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| 1. | I'm Old Fashioned
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| 2. | Macho's Lullaby
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| 3. | 'Round Midnight
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| 4. | Wally's Waltz
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| 5. | Black, Black, Black
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| 6. | Golden Earrings
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| 7. | Romance de los Pinos
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| 8. | Norte&
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| 9. | Maid With the Flaxen Hair
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| 10. | Waltz
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| 11. | The Old Castle
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| 12. | Sevilla
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| 13. | Cheek to Cheek
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| 14. | A Foggy Day
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| 15. | Tangerine
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| 16. | Sunny
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| 17. | Why Was I Born?
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| 18. | I Didn't Know What Time It Was
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| 19. | Tea for Two
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| 20. | The Man I Love
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| 21. | For You
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| 22. | I Hadn't Anyone Till You
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| 23. | I Could Write a Book
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Jazz
Johnny Smith - Guitar, Producer
George Van Eps - Guitar
Tracks 1-12: Johnny Smith
Tracks 13-23: George Van Eps
Students of jazz guitar are inevitably drawn to those sultans of swing Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery, whose playing approximated the rhythmic excitement and melodic intricacy of horn players such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. But there is a parallel tradition in which the guitar is treated less as a horn than as an orchestral instrument, and with the release of LEGENDS, listeners are treated to an exemplary recital by two fabled chord melody masters. Both deploy a full array of moving bass lines, harmonically sophisticated chord changes and supple melodic variations to make their treatments of classical pieces and American popular songs come alive.
Johnny Smith, performing on an acoustic arch-top 6-string guitar, evokes Andres Segovia in his treatment of classics by Albeniz, Ponce, Mussorgsky and Debussy, while bravura interpretations of "Round Midnight" and "Golden Earrings" demonstrate Smith's sweeping emotional range, impeccable ear for chordal color and crystalline picking attack. On the other hand, George Van Eps, employing an electric-acoustic arch-top 7-string, treats his instrument almost like a piano. Expansive performances such as "A Foggy Day," "Tea For Two" and "The Man I Love" are remarkable for the guitarist's harmonic juggling, as he keeps multiple voices moving in contrary motion with a beautifully nuanced timbre, dreamy melodic relaxation, and nary a wasted note. LEGENDS is a perfect recording.
* Bill Cook - Engineer
* Bruce Burr - Photography
* Carl Jefferson - Executive Producer
* Elizabeth Bell - Production Coordination
* George Horn - Mastering
* James Mooney - Engineer
* Jim Ferguson - Liner Notes
* Kent Judkins - Art Direction
* Larry Hathaway - Producer
* Mark Reis - , Photography
* Phil Edwards - Assembly
Despite the impression one could reasonably get from the cover of this reissue, these two guitar legends do not perform together, unfortunately. The next best thing are these solo sessions recorded almost 20 years apart. The first 12 items on the play list belong to Smith and capture his tasteful, clean sound coupled with complex chordal voices, which helped Smith in his adventures with playing classical compositions, including for the fabled Arturo Toscanini. Cuts that remind the listener of Smith's occasional classical foray include "Romance de los Pinos," "The Old Castle," and "Maid With the Flaxen Hair." But Smith was no slouch with constructing unique renditions of popular music. In 1952, teaming with Stan Getz, he made one of the best-selling jazz recordings of all times, "Moonlight in Vermont," which still sold well 50 years later. Van Eps was the master of the seven-string guitar, which allowed him to play his own basslines, well demonstrated on such cuts as "Tea for Two." The 11 pieces assigned to Van Eps reveal a predilection for highly rhythmic versions of well-known pop classics. Perhaps not as multi-faceted as Smith, he nonetheless had a fully developed style that approached the depth and complexity of Smith's. This can be heard on such cuts as "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" and "A Foggy Day." Besides which, he could and did swing. Although sideman on many a session, Van Eps left behind a relatively meager discography as a leader. These solo offerings are among his best. Although the styles of these two guitarists may go down different paths, their excellent technical skills, fully elevated imagination, and sensitivity to what they play clearly establish them among the elite of guitar players, true legends indeed. Recommended.
---Dave Nathan, All Music Guide
Johnny Smith
Active Decades: '50s, '60s, '70s and '90s
Born: Jun 25, 1922 in Birmingham, AL
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Cool, Mainstream Jazz
Guitarist Johnny Smith will always be best remembered for his 1952 hit recording of "Moonlight in Vermont," a mellow ballad that also features Stan Getz. Smith, whose chordal-oriented style is self-taught, originally played trumpet, violin, and viola before switching to guitar. A studio musician from 1947 on, Smith's impressive technique and quiet sound made him in great demand even before "Moonlight" and, although he never had another hit, he was a popular attraction throughout the 1950s. After moving to Colorado in the 1960s he opened a music store, taught, and maintained a lower profile, occasionally recording in New York.
--- Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
George Van Eps
Active Decades: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s
Born: Aug 07, 1913 in Plainfield, NJ
Died: Nov 29, 1998
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Mainstream Jazz, Swing
George Van Eps was a quiet legend among jazz guitarists, one who as far back as the 1930s pioneered a harmonically sophisticated chordal/lead style that was eclipsed in influence by the single-string idioms of Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. Yet Van Eps, like his brassy colleague Les Paul, also stood apart from them as an iconoclastic inventor, designing a seven-string guitar in the late 1930s that adds an extra bass string. Thus, Van Eps was able to play bass lines simultaneously with chords and lead solos, a jazz equivalent of fingerpicking country guitarists like Merle Travis and Chet Atkins. Van Eps puckishly referred to his style of playing as "lap piano," and his seven-string guitar has been adopted by a select few figures like Howard Alden and Bucky and John Pizzarelli.
Van Eps came from a talented musical family; his father Fred was a famous master of the ragtime banjo and a sound engineer, his mother played the piano, and he had three brothers, Bobby, Freddy and John, who were also professional musicians. Self-taught on the banjo, Van Eps began playing professionally at 11, and after falling under the influence of Eddie Lang two years later, he learned the guitar well enough to play alongside Lang for six months as a teenager. From there, Van Eps worked with Freddy Martin (1931-33), Benny Goodman (1934-35) and Ray Noble (1935-36) before moving to Hollywood to become a freelance musician, author of a how-to guitar book, and instrument designer. After returning to Noble in 1940-41, Van Eps worked in his father's recording lab for two years before returning to the freelance arena, where, among other things, he worked for Paul Weston and took part in the 1950s film and TV series Pete Kelly's Blues.
Van Eps only made a handful of recordings as a leader or unaccompanied soloist, including Mellow Guitar (Columbia, 1956) and My Guitar, George Van Eps' Seven-String Guitar and Soliloquy for Capitol in the late 1960s. A bout of serious illness in the early 1970s, plus a 1977 hand injury that resulted in three broken fingers, reduced his activities. However, Van Eps returned to the studio in 1991 for the first of three exquisite duo albums for Concord Jazz with his former student Howard Alden, mixing venerable standards with a few Van Eps originals, and he shared a solo guitar album with Johnny Smith in 1994. Even in his 80s, he remained an eloquent exponent of easygoing modern swing, dying of pneumonia on November 29, 1998.
---Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide |
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