[Dixielandjazz] Guitarist Barney Kessel died at 80

[Roger Wade]

Listmates,

Barney Kessel was a great jazz guitarist who also appreciated the roots 
of jazz.  Note his 1954 (Good Time Jazz L-12008) recording with Kid 
Ory's Creole Jazz Band.

Roger Wade
Really Old Records
Natick, MA
USA
 >>
Norman Vickers wrote:

> Listmates:  Another member of  God's Jazz Band--Barney Kessel
>Norman Vickers
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>----
>New York Times
>May 8, 2004
>Barney Kessel, 80, a Guitarist With Legends of Jazz, Dies
>By PETER KEEPNEWS
>
>Barney Kessel, a guitarist who was both a celebrated jazz soloist and a
>ubiquitous but anonymous studio musician, died on Thursday at his home in
>San Diego. He was 80.
>
>The cause was brain cancer, said his wife, Phyllis. Mr. Kessel had been
>inactive since a stroke in 1992, and he learned in 2001 that he had
>inoperable cancer.
>
>By the mid-1950's Mr. Kessel was one of the most popular guitarists in jazz,
>a perennial winner of music magazine polls and a sideman whose résumé
>included work with Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Art Tatum and countless
>others. But he still found it hard to pay his bills, so he began a second
>career in the studios, which came to dominate his professional life until he
>decided to return to jazz full time in the 1970's.
>
>He was born in Muskogee, Okla., on Oct. 17, 1923, and began his professional
>career there at 14 as the only white musician in an otherwise all-black
>dance band.
>
>Mr. Kessel initially modeled his style closely on that of the pioneering
>electric guitarist Charlie Christian, a fellow Oklahoman, and he continued
>to regard Christian as his main influence.
>
>But when he had the opportunity to play with Christian at a jam session, he
>told The New York Times in 1991, the experience inspired him to develop a
>style of his own.
>
>"I realized that I had been methodically lifting his ideas from records,"
>Mr. Kessel said. "What was I going to play? All I knew was his stuff. There
>were two guys playing like Charlie Christian. I knew I had to find myself."
>
>With Christian's encouragement, Mr. Kessel moved to Los Angeles in 1942 and
>was soon on the road with a band fronted by the comedian Chico Marx.
>
>Over the next few years he worked with the big bands of Artie Shaw, Charlie
>Barnet and Benny Goodman, establishing a reputation as one of the most
>versatile and reliable guitarists on the West Coast.
>
>He soon began working regularly as a sideman for the record producer Norman
>Granz, and in 1944 he was one of the many musicians featured in "Jammin' the
>Blues," the acclaimed short jazz film produced by Granz and directed by the
>photographer Gjon Mili. (In a strange echo of his first job, Mr. Kessel was
>the only white musician in that film; all that was clearly visible of him
>were his hands, which were dyed black.)
>
>Mr. Kessel's profile in the jazz world continued to grow in the 1950's. In
>1952 he joined the pianist Oscar Peterson's trio and toured with Granz's
>all-star Jazz at the Philharmonic aggregation.
>
>The next year he began his recording career as a leader with the first of a
>series of small-group albums for the Los Angeles-based Contemporary label.
>
>Within a few years he had also become a fixture in Hollywood's recording
>studios. In this parallel career he could be heard on movie and television
>soundtracks and in television and radio commercials as well as on records by
>everyone from the Beach Boys to Liberace to Frank Sinatra.
>
>In 1973 he joined forces with his fellow jazz guitarists Herb Ellis and
>Charlie Byrd to form the group Great Guitars. In 1983 at 59 he made his New
>York nightclub debut as a leader.
>
>In addition to his wife, Mr. Kessel is survived by two sons from a previous
>marriage: Dan, of Hemet, Calif., and David, of Pacific Grove, Calif. Also
>surviving are three stepchildren: Christian Wand, of Los Angeles; Colette
>Wand Wirtschafter, of Marysville, Calif.; and Cleo Dougherty, of Boonton,
>N.J.; and five grandchildren.
>
>
>
>
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