jazz guitar

1900-mid-1930s

The stringed, chord-playing rhythm instrument typical of jazz ensembles from 1900 until the early 1920s was the banjo, an instrument which was much louder than guitars of the time. The banjo could generate enough sound to be heard in groups which included military band-style instruments such as brass, saxes, clarinets, and drums, such as early jazz groups. As the acoustic guitar became a more popular instrument in the early 20th century, guitar-makers began building louder guitars which would be useful in a wider range of settings.

The Gibson L5, an acoustic archtop guitar which was first produced in 1923, was an early “jazz”-style guitar which was used by early jazz guitarists such as Eddie Lang. By the 1930s, the guitar began to displace the banjo as the primary chordal rhythm instrument in jazz music, because the guitar could be used to voice chords of greater harmonic complexity, and it had a somewhat more muted tone that blended well with the upright bass, which, by this time, had almost completely replaced the tuba as the dominant bass instrument in jazz music.

The next important development in jazz guitar came in the mid to late-1930s with the advent of electrical amplification. Although Gibson was not the first commercial producer to make an electric guitar, the company made the first successfully-marketed electric guitar, the ES150 in 1936. It was an acoustic archtop fitted with a guitar pickup, which sensed the vibrations in the metal strings so that they could be amplified by a guitar amplifier. When guitarist Charlie Christian used the amplified electric guitar to improvise horn-like, single-line melodies in the jazz context, jazz and blues musicians became interested in the potential of the louder, new electric guitar. His playing was heard by millions in the recordings he cut with Benny Goodman.