Jazz guitar recently lost one of the great ones. Jack Wilkins, champion of modern traditionalism (or is it traditional modernism?) passed on May 5, leaving an unsurpassable legacy. An exponent of the post-Wes Montgomery school, he emerged just after George Benson and Pat Martino, and took guitar-driven hard bop to another level.

Born in Brooklyn to a nominally musical family (his father played sax and trombone, his mother was a self-taught singer/pianist) on June 4, 1944, Wilkins was bred on big-band music but listened to Chuck Berry, rock and roll, doo-wop, folk, and country, decoding chord patterns and licks by ear. He studied fundamentals with Joe Monti (including Mel Bay/Nick Manoloff methods), and learned to read music, which qualified him for lucrative gigs in local pop, dance, and Latin groups, and began performing professionally in his early teens to “get out of my parents’ house and experience life.”

Inspired by Johnny Smith’s Designed for You album, he became obsessed with jazz, absorbed Christian, Pass, Kessel, Farlow, and Raney sounds, and developed his technique on a budget Gibson electric, the ES-125T. He studied more-advanced music with Sid Margolis, progressed rapidly, and in his teens worked under seasoned bandleaders Les Elgart, Warren Covington, and Sammy Kaye. He supplemented his jazz studies with pianist John Mehegan and took classical-guitar lessons from Rodrigo Riera. He also briefly worked with singer/composer/pianist Barry Manilow as an arranger and vibraphonist. As he grew more prominent in NYC, he caught the ear of Bob Shad (Mainstream Records), who recruited him for Watershed, an experimental session conceived as a modernization of Sonny Rollins’ The Bridge and led by Monk sideman Paul Jeffrey; it featured Wilkins’ guitar throughout, with blazing single-note improvisations on “Minor Scene” and characteristic chordal sophistication on “Brand New Day” and “Serenity.”

Wilkins’ playing on “Red Clay” presents a wealth of ideas. The vamping minor-mode progression (similar to “Sunny” in C# minor) provides an ideal environment for unlimited variations. His opening phrases in the solo (1:18) contain a sultry entrance with half-step string bends, rhythmic motif of 4th intervals (measures 3-5), pentatonic/hexatonic licks (5-6), and a stepwise ascent decorated with chromatic passing tones (7-8). He introduces a key intervallic theme in 8, and ends with a pentatonic melody incorporating the A# instead of the predictable B tone.

Windows ’73 was an auspicious debut as leader. A trio date with bassist Mike Moore and drummer Bill Goodwin, it paid homage to the genre established by Burrell, Kessel, and Smith, but occupied middle ground during the rise of fusion via Wilkins’ emphasis on post-bop standards (Corea, Trane, Shorter, Hubbard) and Moore’s modern originals. The six-hour session yielded only first takes, presenting an empathetic group, comfortable and fluent with atypical tunes, yet remained obscure until attaining cult status in hip-hop circles when “Red Clay” was sampled by A Tribe Called Quest, Chance The Rapper, and Angie Stone. As a member of Buddy Rich’s septet in ’74 and ’75, he met and impressed many of the world’s foremost jazz legends. Very Live at Buddy’s Place and Transitions (featuring Jack’s original “Fum”) remain telling documents of the period. He followed with two albums on Chiaroscuro – Merge and You Can’t Live Without It – the former an all-star group with Randy and Michael Brecker, Eddie Gómez, and Jack DeJohnette, then worked as Morgana King’s accompanist in ’79-80 and became a popular studio player in NYC, appearing on sessions with Chet Baker, Astrud Gilberto, Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus, Earl Hines, Sonny Fortune, and others. He joined Manhattan Transfer for a year in ’82 while recording Captain Blued and Opal (’83) for CTI. Through the next two decades, he followed with Call Him Reckless, Alien Army, Mexico, Keep in Touch, Trioart, and Bluesin’ on various labels. If jazz is “the music of surprise,” then listeners were more than surprised by the fusion-oriented Alien Army. Many jazz fans couldn’t follow him down that rabbit hole, which at times sounded like George Benson playing through Jeff Beck’s rig.

In the new millennium, Wilkins maintained forward trajectory through relentless performing, high-profile sessions, teaching (Manhattan School of Music and innumerable clinics) and released several albums in varied tangents. Just the Two of Us (2000) was a duet session with Gene Bertoncini, Heading North found him in a two-guitar quartet with Jimmy Bruno, Reunion resurrected the stellar lineup of Merge, and Christmas Jazz Guitar presented thoughtful arrangements, exploiting multiple overdubbed guitars, of holiday favorites. His final opus Until It’s Time (’09) was an eclectic quartet session that mixed familiar and uncommon standards (“These Foolish Things,” “Show Me,” “Two for the Road”) with bebop (“Airegin”), pop (“Arthur’s Theme,” James Taylor’s “Blossom,” Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Until It’s Time for You to Go”), Venezuelan world music (“Lauro’s Waltz”), Latin (“Tico Tico”), and classical (“Fur Elise”). The ambitious program opened with a fitting nod to his original inspiration, Johnny Smith, in “Walk Don’t Run.”

STYLE
Wilkins’ blend of modernism and tradition distinguished him from his contemporaries, and blazed a trail for adventurous next-generation players like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jonathan Kreisberg, and Gilad Hekselman. As early as Watershed, he trod a different path than most in the Montgomery/Benson continuum. His straight-ahead traditions were subjected to modernity through the prism of tunes most guitarists didn’t play at the time, exemplified on Windows. As guitarist, he was influenced by a variety of musicians, from the usual jazz suspects (Smith, Kessel, Pass, Hall, Farlow) to the less-obvious Hendrix, Bream, and Kottke, and post-bop jazz horn and keyboard players.

“My One and Only Love” captures Jack’s multifaceted chord-melody style. Played in free time, it opens with a cascading melody blending major-pentatonic and bop sounds, and arpeggiated G13 and G7#5 chords. Note his alternation of single-note and chordal textures throughout and an artificial harmonic in measure 6. His modernism is epitomized by the Ab7 arpeggio line (8) while parallel thirds (9) harken back to Kessel and Smith. The phrase ending (10) outlines the turnaround changes in broken shell chords.

Renowned for taking chances, he cultivated an adventurous approach that added danger and excitement to his style. His most-evident link with the past is the clean, electrified archtop timbre he favored, though all bets are off when it comes to Alien Army, with its processed sounds and the distorted tone and jazz-rock inclinations of “Chess,” “No Time But Now,” “Clean Dreamer,” and “Pod Dance.” He varied his amplified clean tone from dark and warm to bright and lively, striking a balance between thicker sounds and stringy acoustic timbres. His advanced sense of harmony, dissonance, and unusual chord colors found a natural home in guitar-trio settings a la Burrell, Kessel, Hall, where melodic freedom and innovation are prized, but he also applied these tactics to larger groups such as the quartet ensemble in Keep in Touch.

Wilkins’ flamboyant single-note technique was a sonic identifier; prominent in rapid, slurred flurries (often tremolo picked), long, linear double-timed runs, and quick arpeggio figures (sweep-picked) injected to jazz lines. However, he was equally fluent with mainstream swing/bebop phraseology and frequently chose economy or consecutive picking over alternate strokes when changing strings in a melody, reminiscent of Pass and Kessel. He generally articulated with plectrum, but applied fingerstyle, hybrid picking, and combinations depending on the music. His single-note passages contained coherent harmonically-grounded bop melodies, connective chromaticism, atonal and side-slipping lines, frequently exploiting pentatonic patterns and 4th intervals. His blues ethic was epitomized in the mix of funky blues licks contrasted by bebop and futuristic post-bop melodies in tunes like “Freight Trane” and “Isotope,” and the occasional idiomatic string bend, especially prevalent on Alien Army. Pursuing modern jazz conception, he reduced complex chords like B9#11 to a simpler F# minor equivalent, using a system of minor conversion associated with John Coltrane and Pat Martino. His quest for alternative sounds led to exploring synthetic pitch collections, like the Double Augmented scale (Bb-C#-D-F-Gb-A-Bb) in “Song for the Last Act” and “Canzona,” and yielded substitute hexatonic patterns and triad sequences built on major thirds as well as major-7#5 sonorities. All are characteristic melodic devices of post-bop jazz. He often added Wes-inspired octave passages to solos like “Freight Train” (5:15-5:26) but generally strummed these with a pick.

Jack’s approach to harmony was diverse. It ranged from the familiar jazz-guitar shapes, standard progressions, bebop extensions, and traditional chord-melody approaches of Pass, Hall, Kessel, and Smith to modal, polytonal, quartal and atonal structures reflecting the tensions of post-bop music. The latter is exemplified in the block-chord passages of “Red Clay” (2:45-2:57). He applied Smith’s close voicings, from which he developed unusual sonorities, pianistic clusters, and bittersweet dissonances often played as partial-chord fragments. He exploited parallelism with stacked fourth chords and successive triads (sometimes on a pedal point) to create drama and modal ambiguity. To impart greater color, he decorated solo arrangements with harmonics – using natural harmonics, artificial harmonics (plucked a la Farlow with pick/fingertip in “If I Were a Bell” and swept in “Moonlight in Vermont” live), and harp harmonics reminiscent of Lenny Breau and Ted Greene (“Two for the Road,” intro of “Angel Eyes” live). As rhythm guitarist, he exhibited a range of comping, from sparse rhythmic punctuation and steady time-defining chord strums to active walking-bass stride passages (check out “Gone With the Wind” with Bertoncini), and regularly used thumb fretting on the sixth string for larger voicings.

The classical influence was another factor in Wilkins’ style, evident in “Carnival” (Call Him Reckless), where he relied on fingerpicking while openly quoting “Leyenda.” The semi-classical “Moon Rain” (Alien Army), with its string orchestration and acoustic-guitar colors, and the baroque opening of “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” (Heading North) reveal other facets of his jazz/classical fusion.

This excerpt from “Red Clay” (2:01) demonstrates Jack’s command of the guitar during fast, complex improvisation. Note octaves (measure 1), bends and pentatonic fragments moved to different scale degrees, post-bop side slipping and development of the aforementioned intervallic theme (2-3). The intricate passage work in 3-5 features his patented high-velocity triplet runs. He closes decisively by tonicizing Bm briefly with an A# ending note.

ESSENTIAL LISTENING
Windows, Merge, and Call Him Reckless are essential. Also recommended are Alien Army, Trioart, Reunion, and Until It’s Time, as well as Live at Buddy’s Place, Watershed, and duets with Bertoncini and Bruno.

ESSENTIAL VIEWING
Online highlights include performances with Eddie Gomez and Andy Luescher: “Angel Eyes,” “Fum,” and “Cheeks” (’94), solo renditions of “Spain,” “Nardis” and “No More Blues” (American Institute of Guitar, ’83), trio takes on “Red Clay” (’19 Northampton Jazz Fest), “All Blues” (’12, Mexico), “Moonlight in Vermont” (’15, North Wales) and “It Could Happen to You” (’16, How Art Thou Cafe), and “Meteor” with Howard Alden and Jon Burr. Also noteworthy are clinic and instructional clips.

SOUND
After Wilkins’ Gibson L-5 was stolen, he acquired an early-’50s L-7C (17″ archtop fitted with neck humbucker) that became his main instrument from ’73 into the mid ’80s, seen on Windows and Merge. He strung it with Darco 6200 medium-gauge strings. In Manhattan Transfer, he played an ES-340TD with DiMarzio DiMeola pickups for a more-contemporary sound, and sometimes recorded with a ’50s Telecaster. His acoustics were a Guild F-48 and Ovation Country Artist nylon-string.

In the ’90s, he also played a blond Gibson L-5CES, sunburst ES-175 (Alien Army), and later used a Gibson Tal Farlow, Bill Comins GCS-1ES, and several Benedetto archtops; Wilkins’ association with the brand began in ’88, when Bob Benedetto built a Fratello to replace Jack’s stolen L-7. In ’98, he acquired a second Fratello with two Kent Armstrong PAFs. The Fratello served as the basis for a Wilkins signature model designed in ’03 by Bob in the Fender/Guild custom shop and played at his 70th birthday party. Jack used Ampeg amps with his first L-5, but after ’73 routinely plugged into Fender Twin-Reverbs – a ’72, and later, blackface reissues. When playing fusion, he favored a Roland JC-120 and Alesis Microverb, and sometimes added an Ibanez Tube Screamer, Ibanez Stereo Chorus, Boss Delay, and Morley volume pedals.

Wolf Marshall is the founder and original Editor-In-Chief of GuitarOne magazine. A respected author and columnist, he has been influential in contemporary music education since the early 1980s. His new book, Jazz Guitar Course: Mastering the Jazz Language, will be released this winter. Others include 101 Must-Know Rock Licks, B.B. King: the Definitive Collection, and Best of Jazz Guitar, and a list credits can be found at wolfmarshall.com.

This article originally appeared in VG’s November 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.