Wes Montgomery

Montgomery was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. According to NPR, the nickname "Wes" was a child's abbreviation of his middle name, Leslie.[2] The family was large, and the parents split up early in the lives of the children. Montgomery and his brothers moved to Columbus, Ohio, with their father and attended Champion High School. His older brother Monk dropped out of school to sell coal and ice, gradually saving enough money to buy his brother Wes a four-string tenor guitar from a pawn shop in 1935. Although Montgomery spent many hours with the guitar, he discounted this time later in life, saying he had to start over when he got his first six-string several years later.[3]

Montgomery in a mid-1960s publicity photo shot by Bruno Bernard for Verve Records

He and his brothers returned to Indianapolis. In 1943 Montgomery found work as a welder and got married. At a dance with his wife, he heard a Charlie Christian record for the first time. This motivated him to buy a six-string guitar the next day. For nearly a year, night and day, he tried to imitate Christian and teach himself the guitar. Although he hadn't intended to become a musician, he felt obligated to learn after buying the guitar. He received no formal instruction and couldn't read music. By the age of twenty he was performing in clubs in Indianapolis at night, copying Christian's solos, while working during the day, first at a milk company. In 1948, when Lionel Hampton was on tour in Indianapolis, he was looking for a guitarist, and after hearing Montgomery play like Christian he hired him.[3]

Montgomery spent two years with the Hampton band. Fear kept him from flying with the rest of the band, so he drove from city to city, town to town, while musicians marveled at his stamina. When arriving at a club, the first thing he did was call home to his wife and family. He was given the opportunity to play with Charles Mingus, Milt Buckner, and Fats Navarro, but not the opportunity he hoped for, and he returned to Indianapolis a better player, though tired and discouraged. He resumed performing at local clubs, this time with the Eddie Higgins Trio and the Roger Jones Quintet, playing with Eddie Higgins, Walter Perkins, and Leroy Vinnegar. He joined his brothers Buddy and Monk and saxophonist Alonzo "Pookie" Johnson in the Johnson/Montgomery Quintet, somewhat in the style of George Shearing. The band auditioned for Arthur Godfrey and recorded sessions with Quincy Jones. After a residency at a club from 1955 to 1957, Montgomery and his brothers went west.[3]

Buddy and Monk Montgomery formed The Mastersounds and signed a contract with Dick Bock at Pacific Jazz. Montgomery joined them for a recording session in 1957 that included Freddie Hubbard. Some of the songs were released by Pacific Jazz on the album The Montgomery Brothers and Five Others, while others showed up on Fingerpickin' (Pacific Jazz, 1958). The Mastersounds remained in California when Montgomery returned to Indianapolis to work in his trio with organist Melvin Rhyne.[3]

He worked as a welder during the day to support his wife and seven children, then performed at two clubs at night until well into the morning. He was a smoker who had blackouts while trying to maintain this busy schedule. During one performance, the audience included Cannonball Adderley, George Shearing, and Lennie Tristano. Adderley was so impressed by Montgomery's guitar playing that he persuaded Orrin Keepnews to sign him to Riverside. Keepnews was also persuaded by a gushing review written by Gunther Schuller. In New York City Montgomery recorded A Dynamic New Sound, the Wes Montgomery Trio, his first album as a leader after twenty years as a musician. In 1960 he recorded The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery with Al Heath, Percy Heath, and Tommy Flanagan.[3]

Montgomery in 1965

He joined his brothers in California to perform as the Montgomery Brothers for the Monterey Jazz Festival. The Mastersounds had broken up, and Buddy and Monk had signed with Fantasy and recorded (with Wes) The Montgomery Brothers, followed by Groove Yard. Montgomery recorded another album as a leader, So Much Guitar, then while visiting his brothers had a chance to perform with the John Coltrane band in San Francisco. In 1961, work was getting harder to find. A tour in Canada led to the album The Montgomery Brothers in Canada, then the band broke up. Montgomery returned to Indianapolis to work in his trio with Rhyne. Keepnews sent him back to California to record a live album with Johnny Griffin, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb. Their performance became the album Full House. This was followed by Fusion!, his first album with a string section.[3]

Montgomery died of a heart attack on June 15, 1968, while at home in Indianapolis.[4]

His grandson is actor Anthony Montgomery,[1][5] who played Travis Mayweather on Star Trek: Enterprise.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Wes Montgomery among hundreds of musicians whose master tapes were destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.[6]

Photo of Montgomery during a recording session in the mid-1960s, positioning his hand on his guitar to pick the strings with his thumb

According to jazz guitar educator Wolf Marshall, Montgomery often approached solos in a three-tiered manner: he would begin the progression with single note lines, derived from scales or modes; after a fitting number of sequences, he would play octaves for a few more sequences, finally culminating with block chords. He used mostly superimposed triads and arpeggios as the main source for his soloing ideas and sounds.[1]

Instead of using a guitar pick, Montgomery plucked the strings with the fleshy part of his thumb, using down strokes for single notes and a combination of up strokes and down strokes for chords and octaves. He developed this technique not for technical reasons but for the benefit of his neighbors. He worked long hours as a machinist before his music career began and practiced late at night. To keep neighbors from complaining, he played quietly by using his thumb.[7]

• Second Place, Readers' Poll, Metronome, 1960[3]
• Most Promising Jazz Instrumentalist, Billboard, 1960[3]
• Talent Deserving Wider Recognition, DownBeat, 1960[3]
• Readers' Poll and Critics' Poll, DownBeat, 1961[3]
• Readers' Poll and Critics' Poll, DownBeat, 1962[3]
• Best jazz guitarist, DownBeat magazine Critics' Poll, 1960–63, 1966, 1967[8]
• Grammy Award nominations, (two), Bumpin', 1965[8]
• Grammy Award, Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by Large Group or Soloist with Large Group, Goin' Out of My Head, 1966[9]
• Jazz Man of the Year, Record World, 1967[9]
• Grammy Award, "Eleanor Rigby" and "Down Here on the Ground", 1968[8]
• Grammy Award nomination, Willow Weep for Me, 1969[8]

In 1982, Bob James and Earl Klugh collaborated on a duet album and recorded the song "Wes" as a tribute to Montgomery on Two of a Kind album. Pat Martino released Remember: A Tribute to Wes Montgomery in 2006.[10]

Jazz guitarist Bobby Broom said that on A Dynamic New Sound in 1959, Montgomery "introduced a brand new approach to playing the guitar... The octave technique... and his chord melody and chord soloing playing still is today unmatched".[11] Broom modeled his guitar-organ trio after Montgomery's.[12]

• Official site
• Examples of Montgomery's licks and signature patterns
• "Wes Montgomery Unedited" by Jim Ferguson, compiled from his Guitar Player magazine article (August 1993), his JazzTimes article "The Genius of Wes Montgomery" (August 1995), and his liner notes from Wes Montgomery: The Complete Riverside Recordings (1992)
• "Wes Montgomery - The King of Octaves" - analysis and transcription of Road Song solo.
• Comprehensive and regularly updated Discography of Wes Montgomery.
• Compositions of Wes Montgomery.
• Find a Grave - Wes Montgomery