Wes Montgomery -- Sunny

Sunny by George Pasdirtz

I'm going to skip a bit ahead and layout an octave solo with a re-harmonized chord progression for Sunny (the first song I tried to play on jazz guitar--the background for this lesson is in earlier posts, particularly here). You can compare the octave solo and re-harmonization to the original lead sheet (you can download a MuseScore file here, but you will have to change the key to Eb/Cm). I'll explain how to play the chords in a harmonized solo and the music theory behind the reharmonization in later posts. For now, I'll just describe the octave solo and give you a challenging assignment to work on once you can play the octave solo.

The notation here is similar to the last post that showed the fingering for playing the C-minor scale in octaves (here with fingering charts here and here). To avoid clutter in the fingering above, I've just provided notation at the start of a sequence of notes that are played on the same strings. For example, we start the song playing an octave using the first finger on 5D (the fifth fret, third string up from low E) and the fourth finger on 8B, skipping the G-string in between. I don't change the fingering notation as long as we stay on the same string. When we change strings, for example in the second half of the second measure, the new fret position is annotate below (since the 1-4 fingering pattern stays the same, it is not changed). If you need help at any point with the fingering, go back to the C-minor scale in the previous post (here) where every position is identified for every note. The finger notation will eventually be reserved for difficult passages or where you want to make sure to start at a particular position on the finger board (since there are multiple places to play most notes). Right now you should be concentrating on learning where the notes are on the fingerboard.

Hopefully, while you are learning the octave solo you are also listening to the Wes Montgomery version of Sunny (here). Listen particularly to the jazz guitar approach which is hard to capture in notation (to play the stilted midi version of Sunny, hit the "Play" button in the upper left-hand corner above the score). Try to move your solo closer to Wes' approach. Also notice that the last two measures of the song are used as an introduction and as an extended vamp (or ostinato) after the first two improvisations.

Once you can play the octave solo, start listening to Wes improvise on the second and third times through the tune. Here's your assignment: does Wes continue playing in the same key or are there any key changes? If so, how many key changes and to what keys does he change? In a future post, I'll return to this issue as well as to the extend vamp after the first two improvisational choruses (HINT: Wes' entire approach to this tune can be described as a vamp or ostinato).

NOTE: If you find any errors in the pdf file, let me know.

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Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method: Octaves

The exact path I took to learn how to play block chords as Wes Montgomery did on Too Late Now is a little blurred after over 40 years of studying guitar. My guess is that after hearing Too Late Now I realized that I would have to start out with a simpler tune and purchased other Wes Montgomery records, most of which were in my collection until very recently. My guess is that I bought the album California Dreaming which was released in 1966 and maybe a few other of Wes' pop records (although critics consider these songs pop fluff, they are great for learning Jazz guitar). In any event, my search for a simpler tune ended up with Sunny by Bobby Hebb (Sunny is one cut on California Dreaming you can download from iTunes or listen to Wes play here). I also, at some point, purchased the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method.

With sheet music for Sunny from Patti Music (in Madison, WI) and some instructional books, I somehow figure out how to play enough chords to get about 3/4 of the way through Sunny, but then got stuck or at least realized that I needed help. I started asking around about guitar teachers and everyone pointed to Roy Plumb. I played 3/4 of Sunny as my audition and told him I wanted to play like Wes Montgomery. Roy must have had an opening (I had to be available at a specific time every week during the day) and what I played or said was good enough to get me in (I have heard that he turned away some Rock musicians who would eventually become his students).

What I'd like to do in the next few posts is look back on that period with what I know today and fill in some of the stumbling blocks that faced me in trying to play a Jazz version of Sunny. What I'm going to assume is that if I got anything useful from instructional books, it was from the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method (last I checked there was one used book available on Amazon, but it is probably quickly going out of print and out of circulation), so I'll start there.

C Minor Scale in Octaves by George Pasdirtz

The book starts out explaining how to use your thumb for single-note playing. The sample given is the break from Tear It Down. I doubt that I even tried to play the excerpt (I still can't play it at speed with my thumb)! The book moves on to octave playing with some simple exercises. I probably worked on these since Wes plays mostly octaves on Sunny (I'm not sure if I actually played octaves for my audition). The technique is illustrated in the photos above. From the guitar fingerboard (here and here) you can see that octaves (the same note, one octave higher) can be found either three of four frets higher (depending on the string) if you skip one string in between. The left-hand technique involves playing the lower note of the octave with the first finger, deadening the next string with the first finger and then finding the higher octave note on the next string either with the third or the fourth finger. The right-hand technique can either involve playing with the thumb, playing with the first- and third-finger using Classical guitar technique (sometimes called parallel octaves), or with a pick.

One very important point about octave playing comes from Jesse Gress in a Guitar Player article (here):

The trick with octaves is to focus on either the lower (my personal preference) or upper notes only and let the higher octaves “shadow” the lower notes, or vice versa. 

I have tried both concentrating on the lower and the upper notes of the octave when playing and typically I concentrate on the lower note in descending lines and the upper note in ascending lines. Symptoms that I have lost my concentration are usually not playing a clean octave, that is, sounding the strings that are supposed to be deadened or playing a 7th interval rather than an octave. If you're having these problems, concentrate on playing one note in the octave and let the other note take care of itself (let it "shadow" the primary note).

The staff above has some better notation. The fingering is shown to the left of the notes and the fret and string for the first finger is given below. The first note of the C minor scale (in the Key of E flat) starts at the third fret of the A-string and the octave higher C is played on the G-string (skipping the D-string) on the fifth fret. Notice that when we get to the D-string, the first and the fourth fingers are used (the right photograph in the picture above). I've also added a few more extra notes in the last measure to complete all the notes you would need to play the Wes Montgomery version of Sunny in octaves. Also notice that if you start in the second measure with E-flat and go to the second note of the last measure, you have the E-major scale. Why the E-major scale is contained within the C-minor scale (or actually, vice versa) will require an understanding of some music theory which I didn't have when I started playing but will explain in future posts.

Octave playing is a great initial exercise for learning the keyboard and building hand strength, speed and precision playing. Play the C-minor scale linearly from C-to-C and then try to skip notes and create improvised ideas. Try to find other notes from the C-minor scale at other places on the keyboard and try building them into your solos. Learning the guitar keyboard is no trivial matter. The white and black keys are not sitting there staring at you along with middle-C on the piano. Try writing out your good improvised ideas and note the correct fingering.

The reason I chose the C-minor scale in the key of E-flat is that it is the scale Wes Montgomery used to improvise on Sunny and the key he plays the song in. The first four measures of Sunny are displayed above. You should have enough information now to play these measures. When I explain block chords (the symbols above staff), I will provide notation for the chords and get into not only chord solos but also single note solos, which Wes does not use on Sunny but which we could try to imagine and play for ourselves. In future posts, I will also discuss what to do with sheet music when the chord notation is incomplete or even wrong (see the lead sheet for Sunny at Wikifonia here, change the key using the "Transpose" feature changing it to "+3 (3 flats)" and compare the first four measures above). These are all the problems I ran into when I started playing. Now they look easy, then they were insurmountable without help.

For today's aspiring Jazz guitarist, there is a wealth of information available on the Internet: YouTube videos of great players (Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, Kenny Burrell, George Benson,  George Van Eps,  Barney Kessel, Joe Pass, Larry Coryell, Lee Ritenour, John McLaughlin, Emily Remler, Steve Kahn, Pat Metheny, Gabor Szabo, Attila Zoller, Jim Hall, John Pizzarelli, Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Ximo Tebar, Graham Dechter, Bireli Larene, Philip Catherine, John Scofield,  Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana,  Stevie Ray Vaughan, Mike Stern, and many others) video Jazz guitar instruction (here), Jazz guitar solo transcriptions (here, here and here) sites devoted to music theory and analysis, sites that make sheet music available (wikifonia), etc. etc. Some of the instructional material is similar to what was available 40 years ago when I started, unintegrated tidbits from a complex topic. If given enough time, I will try to present what I know in an integrated manner.

NOTE: If you find any errors in the pdf file, let me know. You can also find the .pdf file and the .msc file (for MuseScore, if you have it loaded on your machine) here.

Wes Montgomery: The Beginnings

 I started playing Jazz Guitar in the 1970s as the result of an accident. I had subscribed to the Columbia Record Club, a mail-order club that would send you an LP record every month either based on your selection or, if you forgot to select something for that month, whatever they choose to send. I had been selecting rock and blues records. One month, I forgot to make a selection and received The Wes Montgomery Trio. Rather than send the record back, I decided to listen to it and was knocked out by Wes' block chord ballad playing on Too Late Now (you can hear Wes playing it here).

I had never heard guitar playing with harmonized block chords and decided that's what I wanted to do. I went down to Patti Music in Madison, WI and bought a black Fender Stratocaster (wish I still had it) and starting teaching myself chord playing. I didn't get very far. I started asking around about guitar teachers and everyone keep saying "You've got to take lessons from Roy Plumb, if you can get in." He was teaching upstairs at Patti Music.

In the upcoming posts I'll go into more detail about my initial attempts to learn jazz guitar and then on to my lessons with Roy Plumb. But first, some important background on Wes Montgomery.



The videos in this blog were taken from the "NPR Jazz Profiles the Life and Music of Wes Montogomery". Part 1 (above) shows Wes playing an octave solo narrated by Nancy Wilson. Emily Remler (and many others) copied the solos. Wes never learned to read music but he knew what he was doing. Wes learned by copying Charlie Christian solos and played them out note for note (not easy). I met Buddy Montgomery (one of Wes' brothers, also an accomplished jazz musician and a piano player) in a Milwaukee Jazz club and was introduced by a friend who was taking lessons from Buddy (this was in the 1970's in an all-Black club on the near East side of Milwaukee and I was not getting a very warm reception until Buddy waved everyone off). Buddy was the sweetest Jazz musician I have ever met. When he heard that I played guitar he said "Come on down, bring your guitar and play a set with me." To have that offer again forty years later!



Wes was self taught, at home and on the bandstand with Lionel Hampton in 1948 (I imagine that Wes picked up his block chord solo approach from Lionel Hampton's horn section). Returning to Indianapolis he formed a group with Mel Rhyne. Mel Rhyne later moved to Wisconsin, worked in Milwaukee's Rust-Belt factories and played out only occasionally (I heard him play in Madison at a club off King Street on the Square). Wes' first album as lead was The Wes Montgomery Trio (this is the album I received by accident) with  Mel Rhyne on organ and Paul Parker on drums.



Wes's trademark playing guitar with the thumb was an accident (his wife wanted him to practice more quietly at night and his thumb was double-jointed) and octave playing was a result (and consequence) of tuning (Wes' guitar was always in perfect tune). As a result of learning Charlie Christian single-note solos, copying the Lionel Hampton horn section and experimenting with tuning his guitar in octaves, Wes developed a three tier approach to solos: single notes, then octaves followed by block chords. The approach gave his solos a building intensity that kept listeners on the edge of their seats. During this period Wes started exploring pop music with  Creed Taylor and Verve Records, but their first record Movin' Wes was pure big band jazz with the song Caravan a particular standout. Their next record was  Bumpin' in 1965 and it was the beginning of Smooth Jazz. The next record, Smokin' at the Half Note stayed in the Jazz tradition and was another knock out.



The album Goin' Out My Head stayed in the pop tradition but featured a Jazz horn section with strings. The record went gold and earned Wes a Grammy in 1966. Wes was concerned about supporting his family and his wife Serene (he wrote and played a song for her on the Road Song album) told him to start playing music people would like. Wes died in 1968 (my Junior year at UW Madison) of a heart attack, certainly from working multiple jobs, late hours, little sleep and smoking! His career lasted nine years as a leader, not even a decade!

What do I take from Wes Montgomery's development as a musician: (1) jazz guitar can be learned through self study and through playing with great musicians, (2) memorizing and playing the lines of great guitarists (Charlie Christian in Wes Montgomery's case) is an essential part of learning, (3) Wes' many pop tunes are a gift to Jazz guitarists since they are great learning vehicles and the playing standards are very high with no mistake that this is a Jazz player at the peak of his career, (4) accidents are important and (4) don't smoke.

In future posts, I will try to pass on everything I have learned from studying Jazz guitar and Wes Montgomery solos over the last 40 years. Hopefully, this will be of benefit to future players.

Who Was Roy Plumb?

 

I took jazz guitar lessons from Roy Plumb (1928-2004) during the late 1970s. In an earlier post (here), I wrote down a little of what I know. Since then I have a learned more from his friends and students (here). The article above (a newspaper clipping from the Wisconsin Dells Events passed on by Peter Crist, one of Roy's students) begs more questions than it answers (click to enlarge). If anyone has any more information (concrete or anecdotal) about Roy, either get in touch with me or join the FRIENDS/STUDENTS OF ROY PLUMB Facebook Group (here). Here are some of my questions:

• Does anyone have any more information about Roy's time with Hoagy Carmichael's Teenagers? You can hear one of the radio episodes from 1947 when Roy was supposedly with the group on My Old Radio  (listen to the episode from the Armed Forces Radio Service here, you'll have to join to hear the cut but membership is free). I can't hear any guitar playing on the clip but this is pretty great ensemble playing and it would have been a great experience for any teenager to play with and arrange for the group.
• According to the article, Roy received a special permit from California Governor Earl Warren that allowed him to appear in night clubs during WWII. Is there any record of this permit in the California archives or Earl Warren's Papers (here)?
• Roy evidently played with and arranged for the Dorseys (Jimmy and Tommy), Harry James and Paul Weston. Does anyone have any ensemble pictures of these bands in the 1940's? Can anyone recognize the rhythm section guitarist?
• Roy is also said to have scored the theme for the 1944 film "Laura" with music by David Raksin and the 1955 movie "Picnic" with music by George Dunning and Steve Allen. There is definitely a guitarist playing rhythm guitar in the Picnic theme (video below) and there is a beautifully arranged string section. Was this Roy's work? It's harder to tell on the theme from the movie Laura. I will compare the theme to an arrangement of Roy's in a future post.
• Roy was left handed and the article claims that he had the "world's only left-handed 7-string guitar" that was designed by George Van Eps, a friend and teacher of Roy (the original Van Eps 7-string guitar is in the Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, AZ and is pictured below--the guitar is also visible on their website). The article claims that Roy's instrument was made by one of Roy's students, a cabinet maker in Madison, WI. This assertion seems wrong and I have been unable to located the un-named student in Madison. It would be great to clear up this issue.
• Roy's major claim to fame was having been an arranger for Frank Sinatra. This isn't mentioned in the article, it's very important and we need better documentation of this period in his life.
• Roy came to Madison, WI sometime in the late 1950s and completed a Masters Degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1961. His thesis was titled The influence of the lute and guitar on musical texture and idiom of Renaissance keyboard literature. It would be useful to have more information about this period, the exact date he came to Madison, who in the UW Music Department was his thesis advisor, how he selected the topic, etc.
• From sometime in the 1960's until sometime before his death in 2004, Roy taught at Patti Music in Madison, WI. All the recollections of Roy's friends and students date from this period, but the exact dates and many other details remain unclear. 

Who was Roy Plumb? He was certainly someone who had an interesting life, touching many Jazz musicians and big bands. His life needs to be better documented. Hopefully, there are people out there with more information or suggestions about how I can find more information.



Theme from the 1955 film Picnic with great boddice ripper still pictures.



Theme from the 1944 film Laura with more great still pictures.

The Van Eps 7-string Guitar in the MIM. 

You can hear Van Eps playing the instrument here.