Emily Remler was only 32 when she died, but in less than a decade she made some of the most compelling jazz-guitar records of the 1980s.
A brilliant, warm-toned player with the fluency of Wes Montgomery and Pat Martino, she first won attention through immaculate straight-ahead jazz before moving towards more personal writing, bolder rhythms and electric sounds. Her best albums make an unusually satisfying short journey: from the elegant swing of her 1981 debut Firefly to the more exploratory final statement, This Is Me.
Born in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in 1957, Remler began playing guitar as a child, studied at Berklee College of Music and established herself in New Orleans before signing to Concord Jazz in the early 1980s. In a field still overwhelmingly male, she was impossible to dismiss once people heard her play.
Remler died of heart failure while touring in Australia in May 1990. But her music does not need the tragedy to make its case. Start with the albums below and you will hear a guitarist with superb time, a warm but incisive sound, and an increasingly individual musical imagination.
Firefly (1981)
If you want to understand why Emily Remler made such an immediate impression, begin with her debut. Firefly was recorded for Concord soon after Carl Jefferson, the label’s founder, heard her play in California. The setting is classic small-group jazz: Remler on guitar with Hank Jones on piano, Bob Maize on bass and Jake Hanna on drums.
It is an exceptionally sympathetic quartet for a first album. Jones gives the music an unhurried elegance, while Williams and Smith keep the pulse buoyant without ever crowding the guitar. Remler sounds comfortable from the first chorus: fluent in the language of bebop and standards, but never merely running exercises over the harmony.
Wes Montgomery was the obvious reference point, and Remler was happy to acknowledge it. She famously joked that inside she was a 50-year-old, heavy-set Black man with a big thumb, like Wes. You can hear the affection in her use of octaves and in the warmth of her phrasing. Yet she was not trying to recreate Montgomery note for note. Her lines are leaner and more angular, her attack a little sharper, and the sense of forward motion is distinctly her own.
For a first listen, try the title track and the ballad playing. Firefly is the best entry point for listeners who love the classic guitar records of the 1950s and 60s but want to hear that tradition carried forward with real confidence.
Take Two (1982)
Remler’s second Concord album appeared only a year later, and its title tells you something about how quickly her career was moving. Take Two does not attempt a radical reinvention of the debut. Instead, it shows a young player settling into a voice and becoming more relaxed about using it.
Again, the pleasure is in the combination of command and ease. Remler could negotiate fast-moving harmony cleanly, but she did not treat every solo as a display of athleticism. Her best choruses have shape: a melodic idea, a response, a change of register or texture, then a clear route back to the tune.
This is also a useful record for hearing the difference between influence and imitation. There are unmistakable traces of Montgomery, Joe Pass and Pat Martino in her vocabulary, but the character is less about quoting any one guitarist than about the calm authority with which she chooses and develops ideas.
If Firefly is the essential introduction, Take Two is the album to play next. It confirms that the debut was not a lucky first statement and makes a persuasive case for Remler as one of the most accomplished mainstream jazz guitarists of her generation.
Transitions (1984)
By her third album, Remler was beginning to place greater emphasis on her own writing and on a broader palette of influences. Transitions is an important bridge between the Concord records that established her reputation and the more adventurous directions she would explore later in the decade.
The title is apt. The record retains the clarity and swing of her earlier work, but it asks different questions. The rhythmic feel is often less conventional, the writing more central to the identity of the music, and the guitar tone sometimes more forceful. Rather than using standards as ready-made vehicles, Remler increasingly creates environments in which her own playing can move differently.
This is the album to choose if you already enjoy Firefly but want to hear her stretch beyond the most familiar straight-ahead format. It may not be the first Remler record a newcomer needs, but it is the one that makes her development feel most tangible.
Catwalk (1985)
Catwalk is the album many listeners point to as the strongest statement of Remler’s mature Concord period. It places her with trumpeter John D’earth, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Bob Moses: the same group heard on Transitions, now working with even greater assurance.
This is not a conventional guitar-trio album, although Remler remains central to its sound. D’earth’s trumpet expands the colour and counterpoint, while Gomez and Moses bring a mobile, rhythmically alert backdrop to seven Remler originals. The result is more open-ended than the earlier quartet albums, with a broader rhythmic palette and more of her personality in the writing.
Her improvising is especially impressive here. The technical foundation remains obvious, but the playing has become more personal: phrases break unexpectedly, rhythms pull against the bar line, and the sound is less concerned with satisfying expectations of what a jazz-guitar record should be.
For the listener who wants one album that demonstrates both Remler’s traditional grounding and her appetite for change, this is probably it. Catwalk does not discard the swing and lyricism that made her earlier work appealing; it uses them as a starting point.
East to Wes (1988)
The title of East to Wes openly acknowledges the guitarist who remained Remler’s most visible influence. It is a tribute to Wes Montgomery, but it works because she treats his music as material to think with rather than a museum piece to reproduce.
The personnel are ideal: Hank Jones returns on piano, with Buster Williams on bass and Marvin “Smitty” Smith on drums. Their presence gives the album a pleasing connection to Firefly, but Remler herself had changed substantially in the intervening years. Her tone is harder, the lines more fragmented, and the musical personality more independent.
That contrast is the record’s fascination. You hear her affection for Montgomery in the repertoire and occasional octave work, but you also hear how far she had travelled from the neat label of “the next Wes”. The tribute becomes a conversation between a formative influence and the musician Remler had become.
Choose East to Wes if you are already a Wes Montgomery fan, or if you want to hear Remler in a particularly strong acoustic setting. It is not simply a nostalgic homage; it is one of the clearest documents of her own artistic identity.
This Is Me (1990)
Released after her death, This Is Me is the essential final chapter. It is also the record that most plainly suggests the directions Remler might have pursued had she lived longer.
The sound is noticeably different from the Concord albums. Electric guitar and synthesiser textures enter the picture, and the music draws more openly on contemporary jazz, funk and pop. Not every listener who loves the warm acoustic swing of Firefly will immediately prefer it, but that is precisely why it matters. Remler was not standing still or preserving a marketable image of herself as a traditional guitarist.
There is something moving about its title, although the album should not be treated simply as a posthumous curiosity. It is a real artistic statement: less polished in the familiar Concord sense, more exploratory, and full of choices that make the earlier albums sound like only one part of a larger story.
If you have listened to the five records above, do not skip this one. It is the album that turns a very good discography into the tantalising outline of a much bigger career.
Also worth hearing: Cookin’ at the Queens: Live in Las Vegas 1984 & 1988 (2024)
For decades, Remler’s reputation rested mainly on a small run of studio albums. The 2024 release Cookin’ at the Queens: Live in Las Vegas 1984 & 1988 added a welcome new document to the story, collecting previously unreleased performances from two engagements at the Queens nightclub in Las Vegas.
Live recordings matter with a musician like Remler because they show how naturally her precision translated to the bandstand. There is more room for extended improvising, more direct interaction with the rhythm section, and a fuller sense of the personality behind the studio catalogue. It is not the place to begin, but it is an excellent next stop once the core albums have drawn you in.
Where to start with Emily Remler
If you only play one album, make it Firefly. It captures the elegance, swing and lucid melodic playing that first made people take notice.
If you want the most rounded picture of her, listen in this order: Firefly, Catwalk, East to Wes, then This Is Me. In four records, you can hear an exceptional guitarist move from a brilliant command of the tradition towards a sound that was increasingly her own.
Remler’s discography is small enough to explore in an afternoon. The remarkable thing is how much ground it covers. She was never merely a promising young guitarist, nor simply a female exception in a male field. She was a serious jazz musician whose best records still feel alive: direct, warm, rhythmically alert and more individual with each return.
Looking for more jazz guitar? Check out our round up of some of the best jazz guitarists of all-time, as well as the killer modern guitar players today.
