CRITICAL ACCLAIM
Steve Howell: Fingerpicking Early Jazz Standards (Hal Leonard Corporation)
Playing chord melody on the 88 keys is a natural for pianists who have the use of ten fingers at the ready to play simultaneous chords and bass figures with the left hand, and melody with the right. Guitarists, on the other “hand,” need to develop exceptional dexterity and intelligent note choices to make six strings sound like the “little orchestra in a box” Beethoven so memorably described. Texas blues and jazz guitarist extraordinaire Steve Howell has mastered the technique to a high degree, matched by only a select group of his peers and predecessors.
Fingerpicking Early Jazz Standards in standard notation and tablature features fifteen prewar classics expertly transcribed by Steve from the American songwriting giants the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hart and W.C. Handy, among others, as well as New Orleans trombone legend Edward “Kid” Ory. Acknowledging his blues bonafides, Steve presents Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” and Ory’s “Muskrat Ramble” with a combination of down home grit and sophistication. Well known compositions such as “Stormy Weather,” “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “My Melancholy Baby,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street” and “Sweet Georgia Brown” are enhanced by the inclusion of lesser-known gems like “Some of These Days” and “You Took Advantage of Me.”
Steve is extremely adept at arranging songs for solo guitar which were originally performed by ensembles both large and small. Every one of them is definitive and, most important, accessible to a range of guitar players from intermediate to advanced. Even those wishing to make the transition from flatpicking with a plectrum to fingerstyle will find a range of challenges fitting their abilities. For example, the mid-tempo “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” by Gus Kahn and Isham Jones, and recorded by everyone from Django Reinhardt to Chet Atkins with Mark Knopfler, features an expressive arrangement with mostly quarter notes, as does the swinging, toe-tapping “Sweet Georgia Brown.” “Mood Indigo,” by Ellington, Irving Mills and Barney Bigard, has more eighth notes and advanced chord changes. Nonetheless, Howell has placed the latter within the grasp of any pickers with some miles under their belts who will apply themselves to committed study.
The highlights are many, with “St. Louis Blues” and “But Not for Me,” by George and Ira Gershwin, meriting mention as just two from an entire book of standouts. The former contains a brilliant arrangement of its three groundbreaking sections, while the latter features a seamless flow of hip chord voicings to support the melody notes.
Steve Howell has accomplished that elusive goal of music archivists: Making classic songs from a bygone era relevant and vital again. Recordings, naturally, offer the advantages of additional musicians and audio technology, for instance. However, presenting music to come alive on the printed page as a blueprint for solo guitar cannot be done with “sleight-of-hand,” for example. Instead, it takes the head, heart and hands of an exceptional artist to craft the required substantive material. Steve Howell is that individual and this book is a testament to his skills and dedication. It is a landmark publication and will become a classic of guitar instruction.
Playing chord melody on the 88 keys is a natural for pianists who have the use of ten fingers at the ready to play simultaneous chords and bass figures with the left hand, and melody with the right. Guitarists, on the other “hand,” need to develop exceptional dexterity and intelligent note choices to make six strings sound like the “little orchestra in a box” Beethoven so memorably described. Texas blues and jazz guitarist extraordinaire Steve Howell has mastered the technique to a high degree, matched by only a select group of his peers and predecessors.
Fingerpicking Early Jazz Standards in standard notation and tablature features fifteen prewar classics expertly transcribed by Steve from the American songwriting giants the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hart and W.C. Handy, among others, as well as New Orleans trombone legend Edward “Kid” Ory. Acknowledging his blues bonafides, Steve presents Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” and Ory’s “Muskrat Ramble” with a combination of down home grit and sophistication. Well known compositions such as “Stormy Weather,” “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “My Melancholy Baby,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street” and “Sweet Georgia Brown” are enhanced by the inclusion of lesser-known gems like “Some of These Days” and “You Took Advantage of Me.”
Steve is extremely adept at arranging songs for solo guitar which were originally performed by ensembles both large and small. Every one of them is definitive and, most important, accessible to a range of guitar players from intermediate to advanced. Even those wishing to make the transition from flatpicking with a plectrum to fingerstyle will find a range of challenges fitting their abilities. For example, the mid-tempo “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” by Gus Kahn and Isham Jones, and recorded by everyone from Django Reinhardt to Chet Atkins with Mark Knopfler, features an expressive arrangement with mostly quarter notes, as does the swinging, toe-tapping “Sweet Georgia Brown.” “Mood Indigo,” by Ellington, Irving Mills and Barney Bigard, has more eighth notes and advanced chord changes. Nonetheless, Howell has placed the latter within the grasp of any pickers with some miles under their belts who will apply themselves to committed study.
The highlights are many, with “St. Louis Blues” and “But Not for Me,” by George and Ira Gershwin, meriting mention as just two from an entire book of standouts. The former contains a brilliant arrangement of its three groundbreaking sections, while the latter features a seamless flow of hip chord voicings to support the melody notes.
Steve Howell has accomplished that elusive goal of music archivists: Making classic songs from a bygone era relevant and vital again. Recordings, naturally, offer the advantages of additional musicians and audio technology, for instance. However, presenting music to come alive on the printed page as a blueprint for solo guitar cannot be done with “sleight-of-hand,” for example. Instead, it takes the head, heart and hands of an exceptional artist to craft the required substantive material. Steve Howell is that individual and this book is a testament to his skills and dedication. It is a landmark publication and will become a classic of guitar instruction.
Dave Rubin - Blues guitarist, author, teacher and journalist, NYC
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Fingerpicking Early Jazz Standards
Since I was very young, I have loved the music from the early twentieth century. This has been a constant in my life and been reflected in my repertoire. As a fingerstyle guitarist, I have always loved attempting to arrange great songs for solo guitar and the standards from the early jazz songbook have long been one of my main areas of concentration. I love to take these songs, written by some of the greatest American composers and usually originally done by big bands, orchestras and small groups, and attempt to approach them with Andres Segovia’s attitude of the solo guitar being “the orchestra through the wrong end of the telescope.” Through my lifetime musical journey with the guitar, I have embraced rural blues, jazz, old time Appalachian music, Celtic music, rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and Chet Atkins and Merle Travis fingerpicking. Through all of this, my private pleasure and one of my main areas of musical study has been arranging early jazz standards for solo guitar. Through an introduction from a friend, I was able to connect with the Hal Leonard Corporation, the largest sheet music publisher in the world. Hal Leonard offered the invitation to include fifteen of my fingerstyle arrangements of early jazz standards written between 1910 and 1933 in its series of music folios for fingerpicking guitar under the title Fingerpicking Early Jazz Standards. Instrumental in this process were Dave Rubin, esteemed author or over sixty-five books about guitar playing. My dear friend and musical partner, Dan Sumner, who painstakingly and masterfully transcribed my arrangements for the project. Jeff Schroedl and Jeff Arnold, my editors at Hal Leonard, who shepherded this project to completion in a fine and gentlemanly fashion. My dear friend, Jason Weinheimer, who lent his considerable audio and video engineering skills to this project by preparing the audio and video for the transcribing process. Also, my dear old friend, David Dodson, who is working with me to prepare a series of videos supporting the book with performance videos. I deeply appreciate the willingness of all of these fine guys to associate themselves with me. |
The book is available through Amazon, as well as all sheet music outlets.
Songs included in the book (musical notation and tablature):
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AUDIO TRACKS & VIDEO CLIPS
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Click on a link below to access audio tracks for each of the tunes in the book. These may help in working through the arrangements.
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Click on a link below to access the videos for each of the tunes in the book on my YouTube channel.
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