Charlie Hunter

As a budding guitarist in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1980s, Charlie Hunter sought an edge by drawing from jazz master Joe Pass and the supple style of Tuck Andress from the duo Tuck & Patti, both players who wove bass lines into their six-string work to evoke multiple performers at once. Determined to push further, he pursued a single instrument capable of handling guitar and bass duties simultaneously. His self-titled 1993 debut featured a seven-string model that achieved this split, anchored by drummer Jay Lane and saxophonist David Ellis. Two years later the trio’s Bing, Bing, Bing! introduced Hunter’s custom Novax eight-string, crafted by Ralph Novak with divided frets and independent outputs for its guitar and bass sections. By plucking bass strings with his right thumb while stopping them via his left index finger and simultaneously fingerpicking guitar voicings and lines with the remaining digits of each hand, he produced genuine two-instrument textures.

Mid-decade Hunter joined the side project T.J. Kirk, whose repertoire centered exclusively on Thelonious Monk, James Brown, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. After abandoning an initial James T. Kirk moniker following objections from the Star Trek franchise, the group issued a self-titled 1995 debut and the 1996 sequel If Four Was One before dissolving. Hunter retained drummer Scott Amendola for an ambitious 1997 instrumental traversal of Bob Marley’s entire Natty Dread album, supported by saxophonists Kenny Brooks and Calder Spanier; the recording is widely regarded as one of his strongest statements. Following Spanier’s death in a car accident, Hunter relocated to New York with Amendola and formed Charlie Hunter & Pound for Pound alongside vibraphonist Stefon Harris and percussionist John Santos. Their 1998 album Return of the Candyman, dedicated to Spanier, shifted emphasis through Harris’s prominent mallet work and included a vibes-led reading of Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle.”

Thereafter Hunter embraced frequent personnel shifts, pausing between tours to record a 1999 duo project with drummer-percussionist Leon Parker and a self-titled 2000 ensemble release that again featured Parker. He also contributed substantially to drummer Mike Clark’s 2000 comeback album Actual Proof. Closing his Blue Note tenure, Hunter released Songs from the Analog Playground in 2001, his first collection to incorporate vocalists, among them labelmates Norah Jones and Kurt Elling plus Mos Def. In 2003 he moved to Ropeadope and launched two new ensembles: the Charlie Hunter Quintet on Right Now Move and the initial Groundtruther collaboration with percussionist-composer Bobby Previte, documented on Come in Red Dog, This Is Tango Leader. Later that year the Charlie Hunter Trio reconvened for Friends Seen and Unseen, reuniting him with drummer Derrek Phillips and saxophonist John Ellis from the Quintet. Groundtruther expanded into a flexible trio format; Latitude arrived in 2004 with saxophonist Greg Osby, followed by Longitude with DJ Logic in 2005.

The Charlie Hunter Trio resurfaced in 2006 with Copperopolis and promptly disbanded when Ellis pursued solo work. Hunter promptly assembled a new unit featuring Erik Deutsch on keyboards and Simon Lott on drums, resulting in the 2007 Fantasy release Mistico. Beginning in 2008 he issued music independently, starting with Baboon Strength by his trio and continuing in 2010 with Gentlemen, I Neglected to Inform You You Will Not Be Getting Paid, which substituted a three-piece horn section for keyboards. Over the ensuing years he pursued a series of duet recordings, first reuniting with Amendola for the 2012 album Not Getting Behind Is the New Getting Ahead and the 2013 follow-up Pucker, both spanning soul-jazz, blues, and funk. In 2014 he partnered with former Arrested Development guitarist Dionne Farris on Dionne Dionne, interpreting material associated with Dionne Warwick.

Reconvening his Trio in 2015 with Previte and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes—who had appeared on Right Now Move—Hunter previewed the project with the May single “Those People” before issuing Let the Bells Ring On the following month. The 2016 quartet album Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth reunited Previte and Fowlkes with cornetist Kirk Knuffke.