Longtime
Angeleno Kenny Burrell, who turned 80 this summer, has been recording as a jazz
guitarist for six decades; he’s long been one of the masters of the instrument
and is now one of the last links to jazz’s heroic age.
He speaks in an
Arts & Books profile about his roots in Detroit, the meaning of the blues,
his birthday concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall, his years at the university and his
hopes for the future.
Burrell was
shaped by hearing a number of important guitarists – the blazingly innovative
Charlie Christian, the lush, chordal Oscar Moore – while very young, but also
by the blues scene in his hometown and elsewhere; he often heard T-Bone Walker
and John Lee Hooker while growing up.
But somehow, he
says, “I was not influenced very much by guitar players.” His other main
inspirations – “Parker, Miles, Lester Young” – were all horn players, and
Burrell often plays a single-line, horn-like
He discusses
his philosophy of music in the profile, his dedication to balancing head and
heart and his reputation for disciplined improvisations. “When I first became
aware of music and began listening to recordings, everything was three, four,
five minutes – max. And I learned, great artists can say a lot in that time.
I’ve got through a lot of generations of music. But I come from a generation
for which performaces were not overly long.”
His latest album,
“Tenderly,” is a concert for solo guitar recorded in Pasadena’s Boston Court.
It includes standards like “Autumn Leaves,” a medley of songs associated with
Billie Holiday, and a montage by Burrell’s hero, Duke Ellington. This is
reflective, lyrical music, a long way from the soulful ‘60s Burrell of
“Chitlins Con Carne,” but powerful in its own way.
And even today,
60 years after he began recording with Dizzy Gillespie, music remains
mysterious to Burrell. “It goes into that part of us that’s the spirit. That’s
what will speak to people really loud. That’s a combination of knowledge and
feeling. And there’s a deeper thing that we don’t understand – that pulls our
own knowledge and feelings together. If you’re lucky you can express that.”
-- Scott Timberg
Photo Credit:
Katie Falkenberg / For The Times
