TUE., AUGUST 19, 2008
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Early Electric Guitarist George Barnes Mixes It Up
by Kevin Whitehead
So who was the first electric guitarist on a Bob Dylan single? Well, duh, you can read a headline — not Mike Bloomfield, not Robbie Robertson, but George Barnes, in 1962. The record was Mixed-Up Confusion, the band skiffling like Bill Black’s combo behind Elvis. Producer John Hammond’s idle comment about cutting the tune, that they even tried it with a Dixieland band, sent collectors scurrying for a lost take. But Hammond may have meant that the ringers on the release version — Barnes, pianist Dick Wellstood, bassist Gene Ramey, drummer Herbie Lovelle — sometimes worked in Dixie bands.
Still, the players weren’t so easy to stereotype. George Barnes had been impossible to pigeonhole — except as one of the very first electric guitarists, on record a year and half before his fan Charlie Christian. He was the white, teenage lead picker on hardcore black blues records by Big Bill Broonzy and others. But for the first session under his own name, he turned to vintage Broadway bubblegum. Then he put together a colorful octet to rival Raymond Scott for picturesque oddity. And that only gets him to age 25.
Barnes was born near Chicago in 1921 as the Jazz Age was taking off. When he was about nine, he picked up a guitar lying around the house; his father gave him pointers. Before long, an older brother built him a prototype pickup and amp, so George could solo with his fledgling band. In a 1975 Guitar Player interview that everyone who writes about him consults, Barnes claimed that was in 1931 — awfully early. Reference books duly repeat it, but in that same Q&A he does date some other early activities three years too early. (That interview and a partial sessionography are here. )
George Barnes was a “lead,” not rhythm, player from the first. He’d turned pro at 12, he reckoned later, and was mentored by the great jazz and blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson. Barnes played on dozens of blues sides, starting at age 16, around when he crossed paths with fellow electric pioneer Les Paul, and started playing on and arranging for NBC radio. Country picker Merle Travis and jazz’s Herb Ellis took up electric after hearing him on the air; young Chet Atkins copied his solos. (In the ’50s he and Barnes would swap licks on a few of Chet’s Country All Stars sides.)
Barnes’s 1938 blues records were a revelation to me when I recently sought them out. (They’ve never been collected, but see below for a CD-length virtual anthology drawn from eMusic’s vaults). The first disc he plays on — Broonzy’s “Sweetheart Land” and “It’s a Low Down Dirty Shame” — is practically a template for Chicago blues bands, only lacking drums. There’s booting tenor sax, rolling 4/4 rhythm and walking bass; Barnes’s bent-note stinging guitar is heard on line-ending answerbacks and one-chorus solos. He’s a real improviser; the same day, the band also cut the latter tune backing singer Curtis Jones: similar arrangement, different solo. His improvisations are orderly, one phrase giving rise to the next (on, say, Washboard Sam’s “The Gal I Love”). Jazz Gillum’s band is cruder, but Barnes doesn’t dial back the sophistication on “Boar Hog Blues.”
This was a moment when many strains in American music flowed together, before spinning apart. You can hear Barnes’s Hawaiian/slide influence on Washboard Sam’s “It’s Too Late Now,” country lope and twangy tone on Sam’s “Down at the Old Village Store.”
After all that bluesing, for his first solo sides in 1940, George Barnes cut the 1919 frolic “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.” He’d later downplay Django Reinhardt’s influence, but on the flipside, “I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me,” his quick-vibrato single-string runs over chunky strummed rhythm make it hard to believe the Parisian didn’t have some impact.
He regrouped after World War II with a woodwinds-heavy octet that made transcription discs: short pieces licensed to radio stations to fill a few minutes where needed. Here he made another turnabout: pop songs and originals, frothy backgrounds, and a more sophisticated sense of line and harmony. They’re as delightful as his blues records, in a completely different way. Raymond Scott’s influence is obvious from whimsical titles like “Private Life of a Vulture,” “Intricacies of a Threshing Machine” and “London Bridgework.” The exacting, intricate arrangements, cheery and episodic, owe a lot to Scott too. The Hindsight label’s one-disc Barnes sampler focuses on familiar tunes, bypassing many of the oddball treasures on the two-disc Complete Standard Transcriptions.
In the 1950s he went into the New York studios, cut a jillion sessions with everyone from Louis Armstrong to King Curtis to Homer & Jethro; later he’d boast of having the New York musicians union’s fattest contract file. In the ’60s he performed in duos with fellow guitarists Carl Kress and Bucky Pizzarelli. Then in the early ’70s he and the lyrical, juicy-toned cornetist Ruby Braff helped revive each other’s careers with a drumless quartet; Barnes shines on the live The Ruby Braff/George Barnes Quartet Plays Gershwin. They backed Tony Bennett on his 1973 The Rodgers and Hart Songbook; the following year they cut one of their own.
The guitarist’s last, live recording before dying at age 56 was 1977’s George Barnes Plays So Good. Can’t argue with the title. Yet the late-period stuff doesn’t have anything like the impact of his the pre-1950 sides. Time and the competition he’d helped inspire had caught up to a picker once way ahead of the pack.
A selection of 1938 George Barnes (in chronological order)
1) Big Bill Broonzy, “Sweetheart Land”
2) Big Bill Broonzy, “It’s a Low Down Dirty Shame”
[both on 1937-1940 Part 2: Chicago 1937, 1938 CD B]
3) Curtis Jones, “"It’s a Low Down Dirty Shame"
4) Washboard Sam, “It’s Too Late Now”
5) Washboard Sam, “Down at the Old Village Store”
6) Washboard Sam, “The Gal I Love”
[all on Washboard Sam Vol. 3 (1938)]
7) Jazz Gillum, “Just Like Jesse James”
8) Jazz Gillum, “Reefer Headed Woman”
9) Jazz Gillum, “Gillum’s Windy Blues”
10) Jazz Gillum, “New ‘Sail on, Little Girl’”
11) Jazz Gillum, “Boar Hog Blues”
[all on: Jazz Gillum Vol. 1 1936-1938]
12) Louis Powell, "Mushmouth Blues"
13) Blind John Davis, “Jersey Cow Blues”
14) Merline Johnson, “Love Shows Weakness”
15) Merline Johnson, “Squeeze Me Tight”
16) Merline Johnson, “Jelly Bean Blues”
17) Merline Johnson, “My Man Is Gone”
[all on The Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) Vol. 1 1937-1938]
18) Big Bill Broonzy, “I’ll Do Anything for You”
19) Big Bill Broonzy, “Sad Pencil Blues”
20) Big Bill Broonzy, “New Shake-Em On Down”
21) Big Bill Broonzy, “Night Time Is the Right Time No. 2”
[all on 1937-1940 Part 2: Chicago 1937, 1938 CD B]
22) Blind John Davis, “Got the Blues So Bad”
23) Merline Johnson, “Ol’ Man Mose” [explicit language advisory]
24) Merline Johnson, “Separation Blues”
[both on The Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) Vol. 1 1937-1938]
Still, the players weren’t so easy to stereotype. George Barnes had been impossible to pigeonhole — except as one of the very first electric guitarists, on record a year and half before his fan Charlie Christian. He was the white, teenage lead picker on hardcore black blues records by Big Bill Broonzy and others. But for the first session under his own name, he turned to vintage Broadway bubblegum. Then he put together a colorful octet to rival Raymond Scott for picturesque oddity. And that only gets him to age 25.
Barnes was born near Chicago in 1921 as the Jazz Age was taking off. When he was about nine, he picked up a guitar lying around the house; his father gave him pointers. Before long, an older brother built him a prototype pickup and amp, so George could solo with his fledgling band. In a 1975 Guitar Player interview that everyone who writes about him consults, Barnes claimed that was in 1931 — awfully early. Reference books duly repeat it, but in that same Q&A he does date some other early activities three years too early. (That interview and a partial sessionography are here. )
George Barnes was a “lead,” not rhythm, player from the first. He’d turned pro at 12, he reckoned later, and was mentored by the great jazz and blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson. Barnes played on dozens of blues sides, starting at age 16, around when he crossed paths with fellow electric pioneer Les Paul, and started playing on and arranging for NBC radio. Country picker Merle Travis and jazz’s Herb Ellis took up electric after hearing him on the air; young Chet Atkins copied his solos. (In the ’50s he and Barnes would swap licks on a few of Chet’s Country All Stars sides.)
Barnes’s 1938 blues records were a revelation to me when I recently sought them out. (They’ve never been collected, but see below for a CD-length virtual anthology drawn from eMusic’s vaults). The first disc he plays on — Broonzy’s “Sweetheart Land” and “It’s a Low Down Dirty Shame” — is practically a template for Chicago blues bands, only lacking drums. There’s booting tenor sax, rolling 4/4 rhythm and walking bass; Barnes’s bent-note stinging guitar is heard on line-ending answerbacks and one-chorus solos. He’s a real improviser; the same day, the band also cut the latter tune backing singer Curtis Jones: similar arrangement, different solo. His improvisations are orderly, one phrase giving rise to the next (on, say, Washboard Sam’s “The Gal I Love”). Jazz Gillum’s band is cruder, but Barnes doesn’t dial back the sophistication on “Boar Hog Blues.”
This was a moment when many strains in American music flowed together, before spinning apart. You can hear Barnes’s Hawaiian/slide influence on Washboard Sam’s “It’s Too Late Now,” country lope and twangy tone on Sam’s “Down at the Old Village Store.”
After all that bluesing, for his first solo sides in 1940, George Barnes cut the 1919 frolic “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.” He’d later downplay Django Reinhardt’s influence, but on the flipside, “I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me,” his quick-vibrato single-string runs over chunky strummed rhythm make it hard to believe the Parisian didn’t have some impact.
He regrouped after World War II with a woodwinds-heavy octet that made transcription discs: short pieces licensed to radio stations to fill a few minutes where needed. Here he made another turnabout: pop songs and originals, frothy backgrounds, and a more sophisticated sense of line and harmony. They’re as delightful as his blues records, in a completely different way. Raymond Scott’s influence is obvious from whimsical titles like “Private Life of a Vulture,” “Intricacies of a Threshing Machine” and “London Bridgework.” The exacting, intricate arrangements, cheery and episodic, owe a lot to Scott too. The Hindsight label’s one-disc Barnes sampler focuses on familiar tunes, bypassing many of the oddball treasures on the two-disc Complete Standard Transcriptions.
In the 1950s he went into the New York studios, cut a jillion sessions with everyone from Louis Armstrong to King Curtis to Homer & Jethro; later he’d boast of having the New York musicians union’s fattest contract file. In the ’60s he performed in duos with fellow guitarists Carl Kress and Bucky Pizzarelli. Then in the early ’70s he and the lyrical, juicy-toned cornetist Ruby Braff helped revive each other’s careers with a drumless quartet; Barnes shines on the live The Ruby Braff/George Barnes Quartet Plays Gershwin. They backed Tony Bennett on his 1973 The Rodgers and Hart Songbook; the following year they cut one of their own.
The guitarist’s last, live recording before dying at age 56 was 1977’s George Barnes Plays So Good. Can’t argue with the title. Yet the late-period stuff doesn’t have anything like the impact of his the pre-1950 sides. Time and the competition he’d helped inspire had caught up to a picker once way ahead of the pack.
A selection of 1938 George Barnes (in chronological order)
1) Big Bill Broonzy, “Sweetheart Land”
2) Big Bill Broonzy, “It’s a Low Down Dirty Shame”
[both on 1937-1940 Part 2: Chicago 1937, 1938 CD B]
3) Curtis Jones, “"It’s a Low Down Dirty Shame"
4) Washboard Sam, “It’s Too Late Now”
5) Washboard Sam, “Down at the Old Village Store”
6) Washboard Sam, “The Gal I Love”
[all on Washboard Sam Vol. 3 (1938)]
7) Jazz Gillum, “Just Like Jesse James”
8) Jazz Gillum, “Reefer Headed Woman”
9) Jazz Gillum, “Gillum’s Windy Blues”
10) Jazz Gillum, “New ‘Sail on, Little Girl’”
11) Jazz Gillum, “Boar Hog Blues”
[all on: Jazz Gillum Vol. 1 1936-1938]
12) Louis Powell, "Mushmouth Blues"
13) Blind John Davis, “Jersey Cow Blues”
14) Merline Johnson, “Love Shows Weakness”
15) Merline Johnson, “Squeeze Me Tight”
16) Merline Johnson, “Jelly Bean Blues”
17) Merline Johnson, “My Man Is Gone”
[all on The Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) Vol. 1 1937-1938]
18) Big Bill Broonzy, “I’ll Do Anything for You”
19) Big Bill Broonzy, “Sad Pencil Blues”
20) Big Bill Broonzy, “New Shake-Em On Down”
21) Big Bill Broonzy, “Night Time Is the Right Time No. 2”
[all on 1937-1940 Part 2: Chicago 1937, 1938 CD B]
22) Blind John Davis, “Got the Blues So Bad”
23) Merline Johnson, “Ol’ Man Mose” [explicit language advisory]
24) Merline Johnson, “Separation Blues”
[both on The Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) Vol. 1 1937-1938]
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