1943 ACETATE 12” ZEB JULIAN jazz guitar RARE V+

$

51

For Sale: A 12-inch Acetate record (steel backing) in V+ condition. Needs to be cleaned professionally. Probably one of the VERY FEW recordings ever made of this amazing jazz guitarist.

SIDE ONE Label reads: “Zeb Julian, Birchbark, 10/18/43” (Label is “Audio-Scriptions Inc., Radio Recording Studios, Acetate Black Record Plays with Any Needle) 1619 Broadway, NY NY, CIrcle7-7690

SIDE TWO label reads: “Zeb Julian, Jerry Murphy Is A Friend of Mine, 10/18/43”

HEAR A SAMPLE:http://www.midnightseaenterprises.com/Audio/JERRYMURPHY%20Sample.mp3

 This item is sold in as-is condition and all sales are final. Please use Paypal. Insurance provided if you use USPS. Good luck!

WHO WAS ZEB JULIAN?

A search on the internet brought up snippets that suggest he was an influential and original jazz artist who may have invented an important jazz guitar style known as ‘comp’ing.

From Jazz Times.com (2001)

Billy Bauer article by Harvey Pekar

…Tristano helped Bauer create a new style by ruling out playing melody or stating the beat. With those options pretty much gone, Bauer had to find a new and unique way to work with Tristano, and he did. Bauer himself credits an obscure and eccentric but apparently brilliant guitarist, Zeb Julian, with influencing him to comp the way he did with Tristano….

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From: www.local802afm.org

Bill Crow's Band Room (2005)
by Bill Crow

The late Billy Bauer made a tape in response to some questions by Frad Garner on Nov 15, 2004, when Billy was 89. He spoke about Zeb Julian, a guitarist who was briefly on the New York jazz scene, but who appears in none of the jazz encyclopedias. Frad recently sent me his transcription of that tape, and I edited it slightly for clarity. Billy said:

"I met Zeb through Flip Phillips in the 1940’s. At that time he was playing with Frankie Newton’s band in Kelly’s Stable (on 52nd Street). I hung out with Flip, and that’s how I met Zeb. He sat down with us in the room...he wasn’t working anywhere...and he picked up my guitar and started to play. He could play like the whole Ellington brass section! Just to sit down and play such a full, chordal effect on the guitar, and still be swinging and everything, well, it amazed me. So I got to talking to him, and we became pretty good friends.

"He wound up letting me...I don’t know if you can call it lessons, because I didn’t pay him, but he started telling me to do this or that, you know. It was a little bit over my head, what he was talking about. That’s as close as I got to studying with him. The rest of the time, he would just sit there and play. Gees, they had to pull him away from it.

"When I got with Woody’s band, Zeb would come in and hang around, watch the guys, listen to the band. Then he asked me could he play with the band. Woody took off for the last set most nights in this hotel. After one number or so, he’d walk off the bandstand. When Woody walked off, I’d give Zeb my guitar. One night he played the whole last set, and when the band played the theme song and were getting off the bandstand, Zeb just kept playing and playing. I finally went over to him and said, ‘Zeb, I want to go!’ He just wouldn’t stop when he got going!

"When Woody was working at a theater in Newark, New Jersey, Zeb came over to see us. We were talking in the dressing room, and when the band was called to go on stage I told him, ‘Come on down on the stage and stand in the wings.’ I was on the second platform at the end of the stage, and he was right by me, but behind the curtain. At that time I was mostly playing rhythm. That was my job, just to bang away rhythm. While we were playing, all of a sudden out came a big fist from behind the wing. Zeb banged his fist right on my seat, and then he went backwards off-stage, shook his fist at me and said, ‘You’re stronger than me!’ I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Woody said, ‘Never bring him back again!’

"He played a week or two at Kelly’s Stable, and that was the hottest place at the time. Coleman Hawkins had just come back from Europe, and did ‘Body and Soul,’ and they had Billie (Holiday)...they had everybody in Kelly’s Stable. They hired Zeb to play all alone. Now we have a few guys doing that, like Joe Pass, but this was at the end of the 40’s. To go out there all alone, it was a sort of big deal. But he didn’t last too long. A week or two, and that was the end of Zeb (on the New York jazz scene).

"I did hear from some other musicians that they had tried to fix him up with Benny Goodman, who gave him the gig for a week or so. But he fired him, because while Benny was playing, Zeb would play stuff like ‘Yankee Doodle’ behind him.

"I don’t know too much more about Zeb. He had everything! Oh, about his fingers being cut off, I knew him then, right after the accident. He actually did sit down and play. I couldn’t look at him. [Julian lost parts of some fingers while working in a factory in New Jersey during World War II. — B.C.]

"One time I was talking with Zeb about different voicings and everything, and I said, ‘You know, some of the guys tune their guitars different.’ He said, ‘Billy, I’ve tuned it every way I’ve heard of, and when it’s easy to get one voicing one way, you try to make another voicing and it’s hard. So I went back to the original way.’"

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From interview with Guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli in 2006:

Now Barry Galbraith did not play one-note rhythm chords… I never figured out how he played those great chords. Another great rhythm player was Zeb Julian, who could also play finger-style guitar. I first heard Zeb when I was in high school.

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From A History of Jazz in America

By Barry Ulanov, 1955, p. 333:

For many years Billy was a first-rate rhythm guitarist, satisfying to jazzmen of several schools because of his superlative time  his superlative steadiness, drive, relaxation, and unrelaxed musician-  ship. Ever since joining Lennie, Billy has offered something new, s  new conception of his instrument's place in jazz. He credits his initial interest in this new way of playing to Zeb Julian, a fellow guitarist.

 "He used to come back when I was with Woody and show me. He’s a creative guy who first had the idea of playing that way. Maybe he didn't do it on the job, playing with other musicians, but he did it  when he played alone."  The way? The guitar picks up and goes. It is no longer restrictec  to rhythm chords, with occasional sorties provided by note-for-note reiterations of piano arpeggios.

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From Discography of Chu Berry (www.mosaicrecords.com)

(II) WINGIE MANONE AND HIS ORCHESTRA: Wingy Manone (tp, vcl), Buster Bailey (cl), Chu Berry (ts), Conrad Lanoue (p), Zeb Julian (g), Jules Cassard (b), Cozy Cole (d). NYC, April 26, 1939

(NN) WINGIE MANONE AND HIS ORCHESTRA: Wingy Manone (tp, vcl), Buck Scott (tb), Gus Fetterer (cl), Chu Berry (ts), Ernie Hughes (p), Zeb Julian (g), Sid Jacobs (b), Cozy Cole (d).