Favorite jazz guitar albums

[alexssandro]

Two that really come to mind are :

George Benson - "Bad Benson" (more of a funk album than a jazz album but what the heck, it's Benson)

Pat Martino - "Live at Yoshi's"

I'm always on the hunt for tasty dissonance and fluidity. All suggestions are very much appreciated.

[XavierG]

Grant Green - I think the album is "Flood In Franklin Park". If not, it's the album with that tune in it that I like. (I lost that LP about 15 years ago...Aaaaargh!)

[JMX]

Anything with Charlie Hunter on it.

[purple_haze]

Wes Montgomery - Impressions or Jumpin

[JimK]

Bad Benson was the very first "Jazz" album I bought with my own money(picture a 17-year old white boy with hair down the middle of his back; my friends thought I was BS-ing 'em as I stood in line to buy it).
Anyway, BB doesn't really impress me as a "Funk" album, per se. The line-up is pretty killer-
Ron Carter, Kenny Barron, Steve Gadd, & one of the baddest rhythm guitarist out there, Phil Upchurch. This particular record is a CTI(Creed Taylor)production...whatever, I dig it(still).

Pat Martino's Footprints(nee The Visit)is one of my favorites...given to me by my uncle, it may have been my first real Jazz record(Richard Davis & Billy Higgins are on bass & drums).
Martino's Consciousness ain't bad, either(smokin' version of "Impressions").

The Grant Green album I like is a trio outing called Matador...backed by Coltrane's boys, Jimmy Garrison & Elvin Jones.

Jim Hall & Ron Carter-Alone Together is still one of my favorites...

I'm not a huge Pat Metheny fan-
That said, his recent Trio '99-'00 and Trio-Live are happenin'! Bill Stewart & Larry Grenedier round out the rhythm section...

A couple golden 'oldies' in the early daze of '70s Fusion -
1)Larry Coryell-Spaces
2)John McLaughlin-Extrapolation
3)Carlos Santana-The Swing Of Delight
...'80s Fusion-
1)Alan Holdsworth-Metal Fatigue & IOU Live
2)Billy Connors-The Assembler


For something a little 'different'(maybe in the Avant Funk genre)-
I like James "Blood" Ulmer's Music Revelation Ensemble(e.g. In The Name Of... and Cross Fire). The guitar is not really in the forefront here...harmolodics & group improv rule the day.

[Boplicity]

Check out CDs by Al DeMeola.

[Christopher]

Pat Metheny's "Question and Answer". Not dissonant, but very fluid.

Anything with Django on it.

[XavierG]

Most anything by Lenny Breau.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Pat Metheny himself says that :

"Smokin' at the Half Note" by Wes Montgomery is "the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play."

It's included in the double CD "Impressions" that was mentioned previously.

I would also go with "Groove Yard" by the Montgomery Brothers.

Grant Green's "Idle Moments" is a very satisfying album as well as the others mentioned.

I really like Kenny Burrell's playing - as on "Midnight Blue" or with Jimmy Smith.

For more contemporary stuff - there are all John McLaughlin's albums - especially "Que Alegria" which also has some great bass playing!

A personal favourite for Jazz guitar playing is "Spaces Revisited" which has Larry Coryell and Birelli Lagrene on guitars, with a fantastic rhythm section of Richard Bona on bass and Billy Cobham on drums - some awesome fast funk/fusion as well as Jazz standards like Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat"!

I also like Nguyen Le, but am not sure about a particular album.

Really there are just too many!

[APouncer]

Django, Django, Django and some Django Reinhardt.

[JimK]

Originally posted by Bruce Lindfield
A personal favourite for Jazz guitar playing is "Spaces Revisited" which has Larry Coryell and Birelli Lagrene on guitars, with a fantastic rhythm section of Richard Bona on bass and Billy Cobham on drums - some awesome fast funk/fusion as well as Jazz standards like Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat"!

...so have you checked out 'the original', Spaces?
The band is Coryell, McLaughlin, Corea, Vitous, & Cobham.
A word about McLaughlin's first solo disc(Extrapolation)...maybe more Post-Boppish than balls-out Jazz-Rock/Fusion.

And maybe not "Jazz", per se, Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow is essential(IMHO).

[Bruce Lindfield]

I really like Corryell and Lagrene on the later album because of their clear tone - no distortion - and their very precise rhythmic playing, which is also very melodic.

I must say that a lot of the fusion from the 70s is made unlistenable to me by the distorted "rock" guitar wailing away tunelessly for long periods - I just hate it - but of course this is a subjective thing.

So like when you get Stanley Clarke playing with people like Jeff Beck I am in a quandary, as I hate the guitar solos, but love the bass playing.

The only exception to this for me, is Billy Cobham's "Spectrum", where I do like Tommy Bolin's rock-influenced guitar playing ; but on almost every other fusion record I steered away from those with guitar, becuase of this.

So I do prefer McLaughlin's Extrapolation - which sounds to me, very much "English" Jazz and like a lot of the best stuff I have heard over here at clubs
- to the bombast of the Mahavishnu years. I bought those albums but never listened to them.

I also like "Time Remembered" where Mclaughlin play Bill Evans tunes on acoustic guitar backed by an acoustic quartet - for similar reasons.

[JimK]

Originally posted by Bruce Lindfield
I must say that a lot of the fusion from the 70s is made unlistenable to me by the distorted "rock" guitar wailing away tunelessly for long periods - I just hate it - but of course this is a subjective thing.

Bruce-
...ya know, I felt exactly the same way back then('70s-'80s). I think(?) for that reason, I always gravitated more towards Weather Report vs. Return To Forever & The Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Now...I can dig it; if it's a guy that can comp cleanly, Jazz it up & Rock/Funk it out...IMO, that's happenin'!
(Guys like McLaughlin, Pete Cosey, Mike Stern, Scofield,...geez, all Miles' guitarists!)
And Jean-Paul Bourelly falls into this kind-o-player(I really need to pick up one of his discs!).

...& you do dig Extrapolation? I just bought its follow-up album, Devotion(more in a Tony Williams Lifetime vibe w/ Buddy Miles & Larry Young).


More guitar suggestions-
How could I forget Steve Khan & Eyewitness?!