RARE SIGNED Jazz Guitar LP Barney Kessel Charlie Byrd +

$

65

Autographed 1975 LP, GREAT GUITARS, signed by jazz guitar legends, Barney Kessel, Charlie Byrd, and Herb Ellis - plus two others.

Great Guitars: Recorded live at the Concord Summer Festival by Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd.

Here's a real treat for jazz guitar enthusisasts - a great classic album of three legendary guitarists and SIGNED by all three! The record is also signed by Charlie Byrd's brother Joe Byrd (who played bass) and there is one other signature - which is illegible, but presumably a touring drummer.

All of our autographed items are 100% guaranteed authentic for life. Comes with Certificate of Authenticity upon request.

Details: Concord Jazz CJ-4, stereo, white label with Concord logo above hole, 1975.
Vinyl: NM, Cover: VG+

The tracks are:
1. Undecided performed by Byrd / Barney Kessel / Herb Ellis / Johnny Rae - 6:48
2. O Barquinho performed by Byrd / Johnny Rae / Joe Byrd - 4:54
3. Slow Burn performed by Byrd / Barney Kessel / Herb Ellis / Johnny Rae - 5:40
4. Charlie's Blues performed by Byrd / Barney Kessel / Johnny Rae / Joe Byrd - 8:30
5. Topsy performed by Byrd / Barney Kessel / Herb Ellis / Johnny Rae - 6:46
6. Latin Groove performed by Byrd / Barney Kessel / Herb Ellis - 4:52
7. Down Home Blues performed by Byrd / Barney Kessel / Herb Ellis - 4:04
8. H and B Guitar Boogie performed by Byrd / Barney Kessel / Herb Ellis - 4:18
9. Benny's Bugle performed by Byrd / Barney Kessel / Herb Ellis / Johnny Rae - 7:11

From the All Music Guide:
Charlie Byrd was teamed up with Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis (along with bassist Joe Byrd and drummer John Rae) for this rather exciting concert. While Ellis and Kessel have three unaccompanied duets, the inclusion of Byrd (thought of as a Brazilian specialist rather than a bopper) is the wild card that makes this set a major success. While Byrd is excellent on his features "Charlie's Blues" and "O Barquinho," it is the three stomps featuring all the guitarists ("Undecided," "Topsy" and "Benny's Bugle") that are most memorable.

Barney Kessel:
One of the finest guitarists to emerge after the death of Charlie Christian, Barney Kessel was a reliable bop soloist throughout his career. He played with a big band fronted by Chico Marx (1943), was fortunate enough to appear in the classic jazz short Jammin' the Blues (1944), and then worked with the big bands of Charlie Barnet (1944-1945) and Artie Shaw (1945); he also recorded with Shaw's Gramercy Five. Kessel became a busy studio musician in Los Angeles, but was always in demand for jazz records. He toured with the Oscar Peterson Trio for one year (1952-1953) and then, starting in 1953, led an impressive series of records for Contemporary that lasted until 1961 (including several with Ray Brown and Shelly Manne in a trio accurately called the Poll Winners). After touring Europe with George Wein's Newport All-Stars (1968), Kessel lived in London for a time (1969-1970). In 1973, he began touring and recording with the Great Guitars, a group also including Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd. A serious stroke in 1992 put Barney Kessel permanently out of action, but many of his records (which include dates for Onyx, Black Lion, Sonet, and Concord, in addition to many of the Contemporaries) are available, along with several video collections put out by Vestapol.

Charlie Byrd:
Tasteful, low-key, and ingratiatingly melodic, Charlie Byrd had two notable accomplishments to his credit - applying acoustic classical guitar techniques to jazz and popular music and helping to introduce Brazilian music to mass North American audiences. Born into a musical family, Byrd experienced his first brush with greatness while a teenager in France during World War II, playing with his idol Django Reinhardt. After some postwar gigs with Sol Yaged, Joe Marsala and Freddie Slack, Byrd temporarily abandoned jazz to study classical guitar with Sophocles Papas in 1950 and Andrés Segovia in 1954. However he re-emerged later in the decade gigging around the Washington D.C. area in jazz settings, often splitting his sets into distinct jazz and classical segments. He started recording for Savoy as a leader in 1957, and also recorded with the Woody Herman band in 1958-59. A tour of South America under the aegis of the U.S. State Department in 1961 proved to be a revelation, for it was in Brazil that Byrd discovered the emerging bossa nova movement. Once back in D.C., he played some bossa nova tapes to Stan Getz, who then convinced Verve's Creed Taylor to record an album of Brazilian music with himself and Byrd. That album Jazz Samba became a pop hit in 1962 on the strength of the single "Desafinado" and launched the bossa nova wave in North America. Thanks to the bossa nova, several albums for Riverside followed, including the defining Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros, and he was able to land a major contract with Columbia, though the records from that association often consisted of watered-down easy-listening pop. In 1973, he formed the group Great Guitars with Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel and also that year, wrote an instruction manual for the guitar that has become widely used. From 1974 onward, Byrd recorded for the Concord Jazz label in a variety of settings, including sessions with Laurindo Almeida and Bud Shank. He died December 2, 1999 after a long bout with cancer.

Herb Ellis:
An excellent bop-based guitarist with a slight country twang to his sound, Herb Ellis became famous playing with the Oscar Peterson Trio during 1953-1958. Prior to that, he had attended North Texas State University and played with the Casa Loma Orchestra, Jimmy Dorsey (1945-1947), and the sadly under-recorded trio Soft Winds. While with Peterson, Ellis was on some Jazz at the Philharmonic tours and had a few opportunities to lead his own dates for Verve, including his personal favorite, Nothing but the Blues (1957). After leaving Peterson, Ellis toured a bit with Ella Fitzgerald; became a studio musician on the West Coast; made sessions with the Dukes of Dixieland, Stuff Smith, and Charlie Byrd; and in the 1970s became much more active in the jazz world. He is on the first three Concord releases, interacting with Joe Pass on the initial two, and toured with the Great Guitars (along with Byrd and Barney Kessel) through much of the 1970s into the '80s. After a long series of Concord albums, Herb Ellis cut a couple of excellent sessions in the 1990s for Justice, as well as 1999's Burnin' on Acoustic Music.

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