Can A Telecaster Be Used For Jazz?

[archiennc]

I like the sound of the Tele and really think it lends well to some of the more jazzier styles. I have played in venues amongst some "traditionalist" however that when I pull out my Malachite Green Tele, they are almost ready to escort me to the door. You hear terms like "Country Guitar" or my "Grandfather's Axe". What difference should a guitar make? How can any particular guitar define a style or genre of music. I'm curious as to how some of you feel about this. I've included a track that I've done using a Telecaster on a smooth jazz kinda' thing.

I try not to do too many cover songs but I was experimenting with trying to get a really convincing jazzy sound out of my Tele- wanted a fatter, hollowbody kind of vibe with a P-90 kind of attack. (Actually I guess that would be closer to a 335 kind of timbre.) Well, I don't know if that's what I finally got but I liked the sound on this recording. Please take a listen and give me what you think. The song is called "Creepin'" and has a smooth jazz kind of feel a la Jeff Golub and I'm really proud of this cut. It really came close to a sound I'd like to call my own even if it's a little generic to some. I can always count on you guys to be the hardest critics of all the forums I visit so give me a listen and tell me what you think. Here's the link:


Click On the Music Link To The Song "Creepin' "

[Mike Rice]

Ignorance is NOT bliss! It's a handicap.

I don't how I say this without angering those true jazz devotees, but in about 30 years of playing it's those folks who, in a quest to be the "best" musicians, were always the quickest to shut themselves down to new genres and new ideas. Music, musicians, and even gear, had to make some elusive "cut" to be taken seriously. Am I generalizing? Of course I am. But I'm also not pulling this out of thin air and I've heard similar gripes from scores of others.

The tone and playing on your song is great. totally legit. About 10 years ago when I was in really good shape and racing bicycles (on and off road) I joined a local club for their Thursday night ride. These morons literally made fun of my low tech equipment and warned me they had no "trail sweeper" so I should be sure I knew my way home. I won't lie, they were good. But I killed myself to make sure I finished in the top half of the pack. At the end of the night they aksed if they'd see me next week. I rode off and said "I don't think so boys". Not sure if they understood the "boys" reference, but I did and that's all that mattered.

Fire up your Tele just like you did for Creepin and show those boys that talent and Teles can handle any music you care to throw at them!

[archiennc]

8) Well stated and point well taken. Thanks for the listen. I try not to let the snobish comments bother me but every now and then................. :evil:

[Pvee]

http://www.zipnbuy.com/jcurverecords...09&ProdID=3658

This is about all I can show you right now.

I have some awsome jazz and big band stuff that Scotty did at a private event once but I can't share it at this time. Wish I could..

All done on that ragged old Tele.

[jazzalta]

Nice tone archiennc. I'll jam with ya anytime.

[Bruce Kiely]

First I'd like to thank Mike Rice for the wise (as usual) words.

And I'd further like to state that any musician who judges another by the type of gear used is not to be taken seriously. I would just ignore the snobbery and let your music speak to those open minded enough to hear what you have to say.

And finally, I'd like to point out the following jazz players whose gear does not or did not conform to the conventional "jazz gear" standards .....
- Mike Stern played a Tele (neck humbucker) in Miles Davis' band, and still plays it to this day
- Ed Bickert plays a Tele with a neck humbucker, and has played with a list of jazz greats as long as my arm
- Ted Greene, one of the great "unknown" jazz educators and performers, is a well known Tele slinger
- Bill Frissell has been known to sling a Tele
- Ornette Coleman created an entirely new jazz language playing a plastic saxophone
- Bela Fleck's jazz banjo style is as good as it gets

Etc., etc., etc. .......

Cheers,
BK

[hippietim]

The simple answer is NO. A Tele cannot be used for Jazz. It is simply incorrect. That'd be like using a pitchfork to mow your lawn.

[lapsteel]

Originally Posted by hippietim

The simple answer is NO. A Tele cannot be used for Jazz. It is simply incorrect. That'd be like using a pitchfork to mow your lawn.

Sure you can use a Tele for jazz. Just listen to Mike Stern, Bill Frisell, or Ted Greene, all jazz masters that are frequent Tele players. Even Joe Pass used a Tele for a while.

[Big Cookie]

If you can't use a Tele for jazz, somebody better tell Cornell Dupree.

[tahoebob54]

Originally Posted by archiennc

I like the sound of the Tele and really think it lends well to some of the more jazzier styles. I have played in venues amongst some "traditionalist" however that when I pull out my Malachite Green Tele, they are almost ready to escort me to the door. You hear terms like "Country Guitar" or my "Grandfather's Axe". What difference should a guitar make? How can any particular guitar define a style or genre of music. I'm curious as to how some of you feel about this. I've included a track that I've done using a Telecaster on a smooth jazz kinda' thing.

I try not to do too many cover songs but I was experimenting with trying to get a really convincing jazzy sound out of my Tele- wanted a fatter, hollowbody kind of vibe with a P-90 kind of attack. (Actually I guess that would be closer to a 335 kind of timbre.) Well, I don't know if that's what I finally got but I liked the sound on this recording. Please take a listen and give me what you think. The song is called "Creepin'" and has a smooth jazz kind of feel a la Jeff Golub and I'm really proud of this cut. It really came close to a sound I'd like to call my own even if it's a little generic to some. I can always count on you guys to be the hardest critics of all the forums I visit so give me a listen and tell me what you think. Here's the link:


Click On the Music Link To The Song "Creepin' "

3 points I would like to comment on

#1 Sounds like jazz to me, I really have never cared for the jazz style so I am no expert, but it sounded good

#2 My guitar instructor has a MA from The Cleveland Institute of Music, and I was talking to him about this exact thing, He said "that I have played every type of guitar there is and I have played every style on a tele, including jazz, bluegrass, rock, soul, R&B, Flaminco ect" and "its not the guitar, its who playes it.

#3 about 20 years ago I took a music apperation class at Yuba community college when I lived in Davis, Ca the iinstructor said "that the guitar was made to be played right handed, and a left handed player who did not learn to play right handed was not a real player" I asked him what about McCartney And Hendrix. His reply was "who are they" ( i droped the class after tht night) my point is closed minded people are out there and most of them are just stupid.

Bob P.

[John R.]

Ed Bickert plays jazz on a tele. I like listening to Danny Gatton and Scotty Anderson, although purists might argue that they're not really jazz players. I guess the archtop is preferred for lack of sustain and better for complex chord harmonies.

[stantheman]

and try drainin' hot plate bacon with an L-5....it can be
done I suppose but when that bacon grease comes through the paper towels onto a Poly Tele........
well...that's just MAGIC 8) .

If R.Lee Ermey played, he'd play a Tele MAGGOT .

[John R.]

Originally Posted by stantheman

and try drainin' hot plate bacon with an L-5....it can be
done I suppose but when that bacon grease comes through the paper towels onto a Poly Tele........
well...that's just MAGIC 8) .

If R.Lee Ermey played, he'd play a Tele MAGGOT .

You can put your cigarettes out and collect the butts in an L5 though. With a tele, you need that ashtray accessory. :D

[hippietim]

Originally Posted by lapsteel

Sure you can use a Tele for jazz. Just listen to Mike Stern, Bill Frisell, or Ted Greene, all jazz masters that are frequent Tele players. Even Joe Pass used a Tele for a while.

As I said before, this is incorrect.

[miguel]

Originally Posted by hippietim

As I said before, this is incorrect.

Even this is incorrect. A guitar cannot be used for jazz, period.

[FraKo]

Originally Posted by hippietim

As I said before, this is incorrect.

Dear Hippietim, I'm glad to be in the same club of Ed Bickert and Mike Stern. I Play jazz on my threee tele's, two of which have standard single-coil pup's. I think that a 4-way switch helps, since it can give your tele some more power. But I can get a nice dark "kennyburrellish" sound from them.

Tim, by the way: my black avatar clone, the darkest sounding of all, has a pointy headstock :)


Eventually, "Creepin'" is a very nice clip.

[JWK]

Originally Posted by hippietim

The simple answer is NO. A Tele cannot be used for Jazz. It is simply incorrect. That'd be like using a pitchfork to mow your lawn.

I spit tea all over my screen. Hysterical stuff. I was even thinking of coming up with something like this right after it was first posted but just didn't come up with anything, so I thought I'd maybe add the next day. Yours was much more funny than anything I would have come up with. I'm still laughing.

[hippietim]

JWK, glad to see someone got my point.

A question like this comes up pretty frequently on just about every guitar forum I visit:[*]Can a Tele be used for hard rock? (check, did that)[*]Can a Jackson Rhoads be used for jazz? (check, did that)[*]Can the Variax be used a "real" guitar? (check, did that)[*]Can a Les Paul be used for country? (seen that, I've never played country music)

Well, YES. OF COURSE. That is if YOU can play hard rock, jazz, "real", and country. Once the dust settles and the guitar players figure out that they're the only ones that notice...

[Joel Terry]

Archie, at this point in this thread, my post is just "gilding the lily," becaue Mike, Tim, and Bruce all summed it up nicely. Frankly, it doesn't matter about people's preconceptions about the Telecaster, especially once you're playing really fine music. Whenever someone tells me Teles aren't for jazz, I simply point out a couple of pictures of the legendary Joe Pass playing a Tele. In my opinion, if that someone is bold enough to knock Joe Pass, he/she is either the world's greatest musician or an arrogant putz, and I'm inclined to choose the latter.

I know people who are so inherently musical, they could probably make a cigar-box banjo sound good. The instrument you play is ultimately a tool, not an objective; the objective, of course, is to make good music. For a person to tell a musician that they're using the "wrong" gear all because the person deems it to be "wrong" for whatever reason(s), well--I have a real problem with that, because that's the height of presumptuousness and arrogance. And ignorance.

Joel

[Geo]

Heck if Les Paul didn't help design his model he
probably would have been a Tele player!

I'll bet the Bill Lawrence L290TN (neck) would be a
great jazz pickup for a Tele.

[FraKo]

Originally Posted by Joel Terry

I know people who are so inherently musical, they could probably make a cigar-box banjo sound good.

The instrument you play is ultimately a tool, not an objective

Joel is right, of course. You can play jazz on a Warlock, it doesn't matter if you can get what you want.

About the cigar-box banjo, I've read that this was Charlie Christian's very first instrument eh eh eh

Sometimes I play jazz on a fat strat: not the ultimate guitar for bebop, but the neck+middle position isn't that bad.

But, IMHO the neck position on a Tele is perfect for jazz. And the neck+bridge in series (on a 4-way switch) is just great. Consider that I play bop, not smooth jazz, and that my ojective is not to emulate a Gibson L5 (I've got a humbucker Tele for that :D !), but to get the sound I like from that beloved "plank".

Keep swingin'

[KR]

Ok, I'll weigh in here, because I've been asked a variation on this question a lot. I play jazz a lot for a living and teach quite a bit. I'm currently on staff at GIT. One question I get asked constantly is, "what kind of guitar do I need to get to play jazz?", since jazz improv is something I teach quite a bit. This usually comes from someone with anything from a Tele to a Les Paul to a pointy-headed Jackson, and my answer is always the same - jazz is a process and a tradition, not a 'sound'. Learn the tunes. Learn the vocabulary of the great players that have come before you. Learn to improvise and then learn to develop your own voice as an improvisor. This can be done on ANY instrument - recorder, harmonica, steel drums or pointy-headed Steve Vai-approved JEM Ibanez (I've seen all of these used very beautifully and convincingly as 'jazz' instruments). If you really want to learn to play jazz my advice is to shift out of "consumer" mode and start practicing.

FWIW

[DADGAD]

At a drummer's birthday party, I got invited and asked to bring my guitar to jam. I brought my Tele expecting to rock but besides the drummer, only a keyboard player showed up. The keys man only played lounge jazz. I switched my tele to the front SC, rolled off the tone a liddo and we played jazz for hours. It worked just fine.

Lose the pick, throw in some octave riffs ala Wes Montgomery, and they'll be satisfied. 8)

Gary

[archiennc]

:D An instrument should simply be a tool. The shape, size or nomenclature should have anything to do with it at all. I guess that was the discussion I was trying to evoke by posing this topic initially.

I've been a music educator for 23 years. I also find myself being placed in that category of someone who "can make a cigar-box banjo sound good" if I might paraphrase. I don't know if I agree with that sentiment but I get told that quite a bit and I thank the almighty for the blessing. The question about the Tele comes from the same catergorization question that I get from a lot of my students as well and parents too when asking about what guitar to buy their young person for a particular type of music or even adult students. The same basic construction from one guitar to the next is going to be the same. Mechanically, all guitars will be the same. When will musicians get back to the reality that the music and the quality thereof is inside of you- not the the instrument you play. You have to be a musician first-not just a connisseur of a brand or a style. It's really good to hear this sentiment from other musicians.

You know, I go to educators conferences, have even been to some industry events and you hear the same contradictions from orchestral instrument players to music software designers. I'm a clarinetist-play with an area symphony and for the life of me, I can't find a discernable difference between a Buffet R-13, a Selmer 10 G or a LeBlanc G Series Clarinet. Hell I still sound the same with Selmer HS * mouthpiece and a Bundy - it's in the fingers and in your mind and soul. Like most of you have said, the guitar should simply be a tool; an extension of your fingers and your interpretation. Why does it seem that so many "musicians" have lost track of that? :D

[mark norwine]

jazz on a tele.....nah....

oh..wait...

[Raymond]

Originally Posted by Big Cookie

If you can't use a Tele for jazz, somebody better tell Cornell Dupree.

Bill Frisell would probably be interested too...

[fezz parka]

Don't forget Howard Roberts...

The neck pickup on a Tele is jazz.

[maxsmith]

Originally Posted by stantheman

If R.Lee Ermey played, he'd play a Tele MAGGOT .

If R. Lee Ermey played, he'd play an Esquire, 'cause neck pickups are for sissies.

But if he did play a Tele, it'd be a Blue Flower Tele, and R. Lee would patiently wait with a small inner smile for the first guy to make a crack about it...

[ThunderDreamer]

Secretly you want an Antigua Tele and a pointy headstock guitar. Admit it. You do.

LOL, I've got both a Fender Antigua Tele and two Dean Cadillacs with the huge pointy wing headstocks. :D

[jazzalta]

I believe it was Joe Pass who said, "If you're concentrating on the type of guitar to play, you're concentrating on the wrong thing."

[Synchro]

Originally Posted by archiennc

"An instrument should simply be a tool. The shape, size or nomenclature should have anything to do with it at all."

"The question about the Tele comes from the same catergorization question that I get from a lot of my students as well and parents too when asking about what guitar to buy their young person for a particular type of music or even adult students. The same basic construction from one guitar to the next is going to be the same. Mechanically, all guitars will be the same. When will musicians get back to the reality that the music and the quality thereof is inside of you- not the the instrument you play."

I love guitars, basses and amps. I love to look at them, talk about them, read about them and dream about them but they are NOT music! Music comes from a human, not an instrument.

Sometimes you will see detailed descriptions of the instruments used by well known musicians and lately I have started to wonder, did the famous player in question put all of that thought into buying an instrument or did he/she choose something that was adequate to the task and perhaps their favorite color? I have recordings were I can't tell by listning whether I am using a Strat or a Tele. On one jazz recording I'm not even certain if it was a Tele or an archtop on the rhythm part.

Instruments obviously count but they are only one contribution to the entire result. Once, I was in a music store where a young fellow was desperately looking for the right sound. I told him that I would play a job on any serviceable electric guitar in the store and he looked at me like I had just told him I was from Jupitor. In fact I was serious. While it may not be optimal for every task I do believe that any decent quality electric guitar is capable of sounding good.

[FireAarro]

Originally Posted by fezz parka

The neck pickup on a Tele is jazz.

[fabien]

Round 1980 there was a band in Switzerland called 'Pfuri, Gorps und Knieri' or something like that using anything from plastic trash bags to garden hose with trumpet mouthpiece to make music and they performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival for a packed and enthusiastic audience .
So you're actually quite conservative with your Tele :)

Fabien

[maxsmith]

To my ear, a Tele neck pickup can come closer to my favorite classic jazz guitar tones (Charlie Christian, Grant Green, early Kenny Burrell) than a big hollowbody with a humbucker - maybe it's because that sound I love comes from jazz boxes with single coil pickups - they just seem to have more life than buckers.

I have had jazz boxes before, but I prefer the Tele for jazz (and everything else). Part of the reason is the bag-of-flour-baby factor. You know those projects in high school where you carry around a bag of flour for a week to simulate what it's like to have a baby? I always felt that way with a hollowbody, like I always have to be careful with it - they are more fragile and expensive and sensitive. A tele I just stick in a bag (or not) in the car and no worries.

[FraKo]

Originally Posted by maxsmith

To my ear, a Tele neck pickup can come closer to my favorite classic jazz guitar tones (Charlie Christian, Grant Green, early Kenny Burrell) than a big hollowbody with a humbucker - maybe it's because that sound I love comes from jazz boxes with single coil pickups - they just seem to have more life than buckers.

A tele I just stick in a bag (or not) in the car and no worries.

Agreed 100%.

[Dana]

I firmly believe that a good quality guitar is only limited by the person playing it.

[maxsmith]

Originally Posted by Dana

I firmly believe that a good quality guitar is only limited by the person playing it.

A good player can make a bad guitar sound good - a bad player makes a good guitar sound bad - and it's such a pathetic waste.

[Synchro]

Originally Posted by Dana

I firmly believe that a good quality guitar is only limited by the person playing it.

[Unburst]

Originally Posted by maxsmith

To my ear, a Tele neck pickup can come closer to my favorite classic jazz guitar tones (Charlie Christian, Grant Green, early Kenny Burrell) than a big hollowbody with a humbucker - maybe it's because that sound I love comes from jazz boxes with single coil pickups - they just seem to have more life than buckers.

I was copping some Wes licks the other day and I was surprised how close I got with my Tele's SC neck pup.
I like a bright, spanky jazz tone like Christian, Montgomery and electric Django and a Tele does that just fine.

imo a Tele is perfectly suitable for playing jazz (or any other genre) and the fact is that anyone that wants to play jazz enough won't care what guitar they play it on.

[pc]

I agree with the masses here. As in, "Yes. Yes it can."

I just thought I'd point out that this same thread ("Can I use my Tele for Jazz?") gets posted like once every 3 weeks, and almost always the same people reply to it and say the same things.

It's just kinda funny is all.




(BTW, not for nothin', but I think it's really cool that the people who posted in this thread did NOT tell the original poster to just "go do a search". That deserves kudos on it's own.)