Biography
Few developments confound entrenched expectations more than a musician who shifts genres with real authority after critics have locked him into one category. Hank Garland lived that trajectory, moving from his position as Nashville’s most sought-after country guitarist to deliver a remarkable jazz album midway through his career, only for a car crash to halt what seemed like an ascent to jazz prominence. As a jazz artist he displayed a rich melodic and harmonic inventiveness, shaping a tone and attack that followed the principles Charlie Christian had established, while incorporating elements of Les Paul’s approach and a clear measure of Bud Powell’s influence. Even on his country sessions—such as Red Foley’s “Midnight” and “Hearts of Stone”—Garland’s polished jazz and blues instincts surface.
Raised in Cowpens, a rural community outside Spartanburg, South Carolina, Garland first encountered country music through radio broadcasts by Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith and Mother Maybelle Carter before trading banjo for guitar. He entered the Grand Ole Opry at age fifteen in 1945, recorded as a solo artist for Decca beginning in 1949, and took part in countless Nashville sessions while playing clubs on his own time. In July 1960 he presented himself as a jazz musician, forming a group booked for the Newport Jazz Festival that was left without a stage when riots forced the event’s cancellation.
The next year his first jazz album, Jazz Winds From a New Direction, surprised listeners in both jazz and country circles, prompting release of the follow-up The Unforgettable Guitar of Hank Garland. In September 1961, however, a severe automobile accident impaired much of his coordination and memory. He resumed playing later, yet never recovered the stature he had reached in the early 1960s. Hank Garland died on December 27, 2004, at the age of seventy-four.
Raised in Cowpens, a rural community outside Spartanburg, South Carolina, Garland first encountered country music through radio broadcasts by Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith and Mother Maybelle Carter before trading banjo for guitar. He entered the Grand Ole Opry at age fifteen in 1945, recorded as a solo artist for Decca beginning in 1949, and took part in countless Nashville sessions while playing clubs on his own time. In July 1960 he presented himself as a jazz musician, forming a group booked for the Newport Jazz Festival that was left without a stage when riots forced the event’s cancellation.
The next year his first jazz album, Jazz Winds From a New Direction, surprised listeners in both jazz and country circles, prompting release of the follow-up The Unforgettable Guitar of Hank Garland. In September 1961, however, a severe automobile accident impaired much of his coordination and memory. He resumed playing later, yet never recovered the stature he had reached in the early 1960s. Hank Garland died on December 27, 2004, at the age of seventy-four.
Albums
