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…