Jazz Unlimited for Sunday, August 11, 2019, presents “The Career of Kenny Burrell.” Guitarist Kenny Burrell is one of the many jazz musicians who came out of Detroit in the late 1940’d to mid 1950’s. Born in 1931, he began playing guitar by age 12, and took music theory and classical guitar lessons. Influenced by Charlie Christian, Oscar Moore and mainly Django Reinhardt, Burrell made his first recordings with Dizzy Gillespie while he was a student at Wayne State University in 1951. He moved to New York in 1956 and soon became a stalwart for the Blue Note label. Burrell was also a studio musician. Although he maintained an active performing career up to 2015, he also taught at UCLA, starting in 1978. We will hear him with Thad Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Gene Harris, Illinois Jacquet, Johnny Hartman, Jimmy Smith, Paul Chambers, Aretha Franklin, Stanley Turrentine, Frank Wess, Quincy Jones, Gene Ammons, Ike Quebec, the Gil Evans Orchestra, Jimmy Heath, Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane.
The Slide Show presents some of my photographs of the musicians heard on this show.
Here is Kenny Burrell playing "Lover Man" with Larry Ridley (b) and an unidentified drummer in 1987.
