By the late 1950s, Wes Montgomery’s day started at 7am on the factory floor in Indianapolis. He worked until 3pm, went home, and at 9pm was on the bandstand at the Turf Bar. When that gig ended in the early hours, he moved on to an after-hours spot called the Missile Room and played until 5 in the morning.
Then he went back to the factory.
He kept up a day job and two nightly gigs for years. The guitarist who would change how jazz guitar was played was, for most of that decade, a local legend with a day job.
Home from the road
Montgomery was born in Indianapolis on 6 March 1923. He didn’t take up the six-string guitar until he was about 19, teaching himself by copying Charlie Christian’s solos from records.
In 1948 he joined Lionel Hampton’s big band, one of the most popular in the country. He hated flying and drove himself to gigs, and after two years on the road he went home. By then he and his wife Serene had a growing family, and they would eventually have seven children.
Seven children and a day job
That family is why he couldn’t simply move to New York and wait for a break. He worked shifts at a radio-parts factory, and at times as a welder. Music filled the rest of the day.
The hours took their toll, and he sometimes suffered blackouts.
Indiana Avenue
Most of Montgomery’s work was on or near Indiana Avenue, the centre of Black life in Indianapolis. By 1940 it had more than 25 clubs, with the Walker Theatre at its heart. Over the years he played the 440 Club, the Hub-Bub and George’s Bar. Away from the Avenue, on West 16th Street, he also had a long run at the Turf Bar, a club where Black musicians performed but, according to the city’s Black newspaper, only white customers were served.
The Missile Room, near the Walker Theatre, opened late and kept going after the other clubs closed.
He wasn’t the only musician in the family. His older brother Monk played bass and was one of the first jazz musicians to use the Fender electric bass, with Hampton in the early 1950s. His younger brother Buddy played piano and vibraphone, and the two of them formed a group called the Mastersounds.
The Indianapolis Recorder‘s poll named Wes the city’s best guitarist in 1953 and again in later years.
The thumb
Montgomery didn’t use a pick. He played with the side of his thumb, and he gave a practical reason: when he practised at home late at night, a pick was too loud for the neighbours and his children.
The thumb gave him a warm, rounded tone, and he liked it so much that he never changed. He also became famous for playing melodies in octaves, the same note an octave apart on two strings, which made his lines sound fuller. He admitted that at first it gave him headaches.
In his solos he would often build in stages, starting with single notes, moving to octaves and finishing with full chords, so that each chorus sounds bigger than the last.
Cannonball at the Missile Room
In September 1959 the alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley was in Indianapolis and went to hear Montgomery at the Missile Room. He contacted Orrin Keepnews, his producer at Riverside Records in New York, and told him to come and hear this guitarist.
Keepnews flew out, caught Montgomery at the Turf Bar and followed him to the Missile Room. “It was only a matter of seconds until I realized I was listening to something truly different,” he later recalled. He signed Montgomery there at sunrise. Within weeks Montgomery was recording in New York, and one of the tunes on his first Riverside album is called “Missile Blues”.
He was 36.
In January 1960 he made The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery with Tommy Flanagan on piano. You can hear his octaves at full speed on “Four on Six”. Full House (1962), recorded live at a Berkeley coffee house with Johnny Griffin and Miles Davis’s rhythm section of Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, catches him stretching out in front of an audience. Smokin’ at the Half Note (1965), again with Kelly’s trio, has some of his most exciting soloing. There’s more in our guide to the best Wes Montgomery albums.
A short second life
In the late 1960s Montgomery’s pop-jazz records for A&M sold to an audience far beyond jazz, and A Day in the Life (1967) was one of the best-selling jazz albums of its year.
He didn’t have long to enjoy it. On 15 June 1968 he died of a heart attack in Indianapolis, aged 45. About 2,400 people came to pay their respects, and Cannonball Adderley was among them.
For the label that found him, see our pick of essential Riverside Records albums, and for more players, our jazz guitar page.
