Artist: Kevin Eubanks

Kevin Eubanks is an American jazz and fusion guitarist and composer. He was the leader of The Tonight Show Band with host Jay Leno from 1995 to 2010. He also led the Primetime Band on the short-lived The Jay Leno Show. 

Eubanks was born into a musical family. His older brother, Robin Eubanks, is a trombonist, and his younger brother Duane Eubanks is a trumpeter. As an elementary school student, Eubanks was trained in violin, trumpet, and piano at the Settlement Music School (in Philadelphia). He later attended Berklee College of Music (in Boston, Massachusetts). 

After Eubanks moved to New York, he began performing with noted jazzmen such as Art Blakey (1980–81), Roy Haynes, Slide Hampton and Sam Rivers. Like his brother Robin, Kevin Eubanks has played on record with double bassist Dave Holland.

His first recording as a leader, Guitarist, was released on the Elektra label when Eubanks was 25 years old. It led to a seven-album contract with the GRP label and four albums for Blue Note. In total, Eubanks has appeared on over 100 albums. In 2001, he founded the label Insoul Music on which he has released six albums.

Further information about Kevin Eubanks is found at KevinEubanks.com.

Photography credit: Brianmcmillen, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Eubanks, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).