Previously Unissued Wes Montgomery Recordings

Cover of the album being discussed

One week from today, Resonance Records will release Maximum Swing: The Unissued 1965 Half Note Recordings, a two-CD collection of broadcast recordings by the Wes Montgomery Trio. Guitarist Montgomery co-led his trio with pianist Wynton Kelly, and they were joined by Jimmy Cobb on drums. As many may have anticipated, Bandcamp has created a Web page for this album, which is processing pre-orders. The album is also being released as a set of three LPs, which may purchased through a Rough Trade Web page. (For those who might find that name intimidating, Rough Trade was my best source for Brian Eno CDs at a time when few other shops were carrying them.)

Calling Montgomery a virtuoso guitarist verges on understatement. During the pandemic, when YouTube was my primary source for listening to performances, its upload of the Wes Montgomery: Live in ’65 provided an excellent opportunity to appreciate the many dimensions of his virtuosity. As a result, I was not particularly surprised to see that the new Resonance release involved performances from that same year. Mind you, the quality of the gear at the Half Note was a far cry from “high fidelity” standards, probably because it was not intended for studio standards; but Montgomery’s technical skills can be appreciated even without high-quality audio.

Taken as a whole, the new release accounts for seven sets at the Half Note club in New York. The first four of these took place on September 24, November 5, November 12, and November 19. The remaining three sets are documented only as “Late 1965.” All of the sets involve a quartet with four different performers taking on the bass line. Paul Chambers joined the trio on September 24, followed by Ron Carter on November 5. Herman Wright played on November 19, and the remaining three sets were all taken by Larry Ridley.

The presence of an announcer suggests that all of the sets were given “live” broadcasts. This is most evident when that announcer fumbled the title of the first work performed on Carter’s set. (The first guess was “‘Round Midnight” followed by “So What!”) Fortunately, the booklet for the album gets it right. Regardless of what the announcer says, the music is John Coltrane’s “Impressions!”

However, that fumble reminded me of how few opportunities there are these days to listen to “live” jazz performances through the media of either television or radio. (I am beginning to think that, due to streaming technology, radio broadcasting has become almost, if not entirely, obsolete!) Mind you, I do recall seeing a livestream from the SFJAZZ Center during the pandemic; but it was an event that I encountered almost by accident.

What strikes me most about the Half Note sets is their intimacy. Whether he is listening to Montgomery’s own originals or the “standards” of other composers, the attentive listener will be able to appreciate that the guitar work says as much about the music as it says about the guitarist’s own “presentation of self.” Mind you, any performance worthy of listening is likely to emerge as a dialog between “self” and “other.” Whether or not Montgomery was explicitly aware of that dialog in his Half Note performances, one can appreciate the unfolding of that dialog on each of the tracks on this new release.