Chic legend Nile Rodgers is one of the world’s most famous and influential guitar players. And when he talked about the guitarists who had the greatest influence on him, the two names at the top of his list were Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery.
Rodgers revealed in Q magazine: “My whole style is Wes meets Hendrix. All R&B guitar playing – funk, soul, everything – is based on Hendrix. Not the soloing, but the rhythm parts. But I learned most from Wes.”
Indianapolis-born Montgomery was just 45 years old when he died of a heart attack in 1968, but his recorded work had a huge influence on the development of jazz fusion and smooth jazz. And it was Montgomery’s 1962 live album Full House that blew Nile Rodgers’ mind.
Full House was recorded at Tsubo Hall in Berkeley, California on 25 June 1962, with Montgomery leading a quintet featuring Johnny Griffin on tenor sax, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums.
One of the album’s cornerstone tracks is Blue ‘N’ Boogie, a jazz standard originally written in 1944 by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and his pianist Frank Paparelli. The song was also recorded by Miles Davis in 1954.
Rodgers named Montgomery’s version of Blue ‘N’ Boogie as his favourite guitar track of all time.
He told Q: “The first time I was over-impressed with guitar playing was when I heard Wes Montgomery’s Full House. It’s so good it’s just fucking ridiculous! The whole album is amazing but the track that really stood out for me was Blue ‘N’ Boogie. Ba da ba da da dee dah!
“I guess I was around 12 or 13 when I first heard it. I can’t remember exactly. When you’re that young, time blurs. Plus, I was a huge glue-sniffer back then!
“I was a hip young black kid living in South Central, LA, with a haircut like Malcolm X. We called it a ‘front’ – cropped on the sides with a peak at the front. It was cool. And when I was at the local skate rink the song I always heard was Wes’s Bumpin’ On Sunset.”
For Rodgers, the impact of Montgomery’s playing was profound.
He explained: “It was Wes that made me realise that the guitar was something unique and special. I had hipper-than-hip parents who were into modern jazz, so I was hearing Miles, Coltrane… but not many guitar players.
“When I heard Wes, it killed me. The guy played with his thumb, and it’s all downstrokes, which means it’s twice the effort, but he was still so fast it just smoked me!
“My old guitar tutor was actually Wes’s room-mate back in the day, a cat called Ted Dunbar. And it was Ted who taught me the chordal style I used in Chic. ‘Chucking’ – that’s what we call it in New York.”
He added: “I’m still as awestruck by Blue ‘N’ Boogie now as I was back then. It’s not just technically amazing, it’s full of soul, it’s so clever, and there’s riffs in there that would become jazz staples. Listen to George Benson and you’ll hear what I’m saying!”
