CHUCK WAYNE
Chuck Wayne (February 27, 1923 – July 29, 1997) was an American jazz guitarist. He came to prominence in the 1940s, and was among the earliest jazz guitarists to play in the bebop style. Wayne was a member of Woody Herman's First Herd, the first guitarist in the George Shearing quintet, and Tony Bennett's music director and accompanist. He developed a systematic method for playing jazz guitar.
Style
Wayne was known for a bebop style influenced by saxophone players of his time, especially Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins. In an era when many guitarists used four-square, mandolin-style picking, with rigid up-down stroke articulation, Wayne developed a technique not widely adopted by others until decades later. He also developed a comprehensive approach to guitar chords and arpeggios – based on generic tetrad forms spanning all possible inversions, in varying degrees of open voicing. This highly analytic approach to the fretboard was later documented in a series of theory books, some released posthumously.
Life and work
Chuck Wayne was born Charles Jagelka in New York City to a Czechoslovak family. As a boy, he learned banjo, mandolin, and balalaika. In the early 1940s he began playing in jazz bands on 52nd Street. After two years in the Army, he returned to New York City, joined Joe Marsala's band, and settled in Staten Island (until a 1991 move to New Jersey). He changed his musical style after hearing Charlie Parker, recording with Dizzy Gillespie in 1945.Bill Crow writes that Wayne was one of the first jazz guitarists to learn bebop. Two examples are "Groovin' High" and "Blue 'n' Boogie" recorded with Dizzy Gillespie.
Wayne was a member of Woody Herman's First Herd and worked with Coleman Hawkins, Red Norvo, Bud Powell, Jack Teagarden, George Shearing, Lester Young, and Barbara Carroll. During the 1950s, he worked with Tony Bennett, Gil Evans, Brew Moore, Zoot Sims, and George Wallington. He was employed as staff guitarist for CBS in the 1960s. For the next two decades, he played on Broadway, accompanied vocalists, and performed in guitar duos with Joe Puma and Tal Farlow.
Wayne wrote "Sonny" in honor of Sonny Berman. Years later, Miles Davis took the song, changed the first chord from C Major to C minor , renamed it "Solar", and claimed he wrote it. Wayne's "Butterfingers" and "Prospecting" have been incorrectly attributed to Zoot Sims.
He died of emphysema in Jackson, New Jersey, aged 74.
Wayne recorded his debut 10"LP (reissued on The Jazz Guitarist, Savoy) in 1953 with Zoot Sims and Brew Moore which Fresh Sounds has since reissued along with sessions by Lou Mecca and Bill DeArango as Three Swinging Guitar Sessions. He recorded in a trio for Tapestry (1963) and Morning Mist (Original Jazz Classics, 1964) and in a duo with Joe Puma on Interactions (Choice, 1973).
He recorded an album of banjo jazz in 1963. He loved the crisp, hornlike sound that was possible with the banjo, and he predicted there would be a resurgence of interest in the banjo.
Theory and technique
Chuck Wayne invented a system of playing jazz guitar that emulated the style of Charlie Parker. His system included consecutive-alternate picking, chords, scales, and arpeggios. The following summary reflects material in Wayne's method books.
Consecutive-alternate picking
In Wayne's technique, movement of the pick comes mostly from the joints of the first finger and thumb, not the wrist, hand, or arm. The pick is not held rigidly; its angle changes slightly as it passes over the string. The tip of the pick drags slightly during each stroke so that the tip points up during a down stroke and down during an up stroke. This resembles the apoyando, or rest stroke, used by classical guitarists, particularly if the movement is exaggerated with slow, deliberate strokes, allowing the pick to stop on the adjacent string.
When moving between adjacent strings, the guitarist continues a single up stroke or down stroke to play consecutive notes on two strings. Thus, when moving to a higher string (higher in pitch), the down stroke continues over two strings; when moving to a lower string, the up stroke continues. When more than two notes are played on a single string, the guitarist alternates strokes (or uses a slur, depending on the phrasing). This technique eliminates the "plinka-plinka" of traditional alternate picking and allows smooth, rapid playing.
In rapid passages, the right hand is typically anchored, lightly, by touching the pinky fingernail to the pick guard, which itself should be placed near and slightly below the first string. A narrow pick guard for this use, usually of ebony, became known among luthiers as a "Chuck Wayne style pick-guard" or more accurately as a "finger rest." Some guitarists have referred to consecutive/alternative picking as "spray picking", although Wayne disliked this term.
Wayne was an exponent of the use of the right-hand fingers in combination with the pick. He synthesized plectrum and classical guitar technique. The pick is held in the normal way, but the remaining three fingers are used to play chords and counterpoint. Wayne often surprised audiences by using this method to play difficult Bach fugues and other pieces from classical music. His use of the technique for contrapuntal improvisation was an innovation.
Chords
Wayne's chord system is based on "generic" chord forms, forms that have the same sonority in all keys, and that do not rely on open strings or guitaristic peculiarities.
Wayne observed that most guitar chords in common use do not have these properties and that the way most guitarists play a G7 chord, for example, sounds different from the way they play a C7 or an E7 due to the different arrangements of notes. The common ("cowboy") chords are popular because they simplify fingering, but they constrict musical options. Wayne avoided this problem. (He did also use "specific" chord forms when appropriate, but his system concentrated on chords with universal applications.)
Most chord books have diagrams organized by chord name (A13, Gm7b5) or type (thirteenth, minor seven-flat-five). Under each heading are the fingerings that show the chord in alternative inversions and voicings, generally having little in common other than a shared set of notes. The guitarist memorises the forms, learning a few different ways to play each chord. Over time, through practical experience, the guitarist learns or decides when to use each form. When playing in Bb, such a guitarist will inevitably play with a very different set of voicings from what would be used in F or Eb, simply because the "normal" guitar chords in these keys have very different sonorities. Wayne tried to describe the "complete" scope of harmonic possibilities available on the fretboard, in all voicings, given conventional guitar tuning and a human left hand.
Concepts
In Wayne's system, a generic chord has four different notes. This includes chords like dominant sevenths, major sixths, and minor ninths, but not major or minor triads, or other "specific" triadic forms, which Wayne concluded were rarely useful for jazz. For chords containing five or more notes, such as thirteenths and ninths, Wayne removed the root, and other notes if necessary, to preserve the generic four-note form.
Wayne's focus on four-note generic chords reflects the realities of left hand fingering on a six-string guitar. Four-note chords can be comfortably played in many different voicings and fingerings, but five- or six-note chords work only in specific situations and defeat the purpose of a generic approach. Wayne was trying to give the guitarist the harmonic vocabulary and flexibility available to pianists.
Since there are four different notes in each of Wayne's chords, there are four possible starting notes or inversions. (When such a chord contains the root, it is an inversion in the traditional sense; otherwise, it is a revoicing. For convenience, Wayne calls all such transformations "inversions".) The remaining notes are then arranged above it.
Open voicing and derivatives
Wayne realized that the close voicing normally used on pianos – i.e. where an entire chord is played within the same octave – is not usually practical on the guitar. He found that the most useful generic fingerings could be obtained by raising or lowering one or more of the four notes by an octave. Wikipedia.
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