Go Wes, young man

If you love jazz guitar, you love Wes Montgomery. It’s that simple. I never get tired of his remarkable improvisations, his rhythmic finesse, and his overall cool, which is on special display in this clip.

It’s a cryin’ shame that he was persuaded to go commercial in the mid-1960s, with tunes like “Tequila,” but his Riverside catalog alone is a body of work any jazzman would be proud to leave behind. I’ve been dabbling in the Wes oeuvre myself, trying to learn numbers like “Missile Blues,” “Mi Cosa,” and “Sundown,” but I’ve discovered it’s one thing to get the notes under your fingers and another to get the style. I’ll be striving for it for the rest of my days…

Note the spectacular photography of this excerpt. For its time, 1965, the angles and close-ups are dazzling.