Body and Soul, Take 2—Wes Montgomery
#365Songs: June 19
My fellow “No Wrong Notes” editors and writers — Smitty and Dr. J — have unquestionably raised the bar for this year’s edition. Their writing has been visionary, epiphanic, revelatory. I’ve learned an extraordinary amount from them, about them, and — frankly, about life in general.
Are we a bit competitive? Of course we are.
And as the game has heated up and the stakes have risen, we’ve each found ourselves going back to our respective corners desperately seeking some further depth to pull from so that we might live to fight again when back in the ring.
I think this is why theme weeks have unexpectedly emerged as a favored tactic this year — they’re a means to control the mental and emotional sprawl, quell the panic, and focus the feelings.
Sometimes we announce our themes openly. Dr. J. proudly proclaimed “fucking 90’s week” as the debut theme of the 2024 series.
Sometimes themes go unannounced, while making clear the connections all the same. As a recent example, it shouldn’t take you long to figure out what I was up to back at the end of May with this string of recommendations:
Everyday People — Sly and the Family Stone
Message From A Black Man — The Temptations
CIA — The Beatnigs
A House Is Not A Motel — Love
E Pluribus Unum — The Last Poets
Move on Up — Curtis Mayfield
Revolution — Arrested Development
Sometimes the theme is nuanced to the point of obfuscation. Can you even guess Smitty’s theme here?
Riding Around in the Dark — Florist
99 Luftballons — Nena
Nights That Won’t Happen — Purple Mountains
After the Gold Rush — Neil Young
Everyday Is Like Sunday — Morrissey
Zombie — The Cranberries
Abattoir Blues — Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
The #365Songs baton comes to me today, and I have a week of songs to recommend accordingly. And yes, I do have a theme, and no, there’s no mystery about it.
It’s guitars. Guitar players, guitar performances.
I’ve been some version of a working professional guitarist across five different decades. My first paying gig was in the 80’s. My most recent one was a couple of days ago. That’s a lot of guitar playing, a lot of thinking about playing guitars, and a lot of listening to other people play guitars.
When it comes to guitarists and their playing, my tastes are fairly wide-ranging.
I love the folksy syncopation of Mississippi John Hurt and the controlled fervor of Blind Willie Johnson’s slide playing. I love the back of the beat border blues of Willie Nelson and Trigger and the crisply clipped double stops of Scotty Moore. I love the explosive psychedelia of Jimi Hendrix and the swampily tremolo’d Americana of John Fogerty. I love the delayed precision of The Edge and and the nuanced melodicism of Mike Campbell.
I could go on. And I will.
But I’m already over 400 words in, and I haven’t even mentioned my song recommendation.
Body and Soul, Take 2, from the Wes Montgomery album Movin’ Along, released in 1960.
When it comes to jazz guitar, there are a very small handful of names that reign supreme above all other legends in the field. Charlie Christian, of course. The greatest of them all. Followed by — in no particular order — Grant Green, Jim Hall, Django Reinhardt, and Wes Montgomery.
Of this illustrious group, Wes Montgomery arguably had the greatest tone. And, judging by Movin’ Along’s incredible 11-minute alternate take on “Body and Soul,” possibly the rarest, in that he apparently used a Gibson EB-6 for the solo.
Not familiar with that guitar? Not surprising. There were only 67 of them ever made. You can learn a bit more about this rarity here:
To get a sense of how Montgomery used this incredible guitar in the most incredible of ways, check out the line that begins right about at the 1:07 mark:
(you can hear the whole song on our #365Songs playlist, but if you use the YouTube link below, it’ll take you right to the section of the song I’m referring to)
Unreal, right?
Montgomery famously did not use a flatpick, relying instead solely on his thumb. This approach, combined with his choice of guitars and amps, produced a tone unlike any other — instantly recognizable, utterly his own.
Montgomery was a family man and a working musician. He needed and liked to get paid, and his recorded output over the course of his career makes clear he was willing to do what it took to pay the bills. In 1963, he signed with Verve in 1963 and began working with Creed Taylor on what would turn out to be a full decade’s worth of nearly all pop-oriented recordings. The playing and tone would remain gorgeous, but the material was at best conventional and at worst almost unlistenable.
But during his 4-year heyday when he was recording for Riverside, Wes was nearly untouchable.
For any instrumentalist, perhaps the greatest feat is to develop your own SOUND.
And to be clear, your SOUND is not what you dial in with amp and pedals. Nor is it your choice of guitar, your strings, or your pickups. It’s not your preferred scales and chord forms, nor your tempos and progressions. It’s not your technique. It’s not your genre. It’s not your melodies or riffs. It’s not even your mindset or your conception or your knowledge of theory.
It’s all the above, and more.
Wes Montgomery found his holy grail and developed a sound that was so completely his you know it the second you hear it. And on tracks like the one I’ve recommended here, you experience this sound as he delivers lines of incomparable melodicism, feel, swing, and soul.
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Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!
