Kansas jazz is alive and well! Master guitarist Wayne Goins’ new release reveals a musician of deep feeling, unassailable generosity, and exquisite taste. Chronicles of Carmela is, in fact, the most breathtakingly beautiful new jazz release I’ve heard in years. Goins composed, arranged, and produced all eleven songs and gave his musicians plenty of room to improvise. On the opening tracks, Goins, tenor saxophonist Craig Treinen, and pianist Bill Wingfield conjure images of Wes Montgomery and/or young George Benson sitting in with Atlantic-era John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner. To put …

One of the first electric guitarists on record, Floyd Smith played an important role in jazz from the 1930s through the 1950s. Born in 1917 and raised in St. Louis, he first went on the road in 1934 with Eddie Johnson’s St. Louis Crackerjacks. Two years later he joined the Jeter-Pillars Club Plantation Orchestra, playing both standard and Hawaiian-style guitar onstage. In August 1937 Smith used an electric guitar to solo on Jeter-Pillars recording of “Lazy Rhythm.” In 1938, while on tour with the Sunset Royal Entertainers, he was spotted …

While honored today as the first influential electric guitarist in jazz, Charlie Christian was not the first to feature the instrument on a record. In our interview, producer John Hammond noted two others playing electric guitar before Christian: “One was Leonard Ware in New York. He was very good, but he was not in Charlie’s class. The other jazz guitar player was Floyd Smith, but he played a Hawaiian guitar.” Ware, who didn’t do much recording, used an electric guitar on several 78s cut with Sidney Bechet and His Orchestra …

When he was 16, Barney Kessel jammed with his hero, Charlie Christian. The year was 1940, and the venue was the Oklahoma Club in Christian’s hometown. Kessel, still in high school, was playing electric guitar with a college band called the Varsitonians. One evening he looked at the audience and was “absolutely astounded” to see his hero Charlie Christian, on a break from the Benny Goodman Sextet, smiling up at him. Kessel happily loaned him his guitar to sit in with the band. After the show, Christian invited Kessel to …

John Hammond, father of the bluesman with the same name, was a towering figure of 20th-century recorded music. Born into the Vanderbilt family, Hammond was an unsurpassed talent scout and unswerving advocate of racial integration in music. Within a year of joining Columbia Records in late 1932, he produced 78s by the Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Chick Webb, and Benny Goodman orchestras, as well as with the Joe Venuti Blue Six, Chocolate Dandies, Teddy Wilson, and Bessie Smith. He also discovered an unknown 17-year-old singer named Billie Holiday …

Charlie Christian expanded the boundaries of jazz and left us an unsurpassed collection of early electric guitar recordings. A brilliant soloist, Charlie departed Oklahoma City in August 1939 to try out for Benny Goodman’s band. Playing the electric guitar, then a fairly new instrument, Christian quickly proved that he had the tone, imagination, and finesse to create long, flowing melodic lines that were equal to those of Goodman’s horn players, who were among the best in the country. Within weeks, the 23-year-old guitarist had recorded “Flying Home,” “Stardust,” “Rose Room,” …

Tommy Tedesco, the most recorded guitarist in history, was also one of the most beloved characters to ever work the Los Angeles music scene. And work it he did: After arriving from Niagara Falls in 1953, Tommy spent four decades playing sessions for countless films, TV shows, record albums, commercial jingles – you name it. A ferociously good sight-reader, this wonderful, big-hearted Italian maestro of the strings became the town’s “first call” guitarist, meaning he was the first person to call for sessions. Beyond being a brilliant player, Tommy was …