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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

Kenny Burrell and the Jazz Guitar

November 4, 2011 by Scott Timberg

RECENTLY I had the pleasure to walk down memory lane with one of my musical heroes, who marked his 80th birthday over the summer and is still going strong.

Here is my story on jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell, who will mark that milestone with a concert on Saturday Nov. 12. Burrell’s playing is a very elegant and disciplined take on the blues.

Burrell told me a lot of interesting stuff — including that his original inspirations were Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, and that he’s generally more influenced by horn players than other guitarists.

Burrell’s record Midnight Blue, which has Stanley Turrentine on tenor, was one of the first jazz guitar records to really turn my head around. (I can play the line from its opening track, “Chitlins Con Carne,” a little bit.)

One bit I didn’t have time to get into the story: When I asked Burrell what the most important thing for him to do when he improvised was, he said, “I listen.”

More later.

Filed Under: jazz, Los Angeles, ucla, west coast

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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