EASY LIKE MUSIC TO LISTEN TO
by Barney Kessel with Shelly Manne, Red Mitchell

Barney Kessel's emergence as a major jazz guitarist was inseparable from the musical environment of Los Angeles. During the first half of the 1950s, the city developed a remarkably active jazz community in which musicians from different generations and backgrounds worked together in clubs, recording studios, radio orchestras and Hollywood studios. Kessel was at the centre of this scene.
Born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1923, Kessel had grown up listening to jazz and was strongly influenced by Charlie Christian, whose electric guitar playing had demonstrated that the instrument could function as a genuine improvising voice rather than merely as a rhythm instrument. Kessel met Christian as a teenager and absorbed the older guitarist's approach to single-note lines, rhythmic drive and blues expression. By the early 1950s, however, Kessel had developed those influences into a highly individual style of his own.
His playing combined the language of swing with the harmonic and melodic vocabulary of bebop. He could produce long, horn-like single-note lines, but he was equally comfortable with chordal playing and with the rhythmic flexibility of the modern jazz guitarist. His tone was clear and articulate, and his phrasing retained a strong blues element even when the harmonic material became sophisticated.
By 1953 Kessel was firmly established in Los Angeles. His reputation was already sufficiently strong for him to begin recording regularly as a leader, and the first sessions represented here document an unusually productive partnership with several of the leading musicians of the West Coast scene.
The earliest recordings in this collection were made at Radio Recorders in Los Angeles on November 14, 1953. Kessel was joined by Bud Shank, Arnold Ross, Harry Babasin and Shelly Manne. The repertoire included Tenderly, Bernardo, Vicky's Dream and Just Squeeze Me. The session combines standards with Kessel's own compositions and provides an early example of the compact, sophisticated ensemble sound that would become characteristic of his Contemporary recordings.
The musicians around Kessel were themselves becoming important figures in the West Coast jazz movement. Bud Shank had developed into one of the leading alto saxophonists and flutists of the Los Angeles scene; pianist Arnold Ross was a respected studio and jazz musician; Harry Babasin was an important bassist; and Shelly Manne was already one of the most versatile drummers in American jazz.
A second Radio Recorders session followed on December 19, 1953. This time Kessel worked with Buddy Collette, Claude Williamson, Red Mitchell and Shelly Manne, recording Lullaby of Birdland, What Is There to Say?, Salute to Charlie Christian and I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart.
The change in personnel subtly changes the colour of the music. Collette's flute and alto saxophone give the ensemble a different tonal character from Shank's earlier session, while Williamson and Mitchell provide a somewhat more spacious harmonic and rhythmic foundation.
Among the most personal pieces from the period is “Salute to Charlie Christian.” Kessel's admiration for Christian was not simply historical. Christian had provided a model for how an electric guitarist could approach improvisation with the directness of a horn player, and Kessel transformed that example into his own musical language. His tribute does not attempt to reproduce Christian's playing literally; instead, it reflects the rhythmic vitality, blues feeling and linear conception that Kessel had absorbed from him.
The title “Easy Like” itself points toward another aspect of Kessel's musical personality. The composition was recorded on February 23, 1956, with Buddy Collette, Claude Williamson, Red Mitchell and Shelly Manne. The session took place at Contemporary's own Los Angeles studio and was produced by Lester Koenig.
By this time Kessel had become closely associated with Contemporary Records, the Los Angeles label founded by Lester Koenig. Contemporary's recording environment was particularly important to the development of the West Coast sound. Engineer Roy DuNann's recordings for the label were known for their clarity and spaciousness, while Koenig's productions brought together many of the most accomplished musicians working in Southern California.
The February 1956 session also illustrates Kessel's ability to move effortlessly between original material and standards. Easy Like, That's All, April in Paris and North of the Border form a compact program in which Kessel's guitar remains the central voice while the ensemble provides an unusually transparent setting. Contemporary's documentation confirms the four titles and the personnel of Collette, Williamson, Mitchell and Manne.

The second album represented here, Music to Listen to Barney Kessel By, takes Kessel's West Coast concept considerably further. The recordings were made at Contemporary's studio on August 6, October 15 and December 4, 1956, and use substantially larger woodwind combinations.
The August session brought together Kessel with Buddy Collette, Jules Jacob, Howard Terry, George W. Smith, Justin Gordon, André Previn, Buddy Clark and Shelly Manne. The repertoire included Makin' Whoopee, Gone with the Wind, I Love You and Fascinating Rhythm.
The October session employed a somewhat different combination of musicians, with Ted Nash replacing Collette in the principal reed role, Jimmy Rowles at the piano and Red Mitchell on bass. The resulting tracks — Cheerful Little Earful, My Reverie, Blues for a Playboy and Carioca — show Kessel within a carefully arranged woodwind texture while retaining his freedom as a jazz improviser.
The repertoire is revealing. Kessel moves between Broadway songs, film themes, jazz standards and his own composition without treating them as fundamentally different musical worlds. My Reverie, for example, transforms a melody derived from Debussy into a popular song, while Love Is for the Very Young derives from David Raksin's theme for The Bad and the Beautiful. The latter had become a successful instrumental theme and was published by Robbins Music.
The final session, on December 4, 1956, continued the same approach. Love Is for the Very Young, Mountain Greenery and Indian Summer were recorded with Kessel, the woodwind section, Jimmy Rowles and Red Mitchell, while Claude Williamson played piano on Mountain Greenery according to the session documentation. Laura, however, is a different setting altogether: Kessel and Red Mitchell perform it as a guitar-and-bass duet.
This contrast is important to Kessel's music. He was equally convincing in a tightly arranged ensemble and in an almost completely exposed duet. The large woodwind arrangements give his guitar a distinctive place within the texture, but Laura demonstrates how little he actually needed around him. His melodic conception was sufficiently developed to sustain the music with only a bass counterpart.
The West Coast setting also meant that Kessel was surrounded by musicians who moved freely between jazz, popular music, recording work and Hollywood. This flexibility became one of the defining characteristics of the Los Angeles jazz scene. Kessel himself was particularly well suited to it. He could play straight-ahead bebop, accompany singers, work within arrangements, record film and popular repertoire, and still maintain a recognizable personal voice.
His connection with Charlie Christian remained a central part of his musical identity, but by the middle of the 1950s Kessel was no longer simply a successor to Christian. He had absorbed Christian's horn-like approach to guitar and combined it with influences from Charlie Parker, Lester Young, swing guitarists and the harmonic language of bebop. The result was a guitar style that was both deeply rooted in the swing tradition and unmistakably modern.
The recordings from 1953 to 1956 therefore capture an important stage in Kessel's development. The early Radio Recorders sessions show him working in small groups with musicians such as Bud Shank, Buddy Collette, Arnold Ross, Claude Williamson, Harry Babasin, Red Mitchell and Shelly Manne. The later Contemporary sessions broaden the palette through carefully constructed woodwind arrangements while preserving the improvisational freedom of the jazz ensemble.
By the end of 1956, Kessel had become one of the most recognizable guitarists in American jazz. His position on the West Coast was firmly established, and the following year would bring one of his most famous musical partnerships: the formation of The Poll Winners with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne. But the recordings gathered here already show the qualities that made that later collaboration possible — an extraordinary command of harmony, an instinctive sense of swing, a strong melodic personality and an ability to make the guitar function simultaneously as rhythm instrument, harmonic instrument and improvising voice.
The music of Kessel's Los Angeles years is consequently not merely a document of the so-called West Coast jazz style. It is a record of a guitarist developing a language of his own within one of the most active musical communities in postwar America. Between 1953 and 1956, Barney Kessel moved from intimate quintet sessions to increasingly elaborate studio arrangements without losing the essential directness of his playing. Whether surrounded by a small rhythm section, accompanied by a single bass, or placed inside a chamber-like group of woodwinds, the guitar remained unmistakably Barney Kessel's voice.

EU Public Domain Notice
The historical sound recordings included in this release are in the public domain in the European Union. Blue Music Group has created a new digital restoration and mastering of these historical recordings. The digital restoration and mastering by Blue Music Group are protected by applicable copyright and related rights. Rights may differ in other territories, including the United States. This release is not intended for distribution in the United States.

http://easylike.bluemusicgroup.com