Birthday Boy

Legendary guitarist, composer and educator Kenny Burrell celebrates his 75th birthday and an incredible 50-year recording career

Kenny Burrell is celebrating 75 years of life and 50 years of recording as a leader in 2006. To mark these significant anniversaries in the life of the jazz guitarist, composer and educator, the organization, Friends of Jazz at UCLA, is presenting a star-studded tribute to him at UCLA’s Royce Hall on December 2nd. While closely associated with jazz, Burrell’s influence has extended across genre lines: Rock great Jimi Hendrix once said, “Kenny Burrell – that’s the sound I’m looking for;” on the blues side, B.B. King has stated, “Kenny Burrell is overall the greatest guitarist in the world and he’s my favorite.” High praise, but not surprising for an artist who is about to make his one-hundredth album as a leader and has appeared on about 300 sessions as a sideman, contributing to recordings by Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins, among other jazz players, to R&B and pop recordings for James Brown, The Coasters, Aretha Franklin, Neal Sedaka and Maria Muldaur.

Burrell maintains a high profile career as a musician and composer, combining that with educational work as Professor of Ethnomusicology and Music and Director of the Jazz Studies Program at UCLA. He recently spoke with Playback in eager anticipation of the upcoming Royce Hall celebration and in appreciation of a lifetime of creating and playing music.

You were born in a city that has been home to many great figures in American music – Detroit. Did you grow up in a musical family?
I certainly am from a musical family – my mother loved music, sang in the church choir and played the piano. My father, who worked as a mechanic, liked to have fun with stringed instruments, like the ukulele. There was an atmosphere in the home conducive to music. My oldest brother, Billy, who was eleven years older and my first mentor, started to play guitar and I used to watch him. He worked with some bands and guys would come over for occasional jam sessions. I watched all that.

Where did you learn to read music?
I learned to read music in school. At home, it was just absorbing the sounds and trying to pick out a few notes on an instrument – my first public performance was in grade school where I played a piece on the piano that I had figured out at home. I began to play the guitar from watching my brother Billy. I didn’t think it was a big deal at the time. I was able to figure out a few chords very early on. When I got to the age of 12 or 13, it hit me that music was what I wanted to do.

What happened at that point?
My instrument was almost going to be the saxophone. In the early to mid- 1940s, the music we listened to at the time was Big Bands – like Basie, Lunceford. Ellington and Goodman. I was very taken with the tenor sax – Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. When I got that urge to really play, I wanted a sax. But this was during the World War II years and metal was very expensive. We were poor – my father died when I was six. I settled for the guitar, which I already knew how to play a little. I got my first guitar for about ten dollars in a pawnshop. That was the beginning.

Can you talk about some of your guitar influences?
Charlie Christian of the Goodman orchestra was, in many ways, the originator of the single line solo electric guitar. With his amp, he was able to make the guitar a frontline solo instrument like the sax and trumpet. The second influence would be Oscar Moore, who played with Nat “King” Cole’s trio. Moore was an unsung hero in that he was a pioneer in accompanying a vocalist with guitar and in working closely with a pianist. He was also an innovator in his harmonic advancement and beautiful modern chords.

Growing up in Detroit, I was surrounded by the Blues and everything related to the Blues. John Lee Hooker, for example. The Texas bluesman, T-Bone Walker was an influence too. He was among the first to bridge jazz and blues, as was the guitarist and singer, Lonnie Johnson. I also want to mention Django Reinhardt, who was a European Gypsy, and a fantastic guitarist. One of the things that was important to me in listening to Django was the fact that he had such a unique sound that it influenced me not so much to sound like him but to get my own sound on an instrument. He played six strings like everyone else, but it was a really personal sound. That started me thinking about what I wanted to make my guitar sound like.

You were also influenced by the post-war sounds of Bebop.
The second major wave of influence on me was Bebop – people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke and many others. The change in the small group sound, led by Parker and Gillespie, was something we were all excited about and we all tried to learn as much as we could about it. I had the good fortune to have gone to the same high school in Detroit that Milt Jackson had gone to earlier. I looked up to him because he had left Detroit and made a name for himself working with all these people, like Dizzy. In 1951, Dizzy came through Detroit and needed a quick replacement in his group – I got a call to come play with him. I was surprised, but I found myself making my first recording. These recordings turned out pretty good and a couple of them became jazz classics, among them “Birks’ Works” and “Tin Tin Deo.” In fact, “Tin Tin Deo” was one of the first Afro-Cuban jazz pieces. Here I was, only 19, with Dizzy, Coltrane and Milt Jackson, making some records in Detroit. I was nervous but Dizzy was so funny, he kept you laughing right until the downbeat, so you didn’t have time to be nervous. Another thing about these sessions was that there was no piano, so my guitar was the only chordal instrument. That was an innovation for Dizzy, as well as for me. At the time it was a challenge for me, but Dizzy, wise as he was, knew just what he wanted.

Dizzy wanted to take you out on the road, didn’t he?
Yes, but I preferred to stay in school. I was studying music and composition at Wayne State University in Detroit. Not long after finishing college, I got a call from Oscar Peterson. His guitarist had taken ill, so I went off with Oscar and his bassist, Ray Brown and traveled with them for six months. I got a taste of New York and by 1956, I moved there, along with my friend from Detroit, Tommy Flanagan, the pianist.

You were signed to your first recording deal soon after arriving in New York.
I used to go these jam sessions up at the 125 Club in Harlem. One night, the president of Blue Note Records, Alfred Lion, was there and he asked me to make a record. So 50 years ago, I made my first record as a leader (Introducing Kenny Burrell). Interestingly, this December I will be recording my 100th album as a leader in Royce Hall, UCLA.

In your mind, are there highlights you like to look back on?
The 1963 recording, Midnight Blue (was and still is a very important record in my career. It remains the best-selling of all my albums and, according to the wife of Blue Note’s Alfred Lion, it was his favorite record of all the ones he had produced. I was surprised and delighted to learn that. I wrote all the music on that with the exception of Don Redman’s “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You.” Another album I take particular pride in is Ellington is Forever (Fantasy Records)– a double album I put together after Duke died. And I did a record with the Boys Choir of Harlem in 1993 called Love Is the Answer (Concord Jazz). I wrote all the music and lyrics and it was premiered at Lincoln Center. I’m very proud in the sense that I could write this extended musical work for a choir.

You also have made at least 300 appearances as a sideman on all kinds of records.
I played behind so many artists – James Brown, Brook Benton, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson. I do love all kinds of music, and I respect all kinds. I was very busy in the late 50s as a session man. I could read music well and I was flexible. I liked learning all the styles and genres and I really wanted to support the artists, as long as the music was of a certain quality level.

Do you think you accomplished what you set out to do?
You never really reach the level you want in your own mind. All artists feel that way. However, I have been lucky in that what I have done has been respected and accepted by critics, musicians and the jazz public.

What was it that you brought to jazz guitar?
Well, I mentioned earlier about my work with Dizzy in a pianoless group. I had the first working trio without piano – just bass, guitar and drums. We worked in New York and recorded at the Village Vanguard. Also, the Blues is a natural part of who I am and what I feel – the fact is that I have never hesitated to put that in my music. I think that has had an influence in jazz, blues and pop. The only other thing I can say is that I am a product of my own influences. Being yourself is very primary with me – I got that just from listening to, observing and evaluating Duke Ellington.

I know you teach Ellington at UCLA. How do you illustrate Ellington’s greatness?
I started to teach this class in 1978 and I learned later that it was the first regular college course on Ellington taught in the U.S. I had already given some workshops at UCLA’s Center for African-American Studies. When they approached me to teach a jazz course. I didn’t want to do this full time because I was a musician, traveling and performing. I decided to do it for one quarter a year. I thought about it – if I was to do just one class for one quarter of the year, what would be the most effective thing I could do? That’s when I arrived at the idea of Ellington. I felt that, based on what I had learned beginning when I was in college myself, Duke Ellington was the best role model I could think of in terms of being an innovator and a success. He was an innovator all along – in a Downbeat poll of musicians, he was voted Number One musician of the 20th Century. To me, Ellington would provide a role model for everyone. When I was young, I looked around at my heroes and most of them were not doing too well financially. Ellington, however, had a way of maintaining his own demand. He had his own record label, his own publishing - many, many things that pertain to business that helped him to succeed. He was a balance of the artist, entertainer and businessman.

You have been a composer for a number of years. I know that the singer, Dee Dee Bridgewater, won a 1997 Grammy for her performance of “Dear Ella,” music and lyrics by Kenny Burrell.
I have been writing music since I was in my teens. I not only write music but words. I think lyrics and singing add a whole new dimension. People see me as a guitarist, though, and that is what they are paying for when they attend my concerts.

Your 75th Birthday Tribute at UCLA is coming up, with people like Pat Metheny and Gerald Wilson participating. As you look back, what are you thinking?
I feel very fortunate that I have been able to express all kinds of emotions and ideas through music and, at the same time to have people accept it, like it and make a living. And for ten years, I have been directing the Jazz Studies program at UCLA, so I have been writing, performing and teaching it. Everything has been coming together.

—Jim Steinblatt

Photography by Francis Wolff (C) Mosaic Images. For more information on Francis Wolff Photography, visit www.mosaicrecords.com


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