Studying Jazz II - Lenny Breau

Part one

Sound and picture quality isn't great, you'll have to turn your speakers up, here's Winnipeg guitar player Lenny Breau at a workshop quite awhile ago.

Lenny got into jazz learning Chet Atkins songs by ear, what he didn't realize is that Chet would dub over a couple times to get those effects, because it was “impossible” to do it yourself. Lenny did it, often creating the illusion of two, sometimes three guitar players at once by himself. Lenny was also the one who conceptualized the chord shell ideas I talked about last month. As well as the cascading harmonics technique he does at about 1:05. Lenny laid the groundwork for the chord melody style of modern jazz guitar, his album “live at bourbon street” is often referred to as the greatest jazz guitar album ever recorded.

Lenny's style was unheard of in Jazz guitar, he borrowed a lot of techniques from country and flamenco and applied it to jazz, a style that few even today are able to pull off.

Unfortunately Lenny was one of the many great musicians that did way too many drugs, he was flaky and unreliable. And again, like so many others died young (at the age of 43), found strangled to death face down in a swimming pool. Too old to be recognized for dying young, but too young to have made a name for himself in the industry, other jazz guitar players became known for doing the same things, but Lenny is relatively unknown, often even in the jazz community, although his influence is seen in the majority of jazz guitarists coming after him, often without realizing where that styling comes from.