Biography
George Van Eps earned quiet renown among jazz guitarists for developing a harmonically advanced chordal-and-lead approach as early as the 1930s, an approach later overshadowed by the single-line approaches associated with Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. Like the outspoken inventor Les Paul, Van Eps pursued an independent path by creating a seven-string guitar in the late 1930s that incorporated an additional low string. This instrument allowed him to supply bass lines while simultaneously voicing chords and executing solos, producing a jazz counterpart to the fingerstyle techniques of country players such as Merle Travis and Chet Atkins. Van Eps himself wryly labeled the method “lap piano,” and a small circle of later musicians, among them Howard Alden and Bucky and John Pizzarelli, eventually took up the seven-string model.
Born into a musically accomplished household, Van Eps counted among his relatives the celebrated ragtime banjoist and audio engineer Fred Van Eps, a pianist mother, and three brothers—Bobby, Freddy, and John—who pursued professional careers in music. Although initially self-taught on banjo, he began working professionally at age eleven; two years afterward, exposure to Eddie Lang prompted a shift to guitar, and within months he was sharing bandstands with Lang as a teenager. Subsequent engagements included stints with Freddy Martin from 1931 to 1933, Benny Goodman from 1934 to 1935, and Ray Noble from 1935 to 1936. Van Eps then relocated to Hollywood, where he balanced freelance recording work with authorship of an instructional guitar manual and continued instrument design. He rejoined Noble briefly in 1940–1941, spent two years assisting in his father’s recording laboratory, and thereafter resumed studio freelancing that encompassed collaborations with Paul Weston and participation in the 1950s radio and television production Pete Kelly’s Blues.
As a featured artist or unaccompanied soloist, Van Eps issued only a limited number of recordings, among them Mellow Guitar for Columbia in 1956 and the Capitol albums My Guitar, George Van Eps’ Seven-String Guitar, and Soliloquy in the late 1960s. Severe illness in the early 1970s followed by a 1977 hand injury that fractured three fingers curtailed his schedule for a time. He reentered the studio in 1991 to begin a series of three duo albums for Concord Jazz alongside his former pupil Howard Alden, pairing classic standards with several original compositions, and he shared a solo-guitar release with Johnny Smith in 1994. Into his eighties Van Eps continued to embody a relaxed yet contemporary strain of swing. He succumbed to pneumonia on November 29, 1998.
Born into a musically accomplished household, Van Eps counted among his relatives the celebrated ragtime banjoist and audio engineer Fred Van Eps, a pianist mother, and three brothers—Bobby, Freddy, and John—who pursued professional careers in music. Although initially self-taught on banjo, he began working professionally at age eleven; two years afterward, exposure to Eddie Lang prompted a shift to guitar, and within months he was sharing bandstands with Lang as a teenager. Subsequent engagements included stints with Freddy Martin from 1931 to 1933, Benny Goodman from 1934 to 1935, and Ray Noble from 1935 to 1936. Van Eps then relocated to Hollywood, where he balanced freelance recording work with authorship of an instructional guitar manual and continued instrument design. He rejoined Noble briefly in 1940–1941, spent two years assisting in his father’s recording laboratory, and thereafter resumed studio freelancing that encompassed collaborations with Paul Weston and participation in the 1950s radio and television production Pete Kelly’s Blues.
As a featured artist or unaccompanied soloist, Van Eps issued only a limited number of recordings, among them Mellow Guitar for Columbia in 1956 and the Capitol albums My Guitar, George Van Eps’ Seven-String Guitar, and Soliloquy in the late 1960s. Severe illness in the early 1970s followed by a 1977 hand injury that fractured three fingers curtailed his schedule for a time. He reentered the studio in 1991 to begin a series of three duo albums for Concord Jazz alongside his former pupil Howard Alden, pairing classic standards with several original compositions, and he shared a solo-guitar release with Johnny Smith in 1994. Into his eighties Van Eps continued to embody a relaxed yet contemporary strain of swing. He succumbed to pneumonia on November 29, 1998.
Albums
