In the Gary Burton Jazz Improv class I'm in, we are being asked to do an improvisation for Chick Corea's 500 Miles High.

I'm searching YouTube for a melody-dominant rendering of this song (Return To Forever's version seems to stray after the first run through). I'm looking to burn in some of the really definitive turns of the melody and searching YouTube.

I came across this 3 piece where the guitar player smokes some cool jazz on a Telecaster. Neck pickup of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x41whykto9Q

"Back in the day" the Telecaster was played by quite a few jazz and bebop guitarists.

The simplicity of the Telecaster design, especially all those early ones that featured a super lightweight ash body, actually yields a much different playing and "feel" reminiscent of playing a fully acoustic guitar.

Even Barney Kessel showed up with a Tele from time to time.

Joe Messina, one of the original Motown Funk Brothers used a Tele, but only on his jazz and bebop gigs "downtown" but noticeably not in the Motown studios where he was the creme filling of the "oreo cookie" guitar section.






--Mac

Mac,

Thanks for sharing that. I think I remember seeing that clip in the Funk Brothers documentary movie. I saw that movie after I got a chance to go through the Motown studio on an AES sponsored tour probably 5-6 years ago. Way cool experience - as our tour also involved a lecture given by Tony Bongiovi (Jon BonJovi's uncle) and David Clark - both guys who worked as engineers at Motown, on the floor of the main studio at Motown. Bongiovi's story is really interesting as he tells it.

Anyways, these days, it seems like most jazz guitar players gravitate towards hollow bodies and semi-hollow bodies. Notable exceptions like Earl Klugh, of course, but that's the way it appears to me.

I also liked those kids' take on 500 miles with their tight vocal harmonies as well.

Speaking of the Motown guitar section, one of the very interesting things we learned on the tour was that they didn't allow guitar amps in the studio. Those guys plugged in directly into some jacks in the box right under the left side of the window under the mixing console and to the right of the short staircase - see this photo:



Here's a close-up shot of that interface:

The whole studio where all of those great Motown hits were recorded isn't terribly big at all, but big enough to get the whole band in there, horn section and all This photo of Stevie and crew gives some idea of the depth of the size of it, again looking towards the window: .There might be another 7-10 feet of depth that isn't in view in that shot. This shot is from the perspective of right about where the trap set was located. The trap set would be off to the photographer's right side and slightly behind him. All of the old 'Dymo' labels for headphone jacks, input jacks, etc. are still stuck on the walls. I seem to remember most of the mic inputs were dropped from above. Reverb tank in the attic. Living quarters upstairs. I would think that they did most of the recordings en masse, with little overdubs. The bulk of the lecture that we were treated to dealt with the EQs that were on-hand there.

For anyone still reading - a visit to the Motown museum, which is the studio where the lion's share of the Motown hits were made, is well worth your time in Detroit. I don't know if the 'normal' tour involves actually spending time in the studio proper like it was for our AES tour or not, but that was a pretty magical space to stand in for an hour or so taking it all in. At least for me. About the only thing that could have made it better would have been if Stevie or Aretha or any of the Funk Brothers would have paid a surprise visit.


Back on topic - thanks for the jazzer tele references.

Plenty of great jazz players still play planks.

Pat Martino started out using a Les Paul, made it sound like what people think an archtop brings to the game. There was even a stretch when Pat played a Steinberger and a few custom made planks as well.

Then there are all the semi-solidbody jazz players, the infamous ES-335 among them, it may have hollow side bouts but there is indeed a solid plank going underneath the top from neck to bridge. These designs are favored for their lack of feedback sensitivity when playing at higher volumes.

I used to put on recordings of jazz guitarists who used solidbody guitars of all types for my guitar playing friends, kind of like a doubleblind and then would ask them what type or kind of guitar they heard. As with all sorts of tests of this type, the responses were all over the place, each one depending upon the particular guitar player's perception of what a certain guitar type should sound like.

And in the end, it is really the particular player.

The one recording that none of 'em ever nailed, nobody even ever came close, was Jeff Skunk Baxter blowin' modern jazz and bebop lines on his clear acrylic plastic bodied strat copy. So much for hollow and even the so-called, "tonewoods"...


--Mac