The BEST JAZZ Guitarists EVER

How often do you listen to jazz? It’s a form that is equal parts discipline, melody, surprise, exertion and restraint. Jazz as a genre defies many of the self-imposed rules that western music operates around, but still contains a strong overall identity that signals it out as a style, a genre and an aesthetic.

As far as jazz on the guitar goes, it’s a style that works very well on the instrument. Due to the tonal variations available to the guitarist, and the ability to play dense clusters of disparate notes without making impossible stretches, jazz has a natural home on the guitar.

Still, many of us overlook the great jazz players of the world in favour of rock and blues players. Today, I’d love to offer you some examples of music from the world’s greatest jazz guitarists, and see if I can open a door or two for your listening and playing tastes. 

Care to join me?

Wes Montgomery is the greatest jazz guitarist ever. Even more so than Django Reinhardt. Extreme statement? I bet it’s not really. Wes developed so much of the modern jazz vocabulary, not to mention defining ‘jazz tone’ on his hollow body Gibsons (warmth became an enduring thing after Wes), pioneering the use of octaves (so a forerunner of grunge playing, if we are being real about it), and doing it all with a most unorthodox right hand technique: thumb only!

Wes’ melodic fills should be part of every guitarist’s trick bag, and his chord voicings that continually lead towards a harmonic conclusion before doing a 180 and heading into uncharted waters is the stuff of true inspiration.

If Wes Montgomery typifies traditional jazz guitar - and I’d say he does - then Pat Metheny must be the poster boy for modernistic, iconoclastic jazz guitar. Described by Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo as ‘searing shards of action guitar/thought process’, Metheny’s 1994 album Zero Tolerance For Silence pretty much obliterated every notion of what jazz was supposed to sound like and do.

He’s gone all over the place since with his music, so that record hardly defines the man’s craft, but as a line drawn in the sand against the sanitised bores of jazz, Metheny’s boldness did the world a favour. Always expect the unexpected with this guy.

Younger guitarists might have first heard of Joe Pass through his swish Epiphone Joe Pass Emperor hollow body guitar. He’s one of the jazz greats though, a player who performed with Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald.

New Jersey native Joe Pass - real name Joseph Passalacqua - was a proper virtuoso on the instrument, and particularly pioneered the concepts of carrying melody, harmony and bass simultaneously via a complex fingerstyle technique. His solos made extensive use of chords and partial chords, something that every guitarist should most definitely study!

We all know this genius thanks to a certain solid body electric guitar…As you probably know, there’s a lot more to Les Paul than that, as considerable as that contribution was to us all!

Musician, TV host, inventor, restless soul, ideas man and all-round force of nature, Les Paul also had a very cool and distinctive jazz style to his playing. Lightning fast runs, angular Reinhardt-influenced chromatic patterns and a flair for dramatic effects (which were WELL ahead of their time) all served to provide this classic player with a sound that is weirdly still fresh and innovative.

Some people call Bill Frissell ‘America’s guitarist’, which is an exceptionally odd thing to call anyone, and yet I know what they mean! His distinctive genre-crossing style centres on jazz (which really is as American as it gets, when you think about it), but also incorporates folk, country and Americana in general.

Frissell is well known to many music fans thanks to his disparate collaborations. An influence on many of the last few generations’ worth of creative and abstract players, Frissell is a great source of empathetic, unpredictable guitar playing.

Gypsy jazz megastar Django Reinhardt (yes, Django was a nickname) has a backstory like no other player. A genuine Romani gypsy from the days when they actually still lived and travelled in caravans, Reinhardt was a gifted player from an early age. An unfortunate accident at a campfire damaged his left hand, leaving only two fretting fingers available to use on the guitar. Undaunted, the young player simply switched up his technique and made a virtue out of his new style.

Alongside violinist Stephane Grappelli, Reinhardt created a body of music the the 1930s that became enormously influential on the jazz era that followed, and beyond! Indeed, his music is truly timeless, appealing to younger generations today through inclusion in the Bioshock video games! And that technique! Forget about his blindingly speedy runs; his rhythm playing was like 1930s heavy metal! That guy did not let up for a second, it’s immense!

Jim Hall’s art was always about reaching out to communicate through music. His style actually changed with relative frequency, but there was always a tender warmth to his playing and note choice. He preached the idea of considering melodies and then finding them on the guitar, rather than going with muscle memory.

Alongside his phrasing, his sense of timing (and use of silence) was illuminating, and taught a lot about making notes count.

John Scofield is another jazz giant who makes deft use of other genres to enrich his music. Funk and soul play a big part, but Scofield also strays into the realms of blues and rock, too.

LIke many in the jazz world, Scofield is a born collaborator, having played with a veritable who’s who of talent: Dennis Chambers, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny and many,many more.

In the 80s, he even did three albums with the legendary Miles Davis, which basically says a lot about his talent and personality.

Al Di Meola is one third of one of the most thrilling live records ever recorded, if you ask me: Friday Night in San Francisco. Alongside flamenco king Paco De Lucia and fellow jass-fusion guitarist John McLaughlin, the three musicians proved that fireworks could fly from nothing more than three acoustic guitars. It’s essential listening for anyone who cares about the guitar!

But that’s just one side to the multi-faceted talent of Al Di Meloa. This New Jersey boy has enjoyed a super-successful solo career that shifts genres frequently, often with a rich vein of Latin music mixed in. He has staggering technique, sure, but it’s in service to his even better sense of taste and juxtaposition, making him an artist you can often recognise but never pin down completely.

George Benson is a worldwide phenomenon. A crossover artist who brought tasteful smooth jazz vibes into the mainstream, this guitarist-turned-vocalist also has a uniquely distinctive guitar voice. The Pittsburgh native was something of a child prodigy, first on a ukulele and then a guitar. By the time he was 9, he was making records.

Legend.

In terms of guitar playing, one of the things I’ve always noticed with Benson is his fluidity. The speed is ridiculous for sure, but he allows the notes to flow, and his speedy passages are full of character and expression.

Of course, the world of jazz guitar is vast and century-spanning, so ten spots on a list is not nearly enough! It’s all I have space for though, so please allow me to add these more-than-worthy names to the list as honourable mentions…

• Kenny Burwell
• Charlie Christian
• Tal Farlow
• Barney Kessell 
• Mike Stern
• Marc Ribot
• Kurt Rosenwinkel
• John McLaughlin