Tal Farlow: Jazz Guitar and Bebop

(c) -



STEVEN CERRA, COPYRIGHT PROTECTED; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.




"In 1944-1945 I was in the service stationed outside



Philadelphia. I used to go to this little night club in town located in an alley named

Whenever I think of guitarist Tal Farlow I think of fast notes flying all over the place. Maybe it because as Doug Ramsey comments in his book, Jazz Matters:



"Part of the fascination with Farlow's playing is that he plays close to the edge of time."



I gather that the development of Tal's speed on the instrument begins with one of those "necessity-is-the-Mother-of-invention" stories.



Tal always claimed that he worked to acquire speed in his playing to keep up with the speedy vibraphone playing of Red Norvo, whose trio he was a member of in the early 1950's along with the legendary bassist, Charlie Mingus.



According to



Ted Gioia in WEST COAST JAZZ: "Norvo had a preference for fast tempos" which initially created misgiving in bassist Charlie Mingus and Farlow who recalled: "I had all kinds of difficulties at first."



Ted goes on to observe:



"The recordings of the Red Norvo Trio tell a different story from these mutual laments about musical inadequacy. The ensemble work bristles with virtuosity; few trios of that period, perhaps only Art Tatum's or Bud Pow ell's, could boast as firm a command of fast tempos. Mingus emerges on these sides as a powerful young bassist with solid time and a strong, re sounding tone. His solos are few, but his presence is constantly felt.



Farlow is perhaps best known as a consummate bebop guitarist: 'In terms of guitar prowess,' writes critic Stuart Nicholson about these ses sions, 'it was the equivalent of



Roger Bannister breaking the four minute mile.'22But on these recordings his speedy melodic inventiveness is matched by an extraordinary variety of rhythmic and harmonic variations. On Cheek to Cheekhis elaborate chord substitutions hint at the polytonal work of the avant-garde. On Night and Day he pushes the group by playing the guitar body like a bongo. In essence, Farlow serves as soloist, accompanist, and rhythm guitarist--all with great skill. Freed by the ab sence of keyboard and drums, Farlow continually takes chances with the music." [p. 341]



THE NEW GROVE DICTIONARY OF JAZZ offers this description of Tal's playing:



"Farlow was a leading guitarist in the early bop style, with phenomenally fast execution ( ) and a rapid flow of ideas. He has been admired for the unusual intervals in his improvised lines, his original handling of artificial har monics, and his gentle touch (even at exceedingly fast tempos), achieved partly by using his thumb instead of a plectrum." [J. Bradford Robinson]



Although he's rarely mentioned with the legendary Bebop masters who brought superior techniques to super fast tempos - musicians such as Charlie Parker on alto saxophone, Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, J.J. Johnson on trombone and Bud Powell on piano - Tal brought speedy, scintillating Bebop ideas to the amplified guitar and in so doing, transformed the instrument, a process that had begun a decade earlier with Charlie Christian.



Tal's relative, but since remedied, obscurity is also a point that is also touched on by Richard Cook and Brian Morton in THE PENGUIN GUIDE TO JAZZ ON CD, 6THED.:



"One could hardly tell from the catalogue that Farlow is one of the major jazz guitarists, since most of his records - as both leader and sideman - are currently out of print. Perhaps, in the age of Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, his plain-speaking is simply out of favor.



His reticence as a performer belied his breathtaking speed, melodic inventiveness and pleasingly gentle touch as a bop-orientated improviser.



His tenure at Verve included some marvelous sessions and at least THE SWINGING GUITAR OF TAL FARLOW [Verve CD 314 559 515-2] has returned; there are plenty more that could be reinstated in the catalogue. [Actually, since this writing, thanks to



Michael Cuscuna and his great team at



Mosaic Records, all of Tal's Verve CD's were subsequently issued as a limited edition boxed-set.]



Farlow's virtuosity and the quality of his think ing, even at top speed, have remained marvels to more than one generation of guitarists, and given the instrument's current pop ularity in jazz, his neglect is mystifying."



The JAZZ MASTERS [#41 Verve CD314 527 365-2] compilation remains an excellent introduc tion to his work, creaming off the pick of seven albums at Verve."



Each of Tal's Verve CD's have also been individually issued to CD by Verve and the editorial staff at JAZZPROFILES thought it might be interesting to continue its remembrance of Tal and his music by exploring the insert notes to a few of them on these pages.



"Of all the guitarists to emerge in the first generation after Charlie Christian, Tal Farlow, more than any other, has been able to move beyond the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic vocabulary associated with the early electric guitar master.



Tal's incredible speed, long, weaving lines, rhythmic excitement, highly developed harmonic sense, and enormous reach (both physical and musical) have enabled him to create a style that clearly stands apart from the rest.



He was the first jazz guitarist to explore and incorporate the total instrument. Players as stylistically diverse as Jim Hall, Steve Howe, Alvin Lee, John Mclaughlin, Jimmy Raney, and Attila Zoller have all acknowledged Tal's influence on their guitar playing and, in some cases, on their outlook on life.



Talmage Holt Farlow was born on June 7, 1921 in



Greensboro, North Carolina. He was raised in a musical family. His mother played piano and his father played several instruments including guitar, violin, and mandolin. His father gave him a mandolin that was retuned like a ukulele and showed him a few basic chords; he left Tal to figure out the rest. Music was considered a hobby in the family so Tal's first vocation was that of sign painter. (Until a few years ago, he made a good living by painting signs whenever the opportunity arose.) As Tal continued to develop musically, he also picked up his father's interest in electronics and often spent time building radios and other types of equipment. Eventually, after hearing Christian's sound, Tal built an electric guitar by constructing a pickup from an old pair of earphones and a coil of wire.



At age twenty-two and playing professionally, Tal attracted the attention of bandleader Dardanelle Breckenridge. Between 1943 and 1945, Tal toured with Dardanelle up and down the East Coast, playing in such cities as



Richmond, Virginia,



Washington, D.C., and



Philadelphia and eventually landing at the Copa Lounge in



New York City. Upon leaving Dardanelle he returned to



Philadelphia, splitting his time between painting signs and playing with a clarinetist named Billy Krechmer at a jazz club called Jam Session.



In 1948 Tal, along with pianist Jimmy Lyon and bassist Lenny DeFranco (brother of clarinetist Buddy), left



Philadelphia and returned to



New York City. Within about six months, the guitarist landed a gig with a popular cocktail pianist, Marshall Grant. It was during an engagement with the Marshall Grant Trio at Billy Reed's Little Club that bandleader Red Norvo first heard Tal. Soon after, the vibraphonist hired him to replace Mundell Lowe. The re-formed Red Norvo Trio, with Red Kelly on bass, headed to



California and then to



Hawaii for a six-week engagement.

The trio returned to



California to play at The Haig, and it was there that Norman Granz first heard Tal and immediately approached him to offer a recording contract. (Of the more than thirty albums in Tal's discography, nearly one third were recorded for Verve between 1952 and 1960.) Although Tal was given a lot of artistic freedom, '



Norman liked some things more than others. From me, he liked fast tempos,' the guitarist relates.



All of the characteristics of Tal's unique style -- the intricate single lines, the complex re-harmonization's and chord voicings, the special effects such as harmonics (both single-line and palm), and the retuned A string (for extending the bass range on chord solos) -- are found on these tracks.



Of all the words used to describe Tal Farlow, the one most often used is genius. When I asked him how he felt about the term, he displayed his characteristic grace and humility, then absolutely rejected it. I proposed that his successes were, like those of so many other greats, a result of hard work and really digging it out. His reaction to that assessment was,



'That seldom ever entered into any particular instance of my picking up the guitar and practicing in any conventional or traditional way. I mean, I would hear something that I liked from Bud Powell or Bird and try to work it out and gradually put it into my little bag of tricks.



'I think about Jimmy Raney's attitude toward the guitar, and mine is similar, in that I don't have any great, strong allegiance to the instrument. Jimmy said, 'It happens to be the instrument I can play.' It's less a love for the instrument than it is a love for the music.'"



Steve Rochinski - December 1994



Steve Rochinski is a guitarist, on the faculty at the Berklee College of Music in



Boston, and the author of THE JAZZ STYLE OF TAL FARLOW: THE ELEMENTS OF BEBOP GUITAR (Hal Leonard, Milwaukee. 1994).



Bill Simon provided these insights and observations about Tal and his music in these insert notes to THE SWINGING GUITAR OF TAL FARLOW [Verve 314 559 515-2]:



"Ask any professional guitarist -- in jazz, that is -- to name his own favorite guitarists and it's ten to one he'll name, in this order, Segovia, Charlie Christian, and Tal Farlow . . . Segovia for his complete mastery of the instrument and his consummate musi cal artistry, the late Christian for his powerful jazz drive and for his original concept of the guitar's role in jazz . . . and Farlow as the currently operating individual who has carried the instrument to its most advanced and satisfying stage in modern jazz.



Guitarists comprise a well-knit clique these days. As a group, they probably are more familiar with the background of their instrument than is any other group of musi cians. Also, they are the most versatile. Some of our best jazz guitarists started out as hillbillies and as blues strummers. The modern guitarist can play anything from a Bach suite to plain old country "chording". He can play flamenco, smart show tunes, can riff like a sax section in a jazz band, and can whisper intimate accom paniment to a torch singer.



It seems that the top men are constantly in touch with each other, tossing "gigs" to each other, exchanging ideas, and the like. I've never seen it the same way among other types of instrumentalists. In fact, it was Mundell Lowe, another of the top gui tarists and one of the most successful, who recommended Tal as his successor when he left the Red Norvo Trio. Most of the top-rank modern guitarists have played with Red, and his group always has been the showcase wherein their talents have been viewed by the larger jazz public."



The reissue of THIS IS TAL FARLOW as a limited edition Verve Elite CD [314 537 746-2] offered this introduction:



"By the time Tal Farlow came to



New York, he remembers in the interview that comprises the liner note, a lot of musicians knew of his remarkable technique. His prowess had been developed in what he calls 'cocktail trios' -- nothing rowdy, he says, so he could 'get away with a lot of stuff.' And of course in



New York he became mesmerized by the great beboppers and got into more complex harmonies and new ways of phrasing.



This union, of technique and concept, produced records now recognized as landmarks in the development of the guitar trio.



Idolized by Wes Montgomery, Farlow is the guitarists' guitar player; this is the album that best displays his unique talent."



Here's the interview with Tal Farlow conducted by Barry Feldman in March, 1997, about a year before Tal passed away:



Reissuing This Is Tal Farlow



"BF:How did you end up being a guitar player, being from the South and not liking country music?



TF:Country music never appealed to me very much; I preferred what I was hearing over the radio, the standards, which is what was being played those days.



BF:Right, it was the big bands. I think there's an assumption that anybody from down there is going to listen to country music, so how did you -- ?



TF:Well, there was a lot of that around, you know, that was the music, that people in the neighborhood were into.



BF:Did you like listening to Bob Wills?



TF:Well, he had sort of a foot in each camp. I mean, he had a couple of jazz--



BF:--fiddlers.



TF:The guitar players, too; I think [they played jazz]. They were improvising, and I was digging that, they were really good players.



BF:I think Jimmy Wiebel played with him. I know there was a famous song, Roly Poly, and Jimmy played a famous solo there. I know he got out of that and played more straight jazz. But you're appealing more to the rhythm section -- when you say rhythm section, you're referring to hearing Count Basie.



TF:Yes, the music of the horns and the drums. I didn't know at the beginning that there was any special kind of music that jazz guys were playing. I mean, I was hearing dance music generally.



But the more I learned about what the big bands were doing, the more I dug Basie and Ellington. And then there were Guy Lombardo and Freddy Martin, the sweet type, arranged music with [just] melody [while] the other guys played loose with more spirit.



BF:And the drive.



TF:Right.



BF: Did you ever play Freddie Greene's type, four-to-the-bar rhythm?



TF: No, I spent very little time in any kind of rhythm section, actually. I've played mostly in really small groups, where rarely if ever did I play four to the bar.



BF: Now the phenomenal technique -- which came first, the technique or hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and going, "Oh, boy, I gotta play faster"?



TF: Well, I couldn't play fast until I got with Red Norvo [in 1949] because there was never ever a demand for it.



BF:Really?



TF: You know, I was not in groups that were -- I was a professional before I was a jazz player, because I played quite a long time with Dardanella. She was a great musician, a great piano player, but she was into playing at the Copacabana, places like that. She liked jazz, too, and we played a little bit of that.



I got to



New York in a roundabout way, because I went to



Philadelphia first. I used to go from my sign-painting business in



North Carolina when a gig opened up in Philly -- my friends would call me and I would go there and play.



The town was full of, I think they call them cocktail trios. This was during the war, and the clubs had to charge [an entertainment] tax, add it to the customer's bill, if it had dancing or singing. So in most places there was only instrumental music, and the guitar was very popular then -- it could be paired with an accordion or vibes or piano. And then with a bass you had your typical cocktail trio.



They were all listenable; it wasn't rowdy or anything. So you could get away with a lot of stuff: It didn't insult anybody. There was quite a lot of that work around Philly. And also in those days there were a lot of big bands coming through town, and those guys would come to the clubs where I was playing. They'd hear me, so by the time I got to



New York quite a lot of people -- musicians -- already knew me.



I used to hang out with Jimmy Raney quite a bit. And we used to just sit in a room and play a lot. We were both big fans of Bud Powell, because we both figured, Boy, if what he was playing could come out of a guitar amplifier...



BF: Why Bud and not Bird or Dizzy?



TF: Well, there's a similarity between the sound of the guitar and the sound of the piano. It's a per cussive sound, and that was one of Bud's big features. Buddy DeFranco said it sounded like Bud's fingers were going three inches into the keyboard when he played: He was playing with such fire. Also, he played real long phrases, predominantly eighth notes.



BF: That's what struck me when I first heard how you play, without skipping a beat, at fast tem pos. Because your strong tone ... I never heard guitar like that before.



When I heard your recordings, it completely blew my mind that you could just step in with the horn players without missing a beat. The other guitar players -- I'm not criticizing them -- sometimes didn't, they just didn't. I read an interview of Wes Montgomery, and he said that when you came out, he hadn't heard anything like it: the ability to hang in the pocket with all those horn players.



TF: I was fascinated with Bird and Diz, getting into more complex harmonies, with different ways of phrasing and different sounds from the rhythm section. I tried to copy some of Bird's stuff, as everybody knows... as everybody did. But I didn't really have much opportunity to play [that] until I got with Red Norvo, when I replaced Mundell Lowe.



Before that I had been working with a piano player named Marshall Grant, who was not like Dardanella but more in that camp than jazz. I learned a lot of Broadway show tunes from him. Some were obscure, and I suggested to Red that we play them; he knew some of them, too. This was before that was a big thing, making--



BF: -- playing the standard straight up, yes, they used to put--



TF: -- "My Fair Lady" and things like that. I guess the things that I played with Red, a lot of those things just evolved on the job -- because we worked pretty steadily, we worked a lot of restaurants in



Hollywood and



New York, too.



Recording for Verve



BF: You had done a lot of recording with Eddie Costa, but This Is Tal Farlow has a drummer present. And Eddie was a wild man, a great, driving player. He's really not very well known now.



TF:No, he died too early.



When I was out on the Coast with Red I got a message from a guy named Sy Barren, who owned the Composer Club. A lot of guys I knew had been working for him; they probably said, "Why don't you try to get Tal?" Eddie was one of those guys, although I didn't know him, but I did know Vinnie Burke, who was the



third guy in the trio as it first started. We had played there quite a lot, maybe two weeks at a stretch, and he'd have us back maybe three times a year. So, [we started] out, Vinnie Burke, Eddie, and me. Later on it was Bill Takas and Jimmy Campbell.



Jimmy was playing with Marian McPartland, and sometimes he would play with our set, because we didn't have drums. And sometimes Bill Evans, who was a good friend of Eddie's, came in and played piano and Eddie would play vibes. BF:I think what was great about it, with Eddie and you, was the pushing.



TF: We had that going for us. We sort of egged each other on.



BF: It was tremendous egging on, because it made great music. And Eddie would play a lot of those octave solos, the double-octave solos they play way down, low in the bass range of the keyboard. And you'd follow them. The trio records are amazing, but this one is special because you know you have a drummer there. I figured that was the kicker, because we didn't get to hear you guys play much on record with a drummer.



TF: I remember that Bill Takas was supposed to make the record because he'd been playing with us. He said he would be there but he was hung up at the airport, it was a snowstorm or something. And Knobby Totah, I think he was recording with Cy Coleman somewhere in the same building. He had also been playing with Marian at the Composer, and he knew the stuff that we were playing. You know, you don't really have to know it that well --



BF:Yes, it's pretty much standards.



TF: And on some of it, it's hard to tell who's playing what.



BF: You did the record where you wrote the arrangements, THE PORTRAIT OF TAL FARLOW. Did you want to do more records like that, but Norman [Granz] didn't want you to?



TF: He didn't care really what I did. He was less interested in me trying to see if I could write and have a bunch of horns. He really wanted me to play almost all the time; he said it's you the people [want.] He put your name on the album, that's who they want to hear. He said you bring all these other guys.... But I think Jimmy had been doing things like that, with a couple of horns. So I just got the idea, trying to write some things out. I didn't write endings, and it's hard to put them together on the date.



BF:It seems



Norman stood by you a long time.



TF: Well, he had the people that recorded for him, and then he had the guys that worked for him. I never did work for him other than making records, you know. But I guess he used guys like Ray Brown -- I would get him whenever I could.



BF: When you used the drummer, that was your call?



TF:Yes, I think so. Though



Norman may have asked for him.



BF:



Norman ran the most successful jazz operation from a financial standpoint. There was nothing to compare to what Norman Granz pulled off.



TF:Yes, I know.



BF:Did he ever ask you to go out with JATP?



TF:No.



BF:Would you have gone if asked?



TF: I might have, but when I met him he didn't say...Well, he knew I was working with Red, we were working steady. But I don't think I would, I think I was more in his view a record ing guy than--



BF: Yes, he usually had Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel.



TF: I think Barney was a very close personal friend of



Norman's. [They were friends] before



Norman really hit it big.



BF: So you did most of your recordings for Verve out in LA, is that correct?



TF:Yes, most of them.



BF:Now, you finally, you retired around 1959.



TF: Well, I didn't retire, but I came down here in



Jerseyand, you know, things were sort of slow then, and...



BF:Are you asthmatic?



TF:No, I used to be when I was kid.



BF:I read that that was the reason you didn't want to be in clubs.



TF:Oh! I think a guy in



Germany [started this]



BF:You're killing all my stories, "Tal Farlow Quits the Clubs Because of Asthma".



(Laughter)



BF:There's not a lot to like, I guess, about being on the road after fifteen years, playing in the clubs.



TF:Well, I like to do festivals, and occasionally I'll work in a club.



Here are some excerpts from Nat Hentoff's original liner notes to the LP version of THE SWINGING GUITAR OF TAL FARLOW:



"'Of all current jazz guitarists,' Jimmy Raney was saying recently, 'Tal is the one I most like to hear. There are several with a great deal of facility and others with less facility but more ideas. Tal has both. He also does the best chord work of anyone I've heard. I mean in terms of its polish. He has a wild harmonic sense, and fortunately, the long fingers to match it.'



'His time and sound are fine,' Raney adds, 'and I'm especially impressed by the fact that when he plays a solo, he's never unsure and never hung up. It's not that he's worked out a bag of tricks -- because he really does improvise -- but that he knows what he's doing and is in complete control all the time.'



Tal himself, during a Metronome interview, stressed the importance to him of sound. 'If I don't get a good sound, I can't play at all. A good sound to me is a natural sound, a natural guitar sound. I play a good many fast tempos, because I feel better playing in that kind of groove. I don't really like the sound I get on slow tempos or ballads. It's thin. It's difficult to sustain a note on the ampli fied guitar, especially in the high register. Johnny Smith gets a beautiful sustained sound; he does it by adjusting the amplifier a particular way.'



Raney feels -- and I agree -- that Tal's tone is hardly that attenuated on ballads and that his con ception on slow tempos is considerably more absorbing than that of most of his contemporaries. And at whatever tempo, there is a resilient, forward-motion pulsation that can be exhilarating when Tal is playing with men of his caliber and with conceptions that complement his.



Tal ended the conversation for these notes by citing the guitarists he most admires -- Jimmy Raney, Barney Kessel, and Jim Hall. 'And what Johnny Smith can do with sounds. He can sustain long notes and his sound is almost as strong whenever he stops a note as it is when he starts it.'"



Tal has been the subject of three articles in DOWNBEAT Magazine. The first of these was in the December 5, 1963 issue and it was contributed by



Ira Gitler:



"Whatever Happened to Tal Farlow?"



"It was a hot and hectic day in July when it happened. The Down Beat editorial staff was assembled in a



Chicago hotel to cover a music-merchants convention being held there, when a representative o! the Gibson guitar com pany casually mentioned to one of the stall members that there was a concert given by the company to intro duce some ot its new instruments, one of which was going to be a Tal Farlow model.



'Tal Farlow,'the staff man said, mulling the name of one ot the great Jazz guitarists who had not been heard on the Jazz scene for five years. 'Whatever happened to him anyway?'



'Why don't you ask him?' replied the company repre sentative. 'He's coming in this afternoon.'



Alter the initial shock had worn off, the staff man set up an appointment to interview the guitarist in the short time between Farlow's rehearsal and performance. But conventions being what they are, there was no opportunity to get into a lengthy discussion with Farlow. A promise of another get-together in



New York was agreed upon.



Last month in



New York. Farlow was more relaxed and voluble than he had been in



Chicago. He had driven up from his Sea Bright, N. J., home on the Atlantic coast, where he has lived since his marriage in 1958. That year also had marked his last important public appearance, at the old Composer club on



Manhattan's W. 5Sth



St., with the late pianist Eddie Costa and bassist Vinnie Burke.



Farlow had been voted new-star guitarist in the 1954 Down Beat International Jazz Critics Poll, won a similar award in a poll of musicians conducted for the 1956 year book edition of Leonard Feather's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JAZZ, and had taken first place in the "established" division of the 1956 and 1957 critics polls. Yet. with all this recogni tion, he had chosen to remove himself from the scene.



Farlow. a shy, yet warm, person whose appearance has accurately been described as Lincolnesque, said of his atti tude toward seeking jobs in music, 'I don't push very hard.' Perhaps even more telling is his statement; 'I never really have thought of myself as a 100% percent professional musician. There were times when I would stop and do sign painting.'



In



Greensboro, N. C., where Talmadge Holt Farlow wasas born in 1921. he worked in a sign shop when he was about twenty years old.



His father played guitar, mandolin, violin, and 'even some clarinet.' Tal had started playing guitar, too. but it was mostly 'sort of



North Carolina style until I heard Charlie Christian,' he explained. 'These fellows had a music store opposite the sign shop, and I used to go over there and wear out the records. I didn't have a player of my own.'



Farlow did have a radio though, and he heard Christian on remote broadcasts- of the Benny Goodman Band.



'They'd let him stretch out and give him a whole fistful of choruses.' Farlow reminisced. 'First, I couldn't figure out what kind of instrument it was. It was a guitar of some kind, but at that time electric guitars were mostly all Hawaiian guitars. It had a little of that quality, but it not that slippin' and slidin' business of a Hawaiian guitar. That was the first time I had heard an electric Spanish guitar."



As he did with countless other guitarists, Christian soon had exerted a tremendous influence on Farlow. 'I copied his choruses--I learned how to play them,' Farlow said. 'Then I started listening to other Jazz groups. One of them was Count Basic's little band with Lester Young, and I found out there was a lot of similarity between some of the things Charlie was playing and some of the things Lester was playing. Also, Lester's style was pretty easily adapted to the guitar. It sort of fell in place.'



Farlow didn't limit his listening to records and radio. Through his first profession he was able to hear live music.He explained: 'They had these dances for colored only, and white people couldn't getin except for an area reserved for spectators. I did all the signs for these dances so I could get a couple of passes-heard Hampton, Basie, Andy Kirk. The Trenier twins had a band that sounded like Jimmie Lunceford's. I think Lunceford played there too. I heard a lot of good music that way. Except that I know that a lot of the fellows we'd read about in Down Beat like - Lester - he'd never be in the band down there because he had other places to be when the band made the southern scene,Iguess, Ididmeet guitaristIrving Ashby when he was with Hampton.'



During the war Farlow started playing with dance bands around



Greensboro. Pianist Jimmy Lyon, who in later years was a fixture at the Blue Angel and who recently has been holding forth at



New York's Playboy Club, was stationed at a nearby air base, and he and Farlow began playing together. 'He has a magnificent harmonic sense,' Farlow said. 'It stimulated my interest.'



Farlow is that rare bird--the natural musician who never took lessons and who still can't read. 'I never did study because I don't think there was anybody in that area who could have given me what I was alter.' he said. 'You should learn to read right away, With guitar, it's easy to play a little bit. and alter you've played that much, you get to the point where it's boring to go back and learn scales and read. Even now I sit down and say "I'm going to brush up and see if I can't make my reading passable anyway." You can just take so much of that and you start plamg something else.' He added that his reading lack makes him ineligible for studio and recording work of a certain nature, but when asked it he would like to play these jobs, he smiled and replied. 'I don't believe so.'



In 1942,Farlow went north to



Philadelphia but soon returned to



Greensboro and sign painting. After the war he returned to the



Quaker



City where he joined the trio of vibist Dardanelle. After playing in



Philadelphia, the group moved to the Copa Lounge in



New York. Charlie Parker was playing on

Farlow's work shortage was solved at the end of the year when he became part of the Red Norvo Trio. Almost immediately he went to



California with the veteran vibist. 'And alter working so hard to get a



New York card,' the guitarist said.



'Working with Norvo, he said, helped him develop speed and facility:



'Red liked to--I guess he still does--play real fast tunes, things on which he was featured with Woody Herman's band, like I Surrender Dear and The Man I Love. When I first went with him, it was, embarrassing because I couldn't keep up with him. and it was a question of its having to be done. I worked on my technique so I could make the tempos.'



Red Kelly was the bassist with the group, but he left to rejoin Charlie Barnet and Charlie Mingus took his place. Farlow said. 'I think Mingus was carrying mail in



San Francisco at the time. Red knew him, called him, and he came down.' Together, the trio developed a tremendous unity, as their old Discovery records still attest.



Farlow left Norvo in 1954 to work with Artie Shaw's reactivated Gramercy Five but returned to Norvo for a while before leaving permanently in 1955. By this time he had established himself as one of the ranking guitarists of Jazz: his fluidity, fire, amazing continuity. and purity of sound were the hallmarks of his style.



Farlow was in



California in 1955 when Sy Barron, owner of the Composer, contacted him and persuaded him to come back to



New York to play at the club in a trio with pianist Eddie Costa and bassist Vinnie Burke.



'Eddie had given him the idea.' Farlow said. 'I hadn't known Eddie, but he was a friend of Sal's [



Salvador, Eddie and Vinnie had been playing at the Composer in a two-piano group with John Mehegan.'



This was the beginning of a happy association for both players and club. When the Composer closed, Farlow lost a home. He hasn't played in a club since, except for some sitting in with Burke at the bassist's job in



Long Branch, N.J.. last summer.



Barron. however, is in the process of erecting a new club, the Composer-Lyricist, on



"Tal Farlow: Turning Away from Fame"



-BURT KORALL, DOWNBEAT, February 22, 1979



"Tal Farlow -- the name must strike a positive chord if you've been listening to jazz for a while. Before absenting himself from the limelight, this guitarist brought to the music a flock of fascinating ideas, an innovation or two, flashing technique and more than a little of himself.



In all, Tal was on the scene a little over ten years. The 1950s, the Eisenhower decade, was his time. During this period he had a strong effect on fans and his colleagues, mak ing memorable music with the Red Norvo Trio, the Artie Shaw Gramercy Five, and his own trio, featuring explosively talented Eddie Costa on piano and creative Vinnie Burke on bass.



His career prospects were excellent. He was at his peak. Then quite suddenly -- or at least it seemed so at the time -- Tal picked up his mar bles in 1958 and went home. He got away from the big city and its nonsensical hustle, while escaping the "show biz" aspects of jazz so repugnant to him.



'Perhaps I was meant to be away from New York and places like that,' Tal says, adding: 'I got fed up with the backstage parts of the jazz life, the "business" relationships, the push ing and shoving, it seemed that I became in creasingly involved with stuff that had noth ing to do with music. Though I wanted to con tinue playing, I couldn't deal with all the oth er things. So I made a change.



'I moved to Sea Bright on the



Jersey



Shore with my wife. I like it there. It's quiet and peaceful. It feels right to me. I do things around the house, tinker with tape recorders and boats. I teach a bit and sometimes get out and play, mostly locally. Every once in a while I make a record or appear at a festival.



'I'm not really a part of the scene,' he con tinues. 'It may sound unusual to you, but I never felt like a professional musician. I never had any desire to be a leader, either. I just wanted to play guitar. I guess I got into the whole thing by accident, anyway.'



Tall, quiet, reserved, basically shy, Tal had a sign painting and display business in



Greensboro, North Carolina, when he heard Charlie Christian on network radio with Ben ny Goodman in 1940. It was an extraor dinarily striking experience that changed the course of his life.



'Christian made music important to me,' the guitarist says. 'I rearranged the schedule at my shop so I could work nights and listen to band remotes from places like the Panther Room of Chicago's Sherman House, the Penn sylvania Hotel in



New York, Frank Dailey's Meadowbrook in



New Jersey and the Holly wood Palladium.



'I became very familiar with Miller, the Dorsey's, Basie, Glen Gray and a number of other bands. But Christian was the one who got me moving. I bought all the Goodman-Christian recordings and memorized Charlie's choruses, note-for-note, playing them on a second-hand $14 guitar and $20 amplifier. Though a late starter for music -- I was 22 in 1940 -- I sure was fascinated."



Tal kept listening to the radio and progres sively enlarged his record collection, Lester Young became a favorite to and major influence. After a little while, the budding guitarist noted a link between Christian and the Presi dent of the tenor men.



'The conception, feeling and phrasing of their music have
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