Very Interesting Music Comments, Gentlemen!

[Tilla]

They did a three track combo with this upload. The first track in the combo is titled "The Light Is On" and the solo guitar piece on it is by Larry Carlton. I was forgetting that one as a good guitar solo piece too. You know Larry to be quite an accomplished guitarist in his own right.

Then they played "Sailing" which is the title track. I just love that acoustic piano and it eases itself into the music.

Minstrel Gigolo was the last track. I have loved it from back in the early 80s when I first heard it.

[Historian]

Great Player!

I also like Eric Johnson solo piece on Minstrel Gigolo from the Chris Cross 1979 album Sailing.

Excellent solo! I know Eric Johnson very well from other projects. He is a genuinely outstanding jazz and rock guitarist, and is right up there with those guys I regard as the “greatest” guitarists around today!

Tilla, believe it or not, I never heard this particular Christopher Cross song before you mentioned it in your post and I listened to it on YouTube (just now). The person who uploaded this selection placed both “Sailing” and “Minstrel Gigolo” in a single upload:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riIgYjS77E4 )

The guitar solo is very beautiful, but Eric Johnson is such a genuinely good guitarist that he succeeded in playing an interesting solo over this particular rhythm (listen to the syncopated pattern that the rhythm section was playing at one point beneath the guitar solo).

[Assasin]

Hendrix actually played with them on stage but they say he wasn't a discipline enough player for them. He was in his early twenties and used his real name. I guess he would go off in his solo and do his thing.

[Tilla]

I also like Eric Johnson solo piece on Minstrel Gigolo from the Chris Cross 1979 album Sailing.

[Sir X]

Well its your list.

[Historian]

Not Lyn Tait in This Sense!

Lyn tait cut a complimation album in 05 which really showed his class.


Check it out.

X, I know that album, plus, there are tracks from it on YouTube.

Please understand that I’m not knocking Lyn Tait’s abilities as a guitarist or his immense contribution to the development of Jamaican music. The man contributed in significant ways to the development of rock steady and also reggae.

Why I have not included him in the list of “greatest” Jamaican guitar soloists is because I honestly have no idea how good a soloist he really is! He is a good rhythm guitarist, and that much is obvious, and he can play melodies and tunes on a guitar. However, if I’m going to judge “great” solos by what I have heard Jamaican guitarists like Lennox Gordon, Leroy “Gibby” Morrison, Ernest Ranglin, etc. do, then I have no idea how I could include Lyn Tait because I have never heard a record on which he played a blazing solo break in a song. In my post yesterday I compared Lyn Tait’s style with that of another Jamaican studio great, Hux Brown.

A “great solo break,” to me, is something like what Donald Kinsey played on the live version of Peter Tosh’s “Rastafari Is”! That is really, really good soloing.

[Historian]

Definitely Not Chuck Berry!!

Chuck berry - This man defines Rock, all those Rock guitarist imitae him all the way to the bathroom - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvw6o...eature=related

TDowl, there are guitarists playing in Jamaica right now who could make Chuck Berry look like an elementary kid on the guitar!! What I’m saying here is that there is just no way under the sun that we can seriously regard Churck Berry as a “great” guitar soloist in any way, shape or form!

Ignore the flattering comments on the YouTube video you posted!! (I just watched the video a few minutes ago.)

Chuck Berry, like other blues players (Muddy Waters, Albert Collins, etc.), played basic chords and blues phrases. He was a blues who played riffs and influenced recording artists in his time, plus he had an immensely charismatic presence on stage. Nothing more, nothing less, in my opinion.

[Sir X]

Lyn tait cut a complimation album in 05 which really showed his class.


Lyn Taitt - Hold Me Tight: Anthology 1965-1973 [Audio CD] by Lyn Taitt

Overview - Online stores - Nearby stores - Tracks - Related albums

$10 online
All Music Guide rating


By Lyn Taitt - Trojan (2005) - Rocksteady
If guitarist Lyn Taitt didn't single-handedly invent rocksteady, his slowed-down, innovative instrumental arrangements certainly helped define it. A native Trinidadian, Taitt moved to Jamaica in 1962, where he began working in various ska bands, including the Sheiks and the Cavaliers. He formed the Comets in 1964, but his most famous band, the Jets, came together in 1966. The Jets (which at their peak featured a lineup of Taitt and Hux Brown on guitars, Bryan Atkinson on bass, and Gladstone "Gladdy" Anderson on piano) recorded what is arguably the first rocksteady track, "Hold Them," for producer Joe Gibbs in 1967 when Taitt slowed the ska pace of the song down and placed the emphasis on the bass line rather than the horns. Taitt & the Jets recorded for all the major Jamaican producers of the day, including Gibbs, Duke Reid, Sonia Pottinger, Leslie Kong, Derrick Morgan, Ken Lack, Bunny Lee, and Lee "Scratch" Perry, and an in-depth anthology like this two-disc set has been long overdue. The first disc assembles instrumentals drawn from Taitt & the Jets' two Federal LPs, Sounds Rock Steady and Rock Steady Greatest Hits, and includes classics like "Soloman," "The Brush," the slow-burning and funky "Intensified '68," and the beautiful "Rainbow Valley," which features Gladdy Anderson. The second disc spotlights vocal tracks where Taitt & the Jets served as the session band, including Hopeton Lewis' laconic "Cool Collie," the Jamaicans' "Cool Night," the Overtakers' smooth and vocally polished "Girl You Ruff," the Melodians' "Swing and Dine," the Kilowatts' bouncy and eccentric version of Sam Cooke's "Bring It on Home," and Texan Johnny Nash's infectious "Hold Me Tight," which was a Top Ten hit in the U.K. in 1968. Vastly respected in Jamaica, Taitt is barely known elsewhere, a situation this substantial anthology should help address. ~ Steve Leggett, Rovi « less



Check it out.

[Sir X]

They had a guitarist on the skatalittes that did the remake of Police Woman on the Skava voovee album and Don Drummonds Confuscious on the skatallatiies Balls of fire album , dont know if its the same guy but he went solo to the moon .

Latin bands have tried to copy it but cant come close .

E.G Dancing mood Confuscious

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1XYT...eature=related

Police woman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3sNKuHcQvw

Check out these latin kids in a ballroom....Damm good.. gallo negro ska-police woman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JpZ06b30ME


The BBC Bob marley thingy ...It was Peter Tosh on Concrete Jungle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDMxLbMcjxY


Can you truly say Jazz would have kids dancing like that in 2011 all over the latin world ? well world ?....Talk about popularity , if its not bringing the youths to dance in droves then Jazz has a serious problem

[TDowl]

Chuck berry - This man defines Rock, all those Rock guitarist imitae him all the way to the bathroom - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvw6o...eature=related

[Rudi]

Alright boss. I stand corrected. Excellent choices.

[Historian]

Nope, I Didn't

You mention the guitarist from Dire Straits?

Willi, I did not mention that guitarist. Mark Knofler, the lead guitarist for Dire Straits, would -- and this is just my opinion now -- probably fall in the same category as the Eagles’ Joe Walsh and Don Felder (listen to their twin solos at the end of “Hotel California,” for example) or Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. In other words, excellent guitarists who might not be regarded by many music critics as being anything above “excellent”; in other words, outstanding but not great when compared with the more influential rock guitarists.

While I have listened to Dire Straits on more than one occasion in the past, I am not as familiar with their work as I am with, say, the Eagles or Pink Floyd. But I have listened to Knofler more than once.

By the way, one danger of posting my personal opinions on “Great Guitarists” is that, in elevating or ignoring certain musicians, I may end up coming across like a know-it-all or a snob. I hope that this is not the case, because I am neither. I simply listen to a very wide variety of music and read virtually everything I have come across about music and musicians (since I was a child learning music).

[Historian]

"Very Good," But Not "Great"

How you rate the curent Isley Brother on the guitar?

Ernie Isley is actually a very good guitarist. However, the problem with living in a culture-rich country like the USA is that there are so many excellent musicians “out there” at every level. In Ernie’s case, I would have no reason to list him as “great” simply because there are countless rock guitarists in the USA who are superior players. As far as rock guitar soloing is concerned, he is clearly no Steve Vai or Joe Satriani !

From back in my teen years listening to the Isley Brothers, I realized that Ernie Isley was heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix. In fact, very heavily influenced to the point where one could easily mistake his solos as being done by Hendrix himself. Just listen to the extended version of the Isley Brothers’ “Summer Breeze,” for example, and you will see what I mean. Many years ago when I used to devour every book and magazine I came across that had information on singers and musicians, I read on more than one occasion that Jimi Hendrix had lived at the Isley Brothers’ home during the time when he was their lead guitarist (that is, before Hendrix became famous). No doubt that’s where the influence on Ernie started.

[Historian]

Yep, many of them did

I know Jamerson played Bass Fiddle until he had to play on a Martha Reeves and the Vandellas song, and he seems to employ that technique from the fiddle to the electric Bass.

All those Bassie you have listed, did anyone of the have bass Fiddle background..

TDowl, that’s the thing with jazz that I really like; many of those musicians have a high level of music education indeed. To answer your question, several of the electric bass players I named in my incomplete list started off playing the double bass (that is, bass fiddle). Stanley Clarke and John Patitucci, to name just two from my list, studied the double bass at university level and became influential double bass players as well as bass guitarists.

By the way, you probably noticed that I had also compiled a separate list of double bass specialists (the third list in that thread starter) .

[Historian]

Rudi, I didn't leave Ranglin out

Historian, I am surprised you left Ernie Ranglin playing on The Wailers "It Hurts To Be Alone". Sublime. Check it out on You Tube. Mek sure it is the original Wailers version. Don't think it was Bob singing lead. You guys are right the guitar solo on Rastafari Is was always the best to my mind.

Rudi , I did not leave out Ernie Ranglin’s memorable solo on the Wailers’ “It Hurts To Be Alone.” What happened is that this thread to which you are responding was created simply to reply to the several valuable contributions in that other thread by forumites.

In my original thread on outstanding guitar solos, Ranglin’s awesome solo was included among my “Top 5 Greatest Jamaican Guitar Solos” (that thread is now on page 2, but I don’t want to send it to the top as it might cause confusion with this thread).

By the way, the lead singer on “It Hurts To Be Alone” is the late Junior Brathwaite. I feel that of all the members of the original Wailers, Brathwaite had the “sweetest” voice. Unfortunately, he was murdered back in 1999 during a visit to Jamaica (he had lived in the USA since leaving the wailers in the early 1960s).

Here is the original list I posted:

Historian’s Great Jamaican Guitar Solo Breaks
(Listed alphabetically here according to the guitarist’s surname. This list, of course, is NOT complete.)

(Please note that not all the soloists below are Jamaican. Blues guitarist Al Anderson and rock guitarist Wayne Perkins are both Americans, but they have been included for obvious reasons.)

Al Anderson: guitar solo on Bob Marley’s “Woman No Cry” (Live at the Lyceum in London).
Rupert Bent, Sr.: guitar solo on Toots and the Maytals’ ska classic, “Never You Change.”
Wayne Perkins: guitar solo on Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Catch A Fire” (Island Records).
Ernie Ranglin: guitar solo on the Wailers’ “It Hurts To Be Alone.”
Unknown guitarist: solo on live performance of “A Jamaican in New York” by Shinehead. This performance was in Kingston back in either the late 1980s or early 1990s.