Let's agree that the guitar, despite the glories of the past fifty or so years, is still in its infancy. So,
isn't what it was, nor is it what it will become. It couldn't be. The guitar has evolved not only in the way
it's built but also in the way it's played. And what might once have required a big, voluptuous archtop can
easily be done with a bolt-neck slab and some modeling gear. Still, it’s nothing to worry about. After all,
it's the music that matters.
Music, though, can fool even the most eager listener. Why? Because to appreciate music--really, to understand
it--we first try to define what it is. That's a benefit, but it's also a bias. But when you find something you
can identify with, it becomes something you crave. You'll want to know more about it. That's the case with jazz
guitar great John Abercrombie. It’s amazing to think that in his playing one can discern the influences of so
many great players yet immediately tell, from the very first note, that none other than he could be playing.
"Probably the first important guitarist I listened to was Barney Kessel," he says. "He was the first ‘jazz’
guitarist I ever heard. At that time I was trying to make the transition from blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and R&B
players like Chuck Berry. Still, Kessel had a really twangy sound. It was a funky, bluesy, even country kind
of sound."
It was a constant drive . . . a hunger. There was so much to hear, and so much to learn. As a young man, Abercrombie
listened to everything he could get by artists such as Jimmy Rainey and Tal Farlow, the latter of whom was considered
something of a phenomenon in his day. "Eventually I was fortunate to hear George Benson, and he was just terrifying.
And then I heard Pat Martino, and Kenny Burrell.
"But then I heard Wes," says the guitarist after a short pause. "There was something so natural about the way he
played. I used to see him play all the time, back in Boston. I could sit and watch him all night."
The drive to play--to understand, explore and perfect--hasn't diminished. The quiet, working-class guy with the
moustache continues doing what he does best, as a composer of singularly moving music and a player of the first order.
John Abercrombie was born in December 16, 1944 in Port Chester, New York. Port Chester is sandwiched between the
town of Rye (think Barbara Bush) and Greenwich, Connecticut (try not to think of Martha Stewart), two of the ritziest
enclaves on the Eastern seaboard. It was the latter place that John called home, though his wasn't the kind of
neighborhood where caviar was standard fare. As he puts it, "I came from the slums of Greenwich. Believe me,
there are working-class neighborhoods in all the upscale towns around that area."
Neither was it a particularly musical household, he says. "In fact, there was no music in the family. My parents
liked music, and they bought me a record player, but they didn’t listen to jazz or classical records. Just the
radio, maybe, but it wasn’t an important part of their lives.
"The music was just in me," he adds. "I was into R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, and all that. But as I got a bit older,
I decided I wanted to really study the guitar. My parents supported me in it, since they knew I had a good
time playing. But then I got really serious, which sort of scared them. I mean, coming from a small town in
the late 1950s and ‘60s, and deciding I wanted to go to school and study jazz? Nobody even knew what it was,
much less anyone coming from a small town. It was a strange time."
The avenues were limited in terms of formal jazz studies in the early ‘60s, but they were even more limited for
anyone wanting to become a jazz guitarist. After all, the pop phenomenon was relatively new, and the six-string
had to overcome a considerable credibility problem. So, John had just a couple of choices, one of which was the
Berklee College of Music. Luckily, he was young enough to indulge his dream and give it all the energy it required.
If it didn't pan out, it didn't pan out. So, once he graduated from high school in June of ’62, he headed up the
coast to Boston.
He breathed deep the atmosphere of this earthly jazz heaven, and after a few years he received a diploma certifying
him as a musician of professional standing. But he had little interest in making a hobby of the guitar. He wanted
to gig, and he’d trained like an athlete in order to do so. Eventually the opportunity came, in the form of an
audition for one of those jazzy, funky R&B units that populated the club circuits in cities of the period.
"It was around ’67," he says. "During my last year of school I hooked up with an organist named Johnny 'Hammond'
Smith. I was all set to audition for him, and I was really excited, because this was going to be a real jazz gig
playing a selection of stuff every night. You had to be able to comp and solo, and do the R&B stuff. It was a great
experience. I had to learn lots of songs and get up onstage and play, night after night. Of course, my schoolwork
had started to suffer as a result, because I’d realized that this was the real school."
The guitarist made his first professional recording--an LP called "Nasty"--with Smith in ’68. The band consisted
of Smith at the B3, Houston Person on sax, and Grady Tate on drums. Abercrombie toured with the band for a
year-and-a-half, playing a gritty, crowd-pleasing mix of tunes. But this was a time of significant cultural
change, during which the youth of America, inflamed by their forced involvement in a war overseas and by the
exposure of political corruption and corporate collusion, took to the streets and campuses in protest. This
could be heard in music, too, most notably in the ferocious guitar playing and poetical psychedelic blues of
Jimi Hendrix, who had gone to London in the mid-‘60s and come back as a bearer of the Freak Flag for millions.
"The fusion thing had started to happen," Abercrombie says, "and all the musicians were listening to Hendrix.
Around that time I joined a fusion band called Dreams, which was fronted by the Brecker brothers with Randy
on horn, Michael on sax and Barry Rogers on trombone. Billy Cobham was on the drums. The band was holding
try-outs, hoping to find a guy who could play rock guitar. So, I went down and auditioned. I’d grown up
playing rock and R&B, I’d studied jazz at school, and I’d played all sorts of stuff with Johnny ‘Hammond’ Smith,
so I felt pretty much at home with what they were trying to do. They gave me the spot, which was great. I was even
going to switch guitars. With Johnny I’d been playing a Gibson L5, but with the fusion stuff it had to be a Les Paul."
It seemed the guitarist wouldn’t be leaving Boston anytime soon, at least not with all the contacts he was making.
But even though Boston is a bona fide metropolis, it's still a New England city, small by world standards. That
meant only one thing: Eventually he’d have to take that first bite out of the Big Apple. The ticket to Gotham
arrived in the form of a gig with Chico Hamilton. John moved into an apartment there with his girlfriend, and
he quickly found that the spot in Hamilton’s band meant he’d be writing too.
"That was my first professional experience writing music," Abercrombie explains, "because Chico didn’t write
anything. But he’d played with Larry Coryell and Gabor Szabo, and he really liked guitar players. I was still
young and full of testosterone, and I wanted to get in there and really do it. I played lots of notes, and I
used lots of distortion."
Abercrombie was by that time identified as a part of the Brecker Brothers scene. But a new group was being put
together by heavyweight drummer Billy Cobham, again featuring Mike and Randy on sax and horn. "It was interesting
that Billy would give us all a call. That was going to be the Billy Cobham Band, because the Mahavishnu Orchestra
was breaking up and his plan was definitely to continue playing. Now, when this guy played, you knew it. And when
we played, the decibel level was so intense you could see it. It was frighteningly loud."
Abercrombie, though, hadn’t forgotten what he’d set out to be in the first place: a jazz guitarist. To him, the
Billy Cobham Band wasn't a jazz group but a variation on the fusion motif. "There was no emphasis on harmony,"
he says, "and there was basically no jazz rhythm. Looking back at that time, I think of the Mahavishnu Orchestra
and Weather Report as the two most listenable groups of the genre. Of course, all those guys had played with Miles,
and with Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter in there, Weather Report had a great deal of harmony. I think that was
probably the most memorable music of the whole fusion period. The rest of it, even though it involved some amazing
musicians, didn’t interest me. It was way over the top, like a circus."
(End of part 1) » Part 2 |
