Arv Garrison....

by Eugene Chadbourne
Guitarist Arv Garrison staked out a large claim in the collective record pile by participating in recording sessions for Dial, a record label and not a soap bar, with the historic jazz icon Charlie Parker. Thanks to this happy bit of bopping, Garrison's discography hardly scans like the career of a musician who spent a great deal of time in the so-called no-account town of Toledo, OH. Various Parker reissues and collections in which Garrison plays a few choruses form something in the nature of medieval walls around the one Garrison recording that fans of guitar playing actually covet: Five Guitars in Flight, originally released on the Tops label in 1946.


Garrison himself chose the latter as his favorite masterwork in dialogues with Leonard Feather leading up to the guitarist's inclusion in The Encyclopedia of Jazz. That reference also mentions Django Reinhardt as a major influence, but the Tops side, recorded in collaboration with bandleader Earle Spencer, owes as much to the fanciful recording world of Les Paul. Garrison taught himself from these influences, working up to the guitar from the ukulele he cuddled as a nine year old. His first stages were school and local lodge dances. Once 18, the guitarist took charge of his own group and by the '40s had a regular hotel job in Albany, NY.
Throughout the decade Garrison had a trio that gigged nationally, evolving into the Vivien Garry Trio in a power move by the trio's bassist, an understandable one at that since Garry was married to Garrison. He was associated with the Toledo music scene in the '50s.
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