazz" but these guys can play .

 

Yet another aging brainwarp. I meant Tommy Emmanuel on the original list, not Tommy Edwards. Sheesh.

 

There is a great Sonny Greenwich Lp called Evolution Love's Reverse, I can't find a picture of the cover, but to me it's a masterpiece.

 

Bireli Lagrene. The gypsy guitarist has always fascinated me. He's always been brilliant. Early Lagrene (long hair) was a fusionista. As good as ANYONE else that's played this music, he always had true heavyweights as bandmates on his records yet you rarely hear his name mentioned. Currently (short hair) He's been playing acoustic guitar almost exclusively with his Gypsy Project Band. Wonderful band playing beautiful hardcore guitar swing jazz ala his spiritual gypsy father; Django Reinhardt. YouTube's yr friend!

 

Tisziji Munoz. The guy is a nut. In his 70s, he still plays like this


No chords; Tisziji can't play them, due to a wrist injury he suffered as a teenager, before he ever took up guitar. So it's all single-note lines. And what lines they are.

Munoz was a mentor and quasi-guru to Paul Shaffer in the early 1970s. These days, John Medeski often shows up as one of his sidekicks.

 

Bireli is my favorite living guitarist, as well as one of my few top all time jazz guitar favorites. The heir to Django IMO - even Django's son said that too. He actually started out with gypsy acoustic as a child prodigy, playing festivals in his young teens. His fusion phase in early adulthood was fairly short, but memorably mixed with Jaco Pastorius. One tune called Metal Earthquake is a monster. I've seen him in that phase once, and doing acoustic gypsy/other jazz twice. He can play pretty much any style, and play it fast, effortlessly, and with endless complexity, inventiveness, and lots of feeling. If you want to see the best of modern acoustic gypsy jazz, check out his DVD or youtube upload Gypsy Project Live in Vienne, with many extraordinary guests later in the program as well.

 

Yr gonna laugh but I've always felt Bireli's career/journey would make a kickass Jazz movie. Guitar prodigy of a legendary musician, goes electric and hangs/plays with the penultimate bad boy genius bass playa, survives, goes full circle in his later years to play the genius level music of his youth! And here's the kicker (I had this idea when looking at the covers of his Blue Note records, so this is an OLD idea!), the title role would be played by an actor who Bireli actually resembled when they were younger; Johnny Depp! Man, that's a really old fantasy that I've never had the opportunity to share, ya gotta love this forum!

No, wait...I swear this just happened....As I was typing this post, my pod's set on random play. Bireli Lagrene played 3 Views Of A Secret from his Acoustic Moments record!!! I love it when the music gods wink!

 

In addition to the amazing Wynton Kelly Smokin' at the Half Note already mentioned several times, I would add one of my other favorites from Wes Montgomery: Full House. If you can find the DCC CD it sounds pretty darn incredible.

 

Just listened to Full House the day before yesterday

 

What is the best digital version?

 

With the legendary Claude Ranger on drums. And here is a beautiful live version they did of "Time-Space" from this album, this time with vocals, by Ernie Nelson. Might be a transcript record from CBC/Radio-Canada... I'd kill to find this album!