Jazz / Hard bop & Blue Note · 1960
The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery
Wes Montgomery
Why listen
Single notes, octaves and chords become different expressive sizes within a quartet that includes both guitar and piano.
Listen and read
Tracks · previews
English editorial edition
Album story
The title The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery can make virtuosity the first expectation. Yet testing only how quickly a guitarist moves misses the ability to alter the thickness of a sound. A single melodic line, the same note doubled in different registers, and a chord create different shapes. More notes do not necessarily mean greater emotion or a higher score. Consider what each shape can do within a musical situation.
Montgomery’s guitar joins Tommy Flanagan’s piano, Percy Heath’s bass and Albert Heath’s drums on this 1960 album. It is a quartet, not a solo recital in which one instrument must supply every layer. Piano and guitar can both produce chords without performing identical tasks. This selection preserves the original eight-track programme in Craft’s 2025 remaster, excluding added sessions or performances of the same compositions elsewhere. Recording era and present reissue date remain distinct.
A line with a wider surface
An octave doubles the same note name at different heights; it is not automatically two independently composed melodies. A chord combines other pitches. Knowing the distinction lets a listener separate a line’s direction from the breadth of its surface. Naming every technique is unnecessary. Simply notice when a narrow thread seems to become a larger object, without assuming that larger always means better.
Guitar beside a piano
Because Flanagan is present, a guitar chord need not be understood solely as the solution to an absent accompanist. It is a choice made alongside another harmonic instrument. Bass and drums also remain participants, rather than a background to erase mentally. Four people playing together need not fill every moment at equal density. The leader’s decisions have a setting.
Across the original side break
Four on Six closes the original first side; West Coast Blues opens the second. Continuous playback removes the physical interruption but not their placement around the midpoint. The latter’s triple-meter blues offers a useful alternative to assuming one fixed pulse or mood for blues. Compare the neighbouring tracks before returning to the entire sequence: several conditions reveal more than one isolated demonstration of technique.
The album through its tracks
Connect Four on Six with West Coast Blues, comparing the thickness of guitar sound separately from the character of the metre.
Four on Six
Fourth in the sequence, this originally ended the first side. Rather than asking the numbers in its title to explain everything, consider how that position gathers the preceding tracks. Listen for the distinction between a line of single notes and a broader texture. Several pitches sounding together need not imply a more complicated emotion; one instrument can carry different weights. The presence of piano also prevents guitar chords from being understood only as the feat of supplying missing accompaniment. These are choices made among other musicians. After hearing the track alone, continue into West Coast Blues. Across the former side boundary, the same quartet encounters another condition, bringing album placement into the discussion of technique.
Reference · Library of Congress registry essay: quartet, guitar textures and triple-meter West Coast BluesWest Coast Blues
This fifth track originally opened side two and presents a blues in triple metre. If the word blues automatically suggests one tempo or a four-beat framework, the piece offers a chance to loosen that association. First attend to the recurring pulse, then consider the difference between melodic guitar lines and thicker sounds within it. Metre and density are separate questions: a large chord need not change the underlying pulse, and a narrow line need not weaken the foundation. Placed beside Four on Six, the same instrumental combination presents another face. Keep piano, bass and drums in the picture rather than imagining the guitar alone; the leader’s identity and the quartet’s relationships can remain audible together.
Reference · Library of Congress registry essay: quartet, guitar textures and triple-meter West Coast Blues
Listen next
Compare the tenor-and-piano quartet of Soul Station with the changed relationship between chord-producing instruments when guitar occupies the foreground.
Soul Station ↗References & editorial note
Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.