Today, August 20th is Jimmy Raney’s birthday. Dad would’ve been 84. Let us celebrate the legacy of his genius once again by listening as much as possible to this underappreciated genius – and anyone else for that matter – deserving of attention that the general listening public doesn’t seem to give enough to. Maybe even WBGO will play a cut or two, who knows (hopefully before Brian Delp’s 3am slot)… Yesterday, I took a stoll through the park with my dog, BJ while tuned in to the local jazz station WKCR (89.9 FM) listening to serial music without knowing who or what it was. And I thought, wow, is that…

This will be a short one. I was exposed to the Robert Casadesus Complete Ravel Piano Works originally by my father, who had the record collection on vinyl. The record is magical and I’m happy to say is available on Rhapsody. IMO there is no one to this day that can capture the feeling of his rendition of Pavane pour une infante défunte NO ONE. The piece ofcourse is one of Ravel’s most famous (making it that much harder). It carries the unique and difficult task of a pulsating background in regimented time but still the feeling and romance in melody typical of (lets say) Chopin. And ofcourse that marvelous…

For those of you that have an interest in the subject, click here.

Felix Lemerle (son of the late Jimmy Gourley’s bassist, Dominique Lemerle) has referred me to a new blog page about Ronnie that incorporates some of the prior archive website data along with some never before seen photos. I’m hoping the amount of info will increase over time as more facts become known about this lost legendary bebop guitarist. Ronnie Singer page

Hold on to your hats folks. This is the Song Is You 2 Chorus Jimmy Raney Solo referred to in previous post. Time to rethink what you knew about Jimmy Raney Getz period playing. There was (or since??)no other player on earth besides Jimmy that could create a bebop solo with this amount of chops, articulation and clarity at this tempo in 1952. BTW the key is Ab not the usual C. Also note the tempo stays absolutely locked to the metronome for 1 chorus and 8 bars. Pretty astonishing. It moves slightly during a particular bar but the tempo is still pretty locked to the speed 314 bpm. Interestingly…

There’s one guy that (if he had lived) might’ve given Jimmy Raney a run for his money as top 50’s bebop guitarist. His name was Ronnie Singer and my father would often talk about him. Ronnie Songer’s death was an apparent double suicide. What a horrible thing. My father got wind of these recordings (shown below) when I was staying with him around 1985. A friend had them and asked Dad about them (thinking Dad was the guitarist) and Dad exclaimed, “No that’s Ronnie Singer!!” We both listened to them. They were not officially released until after Jimmy Gourley (the original possessor of the tapes) died according to available information.…

In this video Dad answers the question “Why are Tal Farlow and Jimmy Raney so often compared?” Click this link to go to the youtube video Interesting conversation. It settles any question in reference to influence and formation of styles of the two guitar giants. Enjoy! feed://www.jonraney.com/feed/

(by Jon Raney © 2008) Modern Jazz lines are frequently comprised of a combination of 2 to 3 elements in a phrase unit consisting of: scale fragments arpeggios and/or harmonic intervals auxiliary tones (neighbor & passing tones, turns) Scale fragments are typically these types of 4 note constructions, consisting of either 4 consecutive notes or 3 with a skip: 1234 1235 1345 They can be applied modally: 3456 5672 7123 Can be root-reinterpreted (really the same thing as a mode):1235 in C = 3457 in A-7 Can be varied in terms of: direction: 1235 = 5321 note order: 2135 intervallic construction: 3 (6th down) 5 6 7 Or any combination…

One of things that I must repeatedly emphasize about Jimmy Raney is his unique improvisational abilities as it relates to rhythm, and in particular his mastery of the more subtle and beautiful asymmetrical rhythm. It’s mind boggling how his monumental achievements in this area could’ve gone so largely unnoticed. I have noted in prior blogs his mastery of 6/4 and 5/4 phrases over 4/4. See here:   Jimmy Raney’s polyrhythmic concepts part1 and here:   Jimmy Raney’s polyrhythmic concepts part 2 In this blog’s example, 5/4 and 6/4 are used in combination, which is definitely more complex(!), but Jimmy Raney handled such things with ease. The example is a phrase from Jimmy’s…

Tne J-maan… makin’ records…The Rainster… playin’ tunesOf his own..with a band…the BAND-maanHavin a hard timemakin’ recordsplayin tunes..of his own…with a band…He’s a complainsterThe J-maan… 90’s SNL characters aside. I was discussing on my forum (in my usual self-critical fashion) a recording done with bassist, Ed Fuqua and drummer, Eliot Zigmund. Sax and trumpet were added on 3 tunes: father and son team Dan & Tatum Greenblatt. (See also Charles Monteiro video snippet of session). I also enlisted old pals, bassist, Mario Rodriguez, drummer, Todd Isler and guitarist Billy Newman on a couple of more latin oriented cuts. So how did it go? For starters let me say this: I was…

It’s been forever since I’ve last written, but rather than give a billion excuses why, let me just finish the story I started. So when Christian Egeskov told me he had the painting and had obviously obtained it completely innocently it put me in a wierd position. I didn’t want to get angry about it but I felt like he had to know the circumstances by which he obtained it. I told him the entire Ebay story. This was his some of his reply:Seeing the painting on the cover of “the date” album I got the idea the he painted a lot, and that the self portrait was just a…

After my father passed away in 1995 all of his relevant personal effects were to be put into a memorial room at Bellarmine College with the help of guitarist/teacher Jeff Sherman and Dad’s last companion Ola Miracle. We put in a letter of intent and kept a Raney Estate accounting with Ola at the helm as administrator. This went on for years. The room was reserved and she made her best efforts to hold the remaining Raney possessions: original paintings, old photos, albums, tapes, scores, correspondence, and assorted nick-nacks. She had a large condo in Louisville with most of the rooms filled with just about everything she had ever owned…

Continuing on from my earlier article, I mentioned that Charlie Parker and Stan Getz were among Dad’s strongest early influences. Parker was an influence on everyone including Getz. Getz was an influence on Dad on the bandstand from their several years touring together with the Stan Getz Quintet. Dad actually mentioned copying some phrases from Stan, including that trademark double-noted phrase of his. (Listen to Live In Tokyo’s “Darn That Dream” for reference). In the late 40s, at Al Haig’s suggestion, Dad woodshedded Charlie Parker’s Dial and particulary the Savoy Sessions. He learned all the solos note for note, figuring out the appropriate fingering (which ofcourse at that time there…

Rhythmic subtlety was key in my father’s playing. He picked up on this originally from bebop masters such as Charlie Parker and Bud Powell and also bandmate Stan Getz and then incorporated the concepts wholely as the hallmark of his style. Such things as rhythmic displacement, polyrhythmic grouping and polymetric phrasing were a regular feature in their lines and particularly Jimmy’s. The first Just Friends 5/8 phrase is one I constructed from memory. If it’s not an exact replication, it was very typical of the things he played. The second phrase is from a 1974 live duo recording at Bradley’s. Originally played in key of D(?)The snippet is from last…

Happy Birthday Dad! Click the link for a live Jimmy Raney excerpt from Bradley’s 1976 feed://www.jonraney.com/feed/

Many people have bad driving habits. Giving the finger, blabbing on the cellphone, fiddling for a station on the stereo, etc. Aside from the obvious vehicular dangers created, this doesn’t seem like very worthwhile behavior. Dad was very good driver but one day he became intrigued by the low pitch he always heard when passing over the bridge. It was at a definite pitch and it was created by the tires passing over those little spaced rivets found on many bridges. Given his fascination for physics he set out to figure out how far apart these rivets were in order to produce the pitch he was hearing at the speed…

In suburban Louisville where Jimmy Raney lived, there were a lot of crickets out at night. But at some point one of them managed to find a home right outside his front door of the apartment complex (perhaps in a door frame or nearby hallway plant). In the beginning he was curious how this cricket came to be displaced but with a small hallway as a sounding board, and with the cricket showing no signs of leaving, this nightly sound became quite irritating. Finally my father decided to take matters into his own hands. The next night when the cricket started his nightly song, he put a cassette tape recorder…

Once you’ve finally gotten that time to yourself, loosened your belt, grabbed some coffee, checked your email, dodged an instant mesage, killed a pop-up, logged off, patted the dog on his haunches, grabbed a hunk of cheese, had second thoughts about the expiration date of said cheese, glanced over at the dog and his look of disapproval (he would’ve enjoyed the cheese more than you) flashed back on something that went wrong at work, contemplated that look of disapproval from your boss (he would’ve enjoyed the day more without the f### up), ruminated on the possibility of something inherent to your thinking patterns that get you into these kinds of…