Artist: Barney Kessel

Barney Kessel was an American jazz guitarist. Known in particular for his knowledge of chords and inversions and chord-based melodies, he was a member of many prominent jazz groups as well as a "first call" guitarist for studio, film, and television recording sessions. Kessel was a member of the group of session musicians informally known as the Wrecking Crew. 

In the early 1940s, he moved to Los Angeles, where for one year he was a member of the Chico Marx big band. He appeared in the film Jammin' the Blues, which featured  Lester Young. Soon after, he played in the bands of Charlie Barnet and Artie Shaw.  During the day, he worked as a studio musician and at night played jazz in clubs. In 1947, he recorded with  Charlie Parker. He worked in Jazz at the Philharmonic and for one year in the early 1950s he was a member of the Oscar Peterson trio. 

During the 1960s, Kessel worked for Columbia Pictures and was a member of a band of session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew. At one point, after a two and a half hour session to record a one-chord song, "The Beat Goes On," Kessel is reported to have stood up and proclaimed, "Never have so many played so little for so much." He recorded with pop acts such as The Monkees and The Beach Boys and with jazz musicians Sonny Rollins and Art Tatum. 

Kessel eventually left studio work to concentrate on his jazz career both onstage and on records. Along with solo work, he formed the ensemble Great Guitars with Charlie Byrd and Herb Ellis. Kessel was rated the No. 1 guitarist in Esquire, DownBeat, and  Playboy magazine polls between 1947 and 1960. 

Further information about Barney Kessel is found here.

Photography credit: vernon.hyde, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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