His style was unique IMO. His chord melodies and chord soloing are super sophisticated, really swing and always sounded beautiful. He didn't suddenly switch to dedicated single note work after the head, like most players, but continued on with the semi-chordal style - with various added flurries, arpeggios, sweeping ideas and 'suggested' scale phrasing. Some bits of it had a scrappy element that I used to find disturbing. I've come to love these parts along with the rest of his work, by persistent listening. He is the most consistently 'listenable' jazz guitarist I've come across. He seemed to be presenting a full picture of each piece rather than giving us perfectly formed fragments. For me, this is why he was so great a figure.
MrMjp58 - Very good and apt observations. This album is a very tightened up BK; he is on point and as sharp as can be in all his playing. I used to get impatient with his sweep licks but then I recalled that expert white and black guitar players of the 30s, 40s and into the 50s had to perform guitar stunts for their audiences; Barney's sweep playing is a holdover from those country/carnival years where pickers had to have something acrobatic in their performances. I'll never forget seeing him with Herb Ellis at a Seattle jazz club in the late 1970s. The room was small and we (the audience) sat on overstuffed old sofas and wing chairs about 5 feet from the guitar players. Heaven it was to be young then ...
This was the only Barney Kessel album I bought. I was around 10 when this came out and I was randomly buying a record to try to improve my battle with the guitar. I was reading Guitar Player and then going to the record store whenever I got the chance to try to find records... Of course without asking for help 🤣. I had no idea what I was trying to do. But I went through several phases, one being an idea of learning to play this style for playing in a small club or restaurant.(yeah kid, like I would be playing in a bar or something like that at 11 or 12🤣) I then ran into that first Van Halen album... None of that stuff was in my wheelhouse. After stumbling around blindly I ended up in the blues. I'm still working on the chording solo stuff but I should have stuck with my guitar teacher a bit longer... He could play the crap out of this style... But at 15 I just wanted to impress the girls by playing the new hits right when they came out... Oh well... At 56 I'm doing more listening than playing. Sigh.*
You go to my head 0:00 Get out of town 4:30 Seagull 9:25 like someone in love 15:36 You're the one for me 22:33 Beautiful love 27:23 Star eyes 33:58 I love you 38:21
Dude the chord soloing is off the charts on this album. This is later in Mr. Kessel career, at which point his chord soloing (which is different from chord melody, i.e. fingerstyle solo without accompaniment) has been highly perfected.
This is my baseline on guitar playing. Barney Kessel was not only a great guitar player but also a great musician. There can often be a difference. He was a session man in LA for movies, TV etc. and played a # of different styles to meet market demands. To me this is a culmination of the many things he'd come across. It is still way ahead of its time. All you guitar players steal as much as you can off this and make it your own.
I love Barney, but I wish he had done a slower version of "You Go To My Head". His harmonic chops are so cool and that song provides great opportunities. Oh well, he was fantastic. RIP
You go to my head 0:00 Get out of town 4:30 Seagull 9:25 like someone in love 15:36 You're the one for me 22:33 Beautiful love 27:23 Star eyes 33:58 I love you 38:21....:) just to have beside me..
Barney's Chord-Melody on this album is extraordinary - even allowing for all his others which I have. Nobody swings like him in Blues-Jazz. I once heard someone say his style was 'Sloppy' - I wish I was as sloppy.!!!
It's probably because of his "sweep" picking. I'm sure other guitarists sweep pick, but I don' think anyone else has made sweep picking a hallmark of their style.
Kevin Webb Yeah he is not the cleanest player around. Technique isn't everything, you can have the best technical approach and it can still sound terrible. But he has an awful lot to offer our ears, not to mention attitude! Why someone would focus on that one element is laughable! I'm a musician first, that's the most important thing. Make it sound good! You can always improve technique, but if the musicality isn't there-- better start shredding. ☺
no thats not the reason people find his style sloppy, i guess what your confusing about is the tone those fast notes come out of the guitar, but if you listen to great Bird's improvisations you'll hear alot of sweep picking kind sound coming out too! the approach that i have about barneys playing on certain moments when he is just troublin round with his instrument is that he is in sustance making the "bird" fly !! and i feel it the same way when im sweep picking.
The confusion around Barney's technique stems from not knowing about what his personal approach to playing really embodied. He was a fiercely independent voice on guitar and avoided cliche and common licks and scales like the plague when it came to improvised soloing. His approach was to play what he heard and felt, not what he thought was correct and, subsequently, artistically or personally uncreative. That's why his technique is also his singular voice and makes him instantly recognizable. There is no 'correct" technique when you are pushing the envelope. It's as if critics of his style think they know what he was trying to play better than Barney did. It's a big mistake.
thank you john for your answer .barney was a sick,poor man when he died,it is unbelieveble,but he lives in our mind.one of my cousins is able to copy his playing on guitar,barney lives in our heart.
Ingo R. Was BARNEY KESSEL actually poor - I know that he was ill out here in the area above San Diego - BUT I did not hear of him really being poor at all.. please tell me more, thank you , JOE NANIA
Thank you for posting this. I have this LP in vinyl - just about wore out the grooves playing it over and over back in the day. It's a study in adding chord accents to bebop and blues lines. Stating the obvious: Those cats like Kessel, Howard Roberts, Herb Ellis , Jim Hall, and of course Joe Pass were monsters.
His greatest example of Chord-Melody and usage. Check out THE POLL WINNERS series of albums with Ray Brown & Shelly Manne. 1958-61 so much earlier. This guy swings better than any other guitarist before or since.
Same here. I heard his work and was immediately placed on a path of jazz guitar exploration. One of the greatest musical innovators of all time in my opinion.
Jakub Bekier Thanks so much for the kind complements Jakub. Barney Kessel was overlooked in his time, like many players that have been resurfacing through RUclips.
Alex Price well, Barney played with Wrecking Crew out of LA. Also was top guitarist 1950 into 60s. But record wise, yes overlooked certainly. Regardless with the "Great Guitars" Charlie Byrd, Herb Ellis Concord records he was awesome. Now on YT we can all see his energy playing. mosrite60
I have just about every Kessel album, and they are all great. But 'Soaring' stands out as being exceptionel. His technique, imagination is given free rein. Quite expensive and difficult to find, but my son found it in Spain. (RRP in Uk rumoured to be £64!) Get hold of the super stuff somehow.
Mr. Kessel has cost me a lot of money over the years. Instead of being a bluegrass guitarist, with one or two quality acoustics, I've bought various archtops and amps, which push up the cost. If he had never played the guitar, would Herb Ellis, Wes, Pass, Burrell, and Johnny Smith have influenced me to play jazz guitar, to the extent that Barney's playing did? I kind of doubt it. Barney's playing was sort of like an artist who paints with oils with a palette knife- VERY imaginative, with plenty of verve. Yep, have spent a lot of money since '73. 'Soaring' is my favorite jazz album- period.- Charles Bevell Bloomington, IN
What is the first song that is played on this video, everyone is saying it’s You Go to My Head but when compared to many different versions of You Go to My Head, even a recording of him playing it on Poll Winners and it doesn’t sound like it, does anyone know what it is or explain how dumb I am for not knowing XYZ why I don’t understand
Pointless as it seems to reply to a two-year-old question, yes, the first track is "You Go to My Head" - played quite a bit faster than its usual ballad tempo, that's all.
I love Kessel's chord melody work, but some of the single note work I find annoying...Those super-fast, dissonant jumbles of notes and up-down sweeps don't swing to me. They sound sloppy and non-musical. For single-note solo work I prefer Tal Farlow's style.
Yeah, seems like he had trouble coordinating left and right hand despite his otherwise enormous dexterity on the guitar. You hear this progressively more and more as he got older. As you may know, he suffered stroke in the early 90s that limited his motion and had to retire from playing. Sometimes I think it may this could be symptomatic of a series of mini strokes. It could have limited the fine coordination between the two hands in otherwise healthy person. But it may just be that I am having a little professional deformation here..
You go to my head 0:00 Get out of town 4:30 Seagull 9:25 like someone in love 15:36 You're the one for me 22:33 Beautiful love 27:23 Star eyes 33:58 I love you 38:21
His upward sweep picking is a trademark technique. His best album by many counts, including his own.
HIs tone is so gorgeous here.
His style was unique IMO.
His chord melodies and chord soloing are super sophisticated, really swing and always sounded beautiful. He didn't suddenly switch to dedicated single note work after the head, like most players, but continued on with the semi-chordal style - with various added flurries, arpeggios, sweeping ideas and 'suggested' scale phrasing. Some bits of it had a scrappy element that I used to find disturbing. I've come to love these parts along with the rest of his work, by persistent listening. He is the most consistently 'listenable' jazz guitarist I've come across.
He seemed to be presenting a full picture of each piece rather than giving us perfectly formed fragments. For me, this is why he was so great a figure.
You sound like you know a lot about jazz guitar.
MrMjp58 - Very good and apt observations. This album is a very tightened up BK; he is on point and as sharp as can be in all his playing. I used to get impatient with his sweep licks but then I recalled that expert white and black guitar players of the 30s, 40s and into the 50s had to perform guitar stunts for their audiences; Barney's sweep playing is a holdover from those country/carnival years where pickers had to have something acrobatic in their performances. I'll never forget seeing him with Herb Ellis at a Seattle jazz club in the late 1970s. The room was small and we (the audience) sat on overstuffed old sofas and wing chairs about 5 feet from the guitar players. Heaven it was to be young then ...
This was the only Barney Kessel album I bought. I was around 10 when this came out and I was randomly buying a record to try to improve my battle with the guitar. I was reading Guitar Player and then going to the record store whenever I got the chance to try to find records... Of course without asking for help 🤣. I had no idea what I was trying to do. But I went through several phases, one being an idea of learning to play this style for playing in a small club or restaurant.(yeah kid, like I would be playing in a bar or something like that at 11 or 12🤣) I then ran into that first Van Halen album... None of that stuff was in my wheelhouse. After stumbling around blindly I ended up in the blues. I'm still working on the chording solo stuff but I should have stuck with my guitar teacher a bit longer... He could play the crap out of this style... But at 15 I just wanted to impress the girls by playing the new hits right when they came out... Oh well... At 56 I'm doing more listening than playing. Sigh.*
Dear Barney is playing like a Tiger here!
Absolutely Top-Notch Jazz Guitar album...
You go to my head 0:00
Get out of town 4:30
Seagull 9:25
like someone in love 15:36
You're the one for me 22:33
Beautiful love 27:23
Star eyes 33:58
I love you 38:21
weenaaaa compaaaaaaa
pelilloouu
Sí bien
Fabulous playing...Had the pleasure of seeing him live and talking with him on several occasions..Lovely man...
Playing the opening number in uptempo is a find in itself. Love it.
Dude the chord soloing is off the charts on this album. This is later in Mr. Kessel career, at which point his chord soloing (which is different from chord melody, i.e. fingerstyle solo without accompaniment) has been highly perfected.
Pour moi Barney Kessel est toujours et encore une référence parmi les virtuoses du Jazz. C'est un magnifique créateur He makes me soaring.
michel.
This is my baseline on guitar playing. Barney Kessel was not only a great guitar player but also a great musician. There can often be a difference. He was a session man in LA for movies, TV etc. and played a # of different styles to meet market demands. To me this is a culmination of the many things he'd come across. It is still way ahead of its time. All you guitar players steal as much as you can off this and make it your own.
You forget to mention, great teacher. His instructional videos were incredibly good.
This album right here is another example of why the '70s were the most expansive for the electric guitar. One word, Barney!
My favorite studio Album of Barney Kessel Or should I say The master !!!!!!
Just got hold this album. Barney pushes chord-melody to its limit on this one.
One of his best LP's IMO Some of his compositions here
too.
Barney just swung so hard-wonderful playing!
melody, groove, complex harmonies all together, the fifties and sixties my generation...
its so beautifull
To answer a comment I don't see him as underrated. See'Barney Kessel Spectropop' on the net. He is rated as the very best, and I agree totally.
I love Barney, but I wish he had done a slower version of "You Go To My Head". His harmonic chops are so cool and that song provides great opportunities. Oh well, he was fantastic. RIP
Really he is soaring in the music. Thanks Joe for this present so nice
Brutal
what a wonderful way he drives it at the second tune, just amazing how tiny can Monty Budwig get on that one !
Barney could swing. I met the drummer on this, Jake Hanna. He was very nice. Great album!
Kessel is so sophisticated I want to wear a jacket and tie its buttons when listening him.
Thanks....great sound quality.
EXCELENTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great album great concepts in arranging for the time, Thank you!!!
really amazing cat..dig his sounds
You go to my head 0:00
Get out of town 4:30
Seagull 9:25
like someone in love 15:36
You're the one for me 22:33
Beautiful love 27:23
Star eyes 33:58
I love you 38:21....:) just to have beside me..
Maestro extraordinaire!
Barney's Chord-Melody on this album is extraordinary - even allowing for all his others which I have. Nobody swings like him in Blues-Jazz. I once heard someone say his style was 'Sloppy' - I wish I was as sloppy.!!!
It's probably because of his "sweep" picking. I'm sure other guitarists sweep pick, but I don' think anyone else has made sweep picking a hallmark of their style.
Kevin Webb Yeah he is not the cleanest player around. Technique isn't everything, you can have the best technical approach and it can still sound terrible. But he has an awful lot to offer our ears, not to mention attitude! Why someone would focus on that one element is laughable! I'm a musician first, that's the most important thing. Make it sound good! You can always improve technique, but if the musicality isn't there-- better start shredding. ☺
no thats not the reason people find his style sloppy, i guess what your confusing about is the tone those fast notes come out of the guitar, but if you listen to great Bird's improvisations you'll hear alot of sweep picking kind sound coming out too!
the approach that i have about barneys playing on certain moments when he is just troublin round with his instrument is that he is in sustance making the "bird" fly !! and i feel it the same way when im sweep picking.
The confusion around Barney's technique stems from not knowing about what his personal approach to playing really embodied. He was a fiercely independent voice on guitar and avoided cliche and common licks and scales like the plague when it came to improvised soloing. His approach was to play what he heard and felt, not what he thought was correct and, subsequently, artistically or personally uncreative. That's why his technique is also his singular voice and makes him instantly recognizable. There is no 'correct" technique when you are pushing the envelope. It's as if critics of his style think they know what he was trying to play better than Barney did. It's a big mistake.
@@Joshualbm Agree, excellent comment!
a este señor sin duda habria que hacerle un onumento. era grandioso.
great performance! just amazing!
I suck in jazz,never heard of him til today and the guy is unique. I like Gabor Szabo and Emily Remler,but this is another level
check out Farlow, Pass, Christian, Reinhardt just to name a few -Enjoy!
@@jameshullihen649 i know few of them,AL DI MEOLA shines too
@@anfrankogezamartincic1161 if u like Dimeola, check out Coryell, McLaughlin, P. Martino.
@@jameshullihen649 i know them,i am more familiar with fusion then jazz. But i love everything that's different,from simple blues to Fripp
Grant Green and Jack Wilkins
Barney's da bomb!!!
Thank you!
I must find this on vinyl
Great stuff!
barney forever.
Yes, There will never be another Barney.
thank you john for your answer .barney was a sick,poor man when he died,it is unbelieveble,but he lives in our mind.one of my cousins is able to copy his playing on guitar,barney lives in our heart.
Ingo R. Was BARNEY KESSEL actually poor - I know that he was ill out here in the area above San Diego - BUT I did not hear of him really being poor at all.. please tell me more, thank you , JOE NANIA
omg the CHORDS AND SO FAST
king of swing guitar & i remember charlie christian.......!
Been listening to a lot of Joe pass lately and this jumped into my recommended slot .......superb ..boy have I been missing out.
Pass - total virtuoso but always overplays lol!
@@jameshullihen649 it’s impossible to overplay IMO
Try out Grant Green or Jack Wilkins those two along with Barney and Joe are the reason I play guitar
Thank you for posting this. I have this LP in vinyl - just about wore out the grooves playing it over and over back in the day. It's a study in adding chord accents to bebop and blues lines. Stating the obvious: Those cats like Kessel, Howard Roberts, Herb Ellis , Jim Hall, and of course Joe Pass were monsters.
With Jim Hall, my favorite guitar player....Joe Pass too.
Hall can't hold a candle to the Maestro!
@@jameshullihen649 Hall is a different player he had a less is more approach I just don’t understand why everyone forgets Grant Green
daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn
His greatest example of Chord-Melody and usage. Check out THE POLL WINNERS series of albums with Ray Brown & Shelly Manne. 1958-61 so much earlier. This guy swings better than any other guitarist before or since.
Yeah, that's the best stuff. Also with Peterson.
The first jazz guitarist had ever I listened to. My comping style has been influenced by his
Same here. I heard his work and was immediately placed on a path of jazz guitar exploration. One of the greatest musical innovators of all time in my opinion.
I can hear a lot of his influence in your playing. You truly are gifted! A lot of thanks to Mr. Kessel for having inspired the great Alex Price!
Jakub Bekier Thanks so much for the kind complements Jakub. Barney Kessel was overlooked in his time, like many players that have been resurfacing through RUclips.
Alex Price Thanks again, this time for a brilliant lesson in music history!
Alex Price well, Barney played with Wrecking Crew out of LA. Also was top guitarist 1950 into 60s. But record wise, yes overlooked certainly. Regardless with the "Great Guitars" Charlie Byrd, Herb Ellis Concord records he was awesome. Now on YT we can all see his energy playing. mosrite60
This is my thing, yea.
Barney Kessel Soaring 1976..
He plays and sounds as if he has 8 fingers amazing chords n phrasing
He must have invented some chords he uses. I can't find them on my axe.
There's a guy named Jens Larsen who analyzes Barney's solos.jenslarsen.nl/
He was know for his chord phrasing
I cant find them on my computer either
I have just about every Kessel album, and they are all great. But 'Soaring' stands out as being exceptionel. His technique, imagination is given free rein. Quite expensive and difficult to find, but my son found it in Spain. (RRP in Uk rumoured to be £64!) Get hold of the super stuff somehow.
there's one used copy on Amazon now for a little over £20. Everything else is way more expensive, and used, like over £80.
Mr. Kessel has cost me a lot of money over the years. Instead of being a bluegrass guitarist, with one or two quality acoustics, I've bought various archtops and amps, which push up the cost. If he had never played the guitar, would Herb Ellis, Wes, Pass, Burrell, and Johnny Smith have influenced me to play jazz guitar, to the extent that Barney's playing did? I kind of doubt it. Barney's playing was sort of like an artist who paints with oils with a palette knife- VERY imaginative, with plenty of verve. Yep, have spent a lot of money since '73. 'Soaring' is my favorite jazz album- period.- Charles Bevell Bloomington, IN
Gostei de ler a língua portuguesa!
looks like a vintage 76' Seagull hang glider ...manufactured by Mike Riggs at the company * Santa Monica airport facility
Awesome information :)
Except that it wasn't vintage when the album was made!
epf1961 ok
Hats off to to those who dared to fly with it
Hand's God ; Barney _ Georges - Wes - Kenny - Joe . Thanks !
Lose Wes and Georges and sub in Grant Green and Jack Wilkins and you got my Gods hands
He used every chord unknown to man!
27:41 22:33
Anyone know why the track times on the vid descriptions are always wrong ??
this poster typed in each track's length, not it's start time.
What is the first song that is played on this video, everyone is saying it’s You Go to My Head but when compared to
many different versions of You Go to My Head, even a recording of him playing it on Poll Winners and it doesn’t sound like it, does anyone know what it is or explain how dumb I am for not knowing XYZ why I don’t understand
Pointless as it seems to reply to a two-year-old question, yes, the first track is "You Go to My Head" - played quite a bit faster than its usual ballad tempo, that's all.
The reply is just as appreciated now as it would have been 2 years ago. Thanks
ui
22:31 Your the one for me
This makes me think of when America was more classy.
Thanx for saying it.
I love Kessel's chord melody work, but some of the single note work I find annoying...Those super-fast, dissonant jumbles of notes and up-down sweeps don't swing to me. They sound sloppy and non-musical. For single-note solo work I prefer Tal Farlow's style.
Yeah, seems like he had trouble coordinating left and right hand despite his otherwise enormous dexterity on the guitar. You hear this progressively more and more as he got older. As you may know, he suffered stroke in the early 90s that limited his motion and had to retire from playing. Sometimes I think it may this could be symptomatic of a series of mini strokes. It could have limited the fine coordination between the two hands in otherwise healthy person.
But it may just be that I am having a little professional deformation here..
@@vecernicek2 one of the best jazz guitarist of all the time
You go to my head 0:00
Get out of town 4:30
Seagull 9:25
like someone in love 15:36
You're the one for me 22:33
Beautiful love 27:23
Star eyes 33:58
I love you 38:21