JAM: February/March 2003 Issue: The Guitar and Kansas City Jazz

The Guitar and Kansas City Jazz
by Pat Metheny

When people ask me about Kansas City and the jazz scene there, one of the things that I often talk about is the incredible amount of good guitar players that have emerged from the KC scene. I have always felt very proud to be part of that community. Some of my very favorite guitar playing of the past four decades has come from the strings and the fingers of my fellow KC players. There are many great players who have come from Kansas City that I have enjoyed yet never got to know, but here are some musings on a few that I have admired enormously who have had a place in my life over the years.

At the time that I got interested in learning about jazz and was starting to think about trying to figure out the guitar in general, especially how it fit into the jazz spectrum, I was lucky to meet a gentleman who lived in our town of Lee's Summit, Missouri, and who was one of the most prominent jazz guitarists on the KC scene. Dr. Ray Harris remains in my memory unlike any musician I have ever met. Not only was he an incredibly intuitive player, his natural instinct to really push the instrument, not only as a player, but as an inventor/designer made a huge impact on me. Ray would make his own instruments, tuning them all kinds of weird ways and finding the most interesting possible sounds on the guitar, and then he would fully employ those odd tunings and strange instruments into his jazz approach. I always felt lucky to be able to have contact with him at such an early age, and I have remained inspired ever since by his genuine search for new ways to think of the instrument.

Although I never had the chance to meet or hear Don Winsell in person, his playing had a huge impact on me through a beautiful record that he made called "He Was Very Special." It was released after his death in a car accident in 1968 and was loaned to me by Tommy Ruskin. Don's playing was a natural extension of the bebop language that had remained largely unexplored by guitarists until Jimmy Raney, Billy Bean, Joe Pass and others who addressed it head on. Don's sudden death affected everyone in the jazz community and all of his fans alike. I had been hoping to study with him when I was ready, and later I got to know his wife who was always very supportive of my early efforts to play when I started to do gigs around KC. I occasionally get out Don's record and listen to it. He was onto some stuff that was addressing the instrument, and music in general, at the very highest level.

At the time that I started to do gigs around town, the guy that I enjoyed hearing the most was Monte Muza. I was lucky that Monte took an interest in me and my playing and that he turned me on to dozens of records that I had never heard before. Monte's playing with the Greg Meise Trio of that era was a gorgeous distillation of the best aspects of how the role of guitarists in organ trios had developed during that fertile period of time. But Monte was also one of the first guitarists I had ever heard to address Herbie Hancock's playing in detail. Monte's work toward trying to apply that way of thinking of lines on the guitar inspired me.

"Some of my very favorite guitar playing of the past four decades has come from the strings and the fingers of my fellow KC players." -- Pat Metheny

One of the highlights of my experience as a jobbing musician around Kansas City were the many opportunities that I got to be around Herman Bell. Herman was, of course, mainly known as a great saxophonist, but he remains one of my most important early guitar heroes as well. Herman had a kind of direct connection between what he was hearing and what he was able to get out of the instrument that was absolutely eye-opening to me. I remember playing a concert opposite Herman in Kansas City, Kansas one night. He was playing with Reginald Buckner and I was playing with Charles Kynard. I am quite certain that I played many thousands of times the number of notes that Herman played that night, but in one or two phrases, he connected with the audience in a way that was so clear and so engaging that not one person in the house could miss the spirit of it. Herman's guitar playing was much like his sax playing: direct, narrative, funky, and always fun.

It was right around that time, in 1972 or so, that Greg Meise hired another young guy who burst onto the KC scene like a storm: Rob Whitsitt. The first time I heard Rob, I about had a heart attack. His speed, his precision, and the way he could get an audience excited was just spectacular. Rob had this incredible, fat sound that was just gorgeous to listen to, and whenever I would hear him I would go home and practice twice as hard. Rob also turned me on to Billy Rogers, an amazing guitarist from Omaha who was one of Rob's influences. Rob went on to take Billy's place in Jack McDuff's touring band shortly after that.

Among my direct contemporaries was Rod Fleeman, who I first heard with the Kansas City Junior Kix band when they came to our high school to do a concert. Rob was the first guy I ever saw who was the same age as me (we would have both been about 15 at the time) who was also into jazz. When he started playing in octaves a la Wes in one of his solos, I was so excited that I literally ran to the stage to watch him up close. It has been a pleasure to know Rod all these years and hear his playing grow and change. His work with the group Dry Jack paralleled many of the same areas of interest that I was working on with my own band at that time. And his work with Interstring in recent years has been amazing.

Which brings us to another of the most important KC guitarists, Danny Embrey. Danny's thing is so rich with detail. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of every aspect of how the guitar has developed in jazz throughout its history, and he is able to use his incredible time feel and deep skill at melodic development to make every situation I have heard him in rise to a very high level. Besides being one of the very best soloists in the country, equally impressive to me are his abilities to play as an accompanist with such grace and beauty, a difficult and often underappreciated quality that few guitarists can claim to have mastered at Danny's level.

Next in the chronology in what has become a sort of lineage of KC guys would be Steve Cardenas. Steve started doing many of the same gigs that Monte, Rob and I did around town at roughly the same age that I was when I got started. Steve's playing was always exceptional, and as the years have gone by he has absorbed all aspects of the modern jazz guitar language -- particularly the branch developed by John Scofield -- and has turned it into his own thing. Steve is one of the major guitar players in New York now, and as always, every chance that I get to hear him, I always go and enjoy it immensely. Steve has a rare and evolved harmonic capacity that is achieved by few players on their instruments and is particularly difficult to get to on the guitar.

As for the future, there is KC's Jake Blanton, whose talent and potential are kind of off the scale. When I first met Jake a few years ago, we played together for a whole afternoon and talked about playing in considerable detail. Each time I have heard him since, he has doubled or tripled his insight into music. His playing is organic and wonderful, and he is able to distill many of the qualities that set this time apart from other eras in his playing, all while dealing with the harmonic language implied in the modern jazz tradition in a very advanced way. Jake has recently moved back to New York after the excellent period of research he recently spent in Kansas City vis a vis the Westport Art Ensemble.I expect great things from him.

I feel honored to be on the list of KC guitarists with all of these guys, as well as the others you have read about in this issue of JAM who have made KC their home for all or part of their lives.

Pat Metheny was born and raised in Kansas City, has received 14 Grammy Awards, and is up for three more on February 23. His most recent release is Speaking of Now.