Buddy Emmons Solo licks approach

[J D Sauser]

Late Restaurant Marketing "Guru" Tom Feltenstein, whom I worked with for 5 years until 2020 several times in some shape or form pointed out to me:
"EVERYBODY wants to do what famous people do! When instead, they should do what famous people DID to become famous!"


I am reading the "Buddy Emmons book"... and everybody should!

One of the first "Oh YESSSS!"-moments I had was just browsing thru for pictures, first at page 103 it goes about the Steel Guitar Jazz album, and I quote:

By the early 1960's jazz had entered a period of intense transition and exploration. Mailes Davis' ground braking 1959 masterpiece, Kind Of Blue (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDqULFUg6CY)...

Buddy Emmons and Jimmy Day loved hanging out with musician pals and listening to new jazz releases. "Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sonny Rollings where the players we listened to in the '50's over at Buddy's house, recalled Buddy Spicher...

Aha!... Hank Williams step asside! "Hillbillies" listening not to Hillbilly or good ol' Country music, but to Charlie Parker, Dizzy and the gang!


On page 13 it gets even better.

So we learn that much earlier, at age 12 BE, progressed into single note-improvisation (after playing about shy of a year on his Supro S6).
His first idol was Joaquin Murphy who can be found on youtube in many Spade Coley videos just burning it up.
The solo on Yearning is mentioned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkT6m6opGew steel guitar solo (@ 0;34) which in style I find reminiscent of Louis Armstrong's style... maybe even a bit "Dixie Land Jazz"?

but it goes on (BE talking still about him being 12 years old!):

... So, I became interested in collecting some albums by a few Jazz players who where popular at that time (1949).
Saxophonist Flip Phillips and Charlie Parker where two of BE's first Jazz influences.
"I really lucked out; the FIRST ALBUM I EVER BOUGTH was called Jam Session. It had Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel, Ben Webster, Charlie Parker, Ray Brown, the cream of the crop. I'd never heard any of those players before. One entire side of the album was a 15 minute Blues, with all these people exchanging solos. I WAS VERY MUCH INFLUENCED BY THIS first record...

Here's "Jam Session":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfpPC_1Te4A The Jazz Blues Side
&
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdQoeBKYVL4



My comments:
Personally, and I think I've said it before in some way or another, I feel that Jazz-Blues is the "red thread" that shines thru most of BE's Jazz and C6th improvisation more so than pure Bebop lines. But then, most underestimate how much Bebop has it's foundations in Jazz Blues.

And for what Tom Feltenstein repeatedly suggested, Do what BE DID.

So, that's what's for supper tonite!... J-D.


Source:
ISBN 978-0-252-08678-6
BUDDY EMMONS Steel Guitar Icon, by Steve Fishell

[Fred Treece]

"I really lucked out; the FIRST ALBUM I EVER BOUGTH was called Jam Session. It had Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel, Ben Webster, Charlie Parker, Ray Brown, the cream of the crop. I'd never heard any of those players before. One entire side of the album was a 15 minute Blues, with all these people exchanging solos. I WAS VERY MUCH INFLUENCED BY THIS first record...

My first album purchase was “The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane”. I don’t suppose there was ever any real hope for me.

[Brint Hannay]

[J D Sauser]

My first album purchase was “The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane”. I don’t suppose there was ever any real hope for me.

I think got a luckier hand, the first album I bought was an RCA double album called The Glen Miller History. I was 13... 1978 in Switzerland... I even remember the SuperMarket it was at. I played it until it came off the turntable in coils... almost. I can still sing/hum all them tunes. As kids, some things one sucks up for life.
There was a Luis Armstrong collection I was dying to have and begged for it to be a Christmas gift... but instead I got half a dozen Classical records... just my understanding "wild" aunt snuck a George Gershwin album in between which met the same fate as the Glen Miller set.

My stepfather accepted only Classical as "music"... everything else was not.
My mother was into Hungarian and Spanish Flamenco and we listened to that when he was away only.
I wasn't allowed to play my Jazz records on his turn table which was HiFi of the finest (Thorens) as he claimed "that stuff" would damage the needle and fine head with those "dissonant frequencies" off my records. He was a physics professor and would have known better... but to some, music is like religion... it's physics proof.
On my mother's family side, there was a lot of Django Reinhardt being listened to like a cult. I never liked the old original recordings... back then, they weren't remastered and sounded like old mothballs. Later "Gypsy"-Jazz had a big re-discovery and I became part of it and playing rhythm guitar to it for almost 2 decades has helped me a looooong way, to at least believe to better understand music

Influences are HUGELY important. What we listen to, is.
Those who have read me over the decades will know that I always suspect that BE was into JAZZ.... REAL Jazz (vs. Western Swing)... the Steel Guitar Jazz Album was always clear proof to me that he had not just "dabbled" into Jazz. I am taken by the accounts of this book, as to how young and how deeply he immersed himself in Jazz beyond Big Band and dance music of the time, but REAL Jazz, Bebop, the heavy stuff... some of which I wouldn't have been ready to digest at that age.

Good for him and for many who looked up to him and those which grew with him.
You hear so many accounts from other steel players about "at Buddy's house".

... J-D.

[Joseph Carlson]

Best $4 you're gonna spend today in on issue #5 of Steel Guitarist magazine.

https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/stee ... -may-1980/

Buddy lays out how to find your own pockets all over the neck based on locating different intervals

Better yet, buy the whole set and support our fine forum
https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/free ... sses-only/

[Ron Hogan]

viewtopic.php?t=354690&highlight=

[John Larson]

My stepfather accepted only Classical as "music"... everything else was not.
My mother was into Hungarian and Spanish Flamenco and we listened to that when he was away only.
I wasn't allowed to play my Jazz records on his turn table which was HiFi of the finest (Thorens) as he claimed "that stuff" would damage the needle and fine head with those "dissonant frequencies" off my records. He was a physics professor and would have known better... but to some, music is like religion... it's physics proof.
On my mother's family side, there was a lot of Django Reinhardt being listened to like a cult. I never liked the old original recordings... back then, they weren't remastered and sounded like old mothballs. Later "Gypsy"-Jazz had a big re-discovery and I became part of it and playing rhythm guitar to it for almost 2 decades has helped me a looooong way, to at least believe to better understand music

Influences are HUGELY important. What we listen to, is.
Those who have read me over the decades will know that I always suspect that BE was into JAZZ.... REAL Jazz (vs. Western Swing)... the Steel Guitar Jazz Album was always clear proof to me that he had not just "dabbled" into Jazz. I am taken by the accounts of this book, as to how young and how deeply he immersed himself in Jazz beyond Big Band and dance music of the time, but REAL Jazz, Bebop, the heavy stuff... some of which I wouldn't have been ready to digest at that age.

It's interesting there's kind of a dichotomy nowadays of the concept of genre is both starting to fade on one hand as the internet has broken down the natural regional styles that used to develop and maintain genres and styles. While there is also the ability for one to become ever more pigeonholed in their listening and become ever more derivative and cannibalistic in their genre stylings.

It's easier than ever to listen to absolutely anything but on the same hand to rabbit hole dive deep into singular genres and find the most obscure examples of certain styles and form genre purism e-cults, and that's what it is (my formative musical years were steeped in the metal and punk spheres and it's hilarious to me the genre conservatism that goes on in so called left of path and "rebellious" genres). I've always noticed it trends towards the listeners and not so much the players, musicians are naturally more open to things it seems.

What made a lot of folks well rounded back in the day was the ability to listen to a bit of everything because access to recordings was limited to radio and whatever physical releases people could come across. Miles Davis wouldn't have made an album like Bitches Brew if he was solely trying to regurgitate the previous 15 years of bebop stylings to please the genre police and anyone familiar with jazz history from the mid 60s onward knows the pushback he and other free spirits got from certain folks over this. (I think had Coltrane lived through the 70s "jazz historians" would not be so kind to him as they are). One only need to watch the tail end of the Ken Burns jazz documentary to see the reconning of history and genre policing that was and probably still is alive and well.

Personally in everything I've listened to I've always gravitated towards artists that take in a myriad of influences and it's a pattern I only noticed much later in my time actively listening to and seeking out music.

[J D Sauser]

My stepfather accepted only Classical as "music"... everything else was not.
My mother was into Hungarian and Spanish Flamenco and we listened to that when he was away only.
I wasn't allowed to play my Jazz records on his turn table which was HiFi of the finest (Thorens) as he claimed "that stuff" would damage the needle and fine head with those "dissonant frequencies" off my records. He was a physics professor and would have known better... but to some, music is like religion... it's physics proof.
On my mother's family side, there was a lot of Django Reinhardt being listened to like a cult. I never liked the old original recordings... back then, they weren't remastered and sounded like old mothballs. Later "Gypsy"-Jazz had a big re-discovery and I became part of it and playing rhythm guitar to it for almost 2 decades has helped me a looooong way, to at least believe to better understand music

Influences are HUGELY important. What we listen to, is.
Those who have read me over the decades will know that I always suspect that BE was into JAZZ.... REAL Jazz (vs. Western Swing)... the Steel Guitar Jazz Album was always clear proof to me that he had not just "dabbled" into Jazz. I am taken by the accounts of this book, as to how young and how deeply he immersed himself in Jazz beyond Big Band and dance music of the time, but REAL Jazz, Bebop, the heavy stuff... some of which I wouldn't have been ready to digest at that age.

It's interesting there's kind of a dichotomy nowadays of the concept of genre is both starting to fade on one hand as the internet has broken down the natural regional styles that used to develop and maintain genres and styles. While there is also the ability for one to become ever more pigeonholed in their listening and become ever more derivative and cannibalistic in their genre stylings.

It's easier than ever to listen to absolutely anything but on the same hand to rabbit hole dive deep into singular genres and find the most obscure examples of certain styles and form genre purism e-cults, and that's what it is (my formative musical years were steeped in the metal and punk spheres and it's hilarious to me the genre conservatism that goes on in so called left of path and "rebellious" genres). I've always noticed it trends towards the listeners and not so much the players, musicians are naturally more open to things it seems.

What made a lot of folks well rounded back in the day was the ability to listen to a bit of everything because access to recordings was limited to radio and whatever physical releases people could come across. Miles Davis wouldn't have made an album like Bitches Brew if he was solely trying to regurgitate the previous 15 years of bebop stylings to please the genre police and anyone familiar with jazz history from the mid 60s onward knows the pushback he and other free spirits got from certain folks over this. (I think had Coltrane lived through the 70s "jazz historians" would not be so kind to him as they are). One only need to watch the tail end of the Ken Burns jazz documentary to see the reconning of history and genre policing that was and probably still is alive and well.

Personally in everything I've listened to I've always gravitated towards artists that take in a myriad of influences and it's a pattern I only noticed much later in my time actively listening to and seeking out music.

Yes, the Internet has deepened the cultural and political trnches, it has brought music together. Classical musicians have learned to respect Jazz to NeoSoul musicians, and the Pop & Jazz crowd has re-discovered the influences and richness of harmonic artistry from the past Centuries.

… JD