Favorite jazz guitar albums

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!)

 

Anything with Charlie Hunter on it.

 

Wes Montgomery - Impressions or Jumpin

 

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.

 

Check out CDs by Al DeMeola.

 

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

Anything with Django on it.

 

Most anything by Lenny Breau.

 

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!

 

Django, Django, Django and some Django Reinhardt.

 

...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).

 

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.

 

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?!