Kenny Burrell

Kenny Burrell ranks among the foremost practitioners of unadorned jazz guitar. His restrained yet lyrical approach, rooted in bebop and blues traditions, positioned him as a frequent collaborator from the mid-1950s onward and continues to serve as a benchmark against which many jazz guitarists evaluate their own playing. He entered the world in Detroit in 1931 and grew up amid music at home, where his mother played piano and sang in the Second Baptist Church choir while his father gravitated toward the banjo and ukulele.

At age twelve Burrell picked up the guitar and soon absorbed the work of Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Oscar Moore, T-Bone Walker, and Muddy Waters. The city’s thriving jazz and blues circles offered steady work, and his circle of friends and fellow musicians included pianist Tommy Flanagan, saxophonists Pepper Adams and Yusef Lateef, drummer Elvin Jones, and others.

His first recording appeared in 1951 on a combo date that also featured trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, saxophonist John Coltrane, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, and bassist Percy Heath. While already counted among the city’s top professional jazz players, Burrell kept studying privately with classical guitarist Joe Fava and enrolled in the music program at Wayne State University. After completing a B.A. in music composition and theory in 1955, he joined pianist Oscar Peterson’s trio for a six-month tour.

In 1956 Burrell and Flanagan relocated to New York City, where they quickly became two of the busiest sidemen on the scene. They performed with singers Tony Bennett and Lena Horne, worked in Broadway pit orchestras, and recorded alongside Coltrane, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, organist Jimmy Smith, vocalist Billie Holiday, and many more. That same year Burrell made his first appearance as a leader on the Blue Note album Introducing Kenny Burrell, his second session for the label yet the first to reach the public.

From the late 1950s forward he led his own sessions and contributed to countless others, among them the 1957 album The Cats with Coltrane, 1963’s Midnight Blue featuring saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, 1965’s Guitar Forms arranged by Gil Evans, and 1968’s Blues – The Common Ground.

Beginning in 1971 Burrell began offering college seminars, including the first ongoing academic course in the United States devoted to the music of composer, pianist, and bandleader Duke Ellington. He maintained an active schedule of performing, recording, and teaching through the 1980s and 1990s, issuing Guiding Spirit in 1989, Sunup to Sundown in 1991, Collaboration with pianist LaMont Johnson in 1994, Primal Blue in 1995, and the church-music-inspired Love Is the Answer in 1998.

On Concord he released the relaxed quartet session A Lucky So and So in 2001 and followed it with Blue Muse in 2003. To mark his seventy-fifth birthday in 2006 he recorded a live date issued the following year as 75th Birthday Bash Live! In 2010 he captured Be Yourself: Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Lincoln Center’s intimate venue, then two years later documented Special Requests (And Other Favorites): Live at Catalina’s. The Road to Love, another live set from Catalina’s Jazz Club in Hollywood, appeared in 2015, and Unlimited 1, recorded with the Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra, followed in 2016. In addition to his ongoing performances, Burrell founded and directs the Jazz Studies Program at UCLA and serves as president emeritus of the Jazz Heritage Foundation.