Exfiltration Radio: Impressions in jazz guitar

Grant Green I used to not appreciate jazz guitar; it too often reminded me of fusion and guitarists noodling on the boundary between jazz and rock. Obviously it’s a much broader landscape, and today we get only a small slice of it. But what a slice! We have Jim Hall, Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, and some lesser known names. Barney Kessel was active from the 1940s to the 1980s, and in addition to a few albums of tasty West Coast jazz like this he also was a member of the Wrecking Crew, appearing as a session musician on hundreds of hit singles from the 1960s. Kenny Burrell has appeared in this blog before; this is from one of his many sessions from the 1950s and 1960s (and from a record credited to him and Coleman Hawkins, though the Hawk doesn’t appear on this track.) We’ve heard some of Wes Montgomery’s output on the blog before, but the cuts I’ve selected here come from two of the many latter-day live releases that have come out from radio shows and highlight how this man could…