Chris Flegg is based in St Albans, Herts and not only plays jazz guitar but is a singer songwriter on the acoustic and folk scene with three albums of original songs to date, the latest being The Sound Of Life.
Previous jazz recordings include Moving On, an album of original pieces for jazz quartet, in which John Rees-Jones also features on bass. Chris mainly performs locally in St Albans with sax and bass in a jazz context or solo as a singer guitarist. He runs a monthly jazz jam session and enjoys charity busking in support of the British Heart Foundation.
John Rees-Jones trained classically as a cellist and toured and recorded with Keith Tippetts Centipede which included many of the top jazz and rock musicians of the time. He subsequently appeared with numerous classical musicians such as Yehudi Menuhin before moving over to the double bass and bass guitar in the late 1970s. John has since worked extensively in the theatre, cabaret, studio and jazz fields with a breathtaking list of artists of which a small sample includes Elkie Brooks, Georgie Fame, The Inkspots, Ted Heath Big Band, Glenn Miller Orchestra UK, and George Melly, as well as guitarists Barney Kessell, Martin Taylor, Al Casey, Herb Ellis, Slim Gaillard and Charlie Byrd. He was a member of Humphrey Lytteltons band until Humphs sad demise in 2008. John is visiting teacher of jazz double bass and bass guitar at Eton College and has tutored several hundred jazz workshops nationwide.
This album is taken from a single recording session at Cream Studios, Wembley, 10 November 2008, a day which produced no fewer than 23 recorded titles. The album features guitar and double bass with just Her Favourite flower and Round Midnight as solo guitar pieces. The aim in creating this (my sixth) CD was to put together some of my arrangements of standards and a few original tunes with a jazz flavour but with the accent mainly on melody rather than extended improvisation.
The Guitar
The guitar is a Gibson L5 Custom electric guitar played mainly finger style and sometimes with a pick during solos. The L5 has been the preferred instrument of many jazz players since Gibson first started making the L5 in 1922, this Custom model being the single pickup version designed for Wes Montgomery and branded with his name. But dont expect to hear on this album anything like that famous Wes Montgomery sound, Wes got an individual tone by playing heavy flat wound strings with his thumb and cutting back the treble using the tone control. I prefer using light gauge round wound strings plucked with finger nails for a bright clean sound. The double bass of John Rees-Jones richly complements this guitar sound, never more so when John resorts to bowing as for example in the last notes of Stardust. So here are some notes on the tracks:
The Songs (Notes by Chris Flegg)
“Night and Day," by Cole Porter, I first heard on a Django Reinhardt recording that was an early jazz influence for me, though my finger picking / chordal style version bears little resemblance to Djangos, not withstanding my quote in my improvisation from his composition Nuages.
“Im Going Home" and “Cat House" are my own compositions, both written some years ago but never previously available on CD. I occasionally sing a vocal version of “Im Going Home", but the instrumental version here is I believe just as strong and has a relaxed bossa feel. “Cat House" has a main theme that swings along with an almost country lilt and in places suggests the influence of Chet Atkins or maybe Les Paul. The long chordal intro and bridging riff are repeated after the theme and help make this a quite unusual number.
“Stardust" as a guitar piece will for me always be associated with Frank Vignola who I saw playing this tune in a bar in New York with the Frank and Joe Show. His CD recordings are hard to find but they are out there. My version begins with the verse played out of tempo, and the ending closes with John bowing a magnificent bottom C.
“Our Love Is Here To Stay" is a tune which is so interesting it hardly needs extemporisation to make it jazz. This is said to be the last composition of George Gershwin so I guess you could say by then he knew what he was doing.
“Her Favourite Flower" is a guitar solo I wrote in the 1970s and was inspired by listening to one of Djangos solo guitar recordings titled Improvisation, though the only real similarity is the idea of three note chord voicing to carry the melody against a bass line on the lower strings. The title comes from memories of a girl waiting for me holding a single flower, a tulip.
“A Day In The Life Of A Fool" is a melancholy tune with a Brazilian flavour. This version includes an excellent bass solo from John.
“The Girl From Ipanema" must be the best known bossa nova of all time, not only a pop hit in its day but memorable for the playing of Stan Getz in the original. John gets to play the intro and ending on this track and the overall feeling is bright and rhythmically interesting.
“Body And Soul" is a classic jazz ballad with some fun chord changes (giving us a chance to play in D flat) and a middle section that ends like no other; I guess I just like playing it.
Perhaps less well known is “Stella By Starlight", a number which I first heard played in a record by Stan Getz in a version I have never heard equalled, in fact his recording of this tune was on of the reasons I took up playing tenor sax, but that is another story. This is a great tune for playing melody against guitar chord in a single voicing and shows off the tone of the guitar to its best.
“Round Midnight" is played here as a bluesy solo guitar arrangement which tries in places to capture some of the staccato piano style of the original almost percussive piano playing of the composer, Thelonious Monk. I think sounds unusual and in fact have so far not heard any other solo guitar arrangement of this tune.
My version of “When Sonny Gets Blue" starts with an introduction based on the Miles Davis tune “Blue n Green" and then simply states the melody.
Previous jazz recordings include Moving On, an album of original pieces for jazz quartet, in which John Rees-Jones also features on bass. Chris mainly performs locally in St Albans with sax and bass in a jazz context or solo as a singer guitarist. He runs a monthly jazz jam session and enjoys charity busking in support of the British Heart Foundation.
John Rees-Jones trained classically as a cellist and toured and recorded with Keith Tippetts Centipede which included many of the top jazz and rock musicians of the time. He subsequently appeared with numerous classical musicians such as Yehudi Menuhin before moving over to the double bass and bass guitar in the late 1970s. John has since worked extensively in the theatre, cabaret, studio and jazz fields with a breathtaking list of artists of which a small sample includes Elkie Brooks, Georgie Fame, The Inkspots, Ted Heath Big Band, Glenn Miller Orchestra UK, and George Melly, as well as guitarists Barney Kessell, Martin Taylor, Al Casey, Herb Ellis, Slim Gaillard and Charlie Byrd. He was a member of Humphrey Lytteltons band until Humphs sad demise in 2008. John is visiting teacher of jazz double bass and bass guitar at Eton College and has tutored several hundred jazz workshops nationwide.
This album is taken from a single recording session at Cream Studios, Wembley, 10 November 2008, a day which produced no fewer than 23 recorded titles. The album features guitar and double bass with just Her Favourite flower and Round Midnight as solo guitar pieces. The aim in creating this (my sixth) CD was to put together some of my arrangements of standards and a few original tunes with a jazz flavour but with the accent mainly on melody rather than extended improvisation.
The Guitar
The guitar is a Gibson L5 Custom electric guitar played mainly finger style and sometimes with a pick during solos. The L5 has been the preferred instrument of many jazz players since Gibson first started making the L5 in 1922, this Custom model being the single pickup version designed for Wes Montgomery and branded with his name. But dont expect to hear on this album anything like that famous Wes Montgomery sound, Wes got an individual tone by playing heavy flat wound strings with his thumb and cutting back the treble using the tone control. I prefer using light gauge round wound strings plucked with finger nails for a bright clean sound. The double bass of John Rees-Jones richly complements this guitar sound, never more so when John resorts to bowing as for example in the last notes of Stardust. So here are some notes on the tracks:
The Songs (Notes by Chris Flegg)
“Night and Day," by Cole Porter, I first heard on a Django Reinhardt recording that was an early jazz influence for me, though my finger picking / chordal style version bears little resemblance to Djangos, not withstanding my quote in my improvisation from his composition Nuages.
“Im Going Home" and “Cat House" are my own compositions, both written some years ago but never previously available on CD. I occasionally sing a vocal version of “Im Going Home", but the instrumental version here is I believe just as strong and has a relaxed bossa feel. “Cat House" has a main theme that swings along with an almost country lilt and in places suggests the influence of Chet Atkins or maybe Les Paul. The long chordal intro and bridging riff are repeated after the theme and help make this a quite unusual number.
“Stardust" as a guitar piece will for me always be associated with Frank Vignola who I saw playing this tune in a bar in New York with the Frank and Joe Show. His CD recordings are hard to find but they are out there. My version begins with the verse played out of tempo, and the ending closes with John bowing a magnificent bottom C.
“Our Love Is Here To Stay" is a tune which is so interesting it hardly needs extemporisation to make it jazz. This is said to be the last composition of George Gershwin so I guess you could say by then he knew what he was doing.
“Her Favourite Flower" is a guitar solo I wrote in the 1970s and was inspired by listening to one of Djangos solo guitar recordings titled Improvisation, though the only real similarity is the idea of three note chord voicing to carry the melody against a bass line on the lower strings. The title comes from memories of a girl waiting for me holding a single flower, a tulip.
“A Day In The Life Of A Fool" is a melancholy tune with a Brazilian flavour. This version includes an excellent bass solo from John.
“The Girl From Ipanema" must be the best known bossa nova of all time, not only a pop hit in its day but memorable for the playing of Stan Getz in the original. John gets to play the intro and ending on this track and the overall feeling is bright and rhythmically interesting.
“Body And Soul" is a classic jazz ballad with some fun chord changes (giving us a chance to play in D flat) and a middle section that ends like no other; I guess I just like playing it.
Perhaps less well known is “Stella By Starlight", a number which I first heard played in a record by Stan Getz in a version I have never heard equalled, in fact his recording of this tune was on of the reasons I took up playing tenor sax, but that is another story. This is a great tune for playing melody against guitar chord in a single voicing and shows off the tone of the guitar to its best.
“Round Midnight" is played here as a bluesy solo guitar arrangement which tries in places to capture some of the staccato piano style of the original almost percussive piano playing of the composer, Thelonious Monk. I think sounds unusual and in fact have so far not heard any other solo guitar arrangement of this tune.
My version of “When Sonny Gets Blue" starts with an introduction based on the Miles Davis tune “Blue n Green" and then simply states the melody.
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