Howard Roberts; Jazz Guitarist Played on 2,000 Recordings

Howard Roberts, a prolific jazz guitarist who once estimated that he had been heard on more than 2,000 long-playing recordings in a 10-year period, is dead of prostate cancer.

His family announced Tuesday night that the virtuoso guitarist--who backed stars ranging from Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley to The Beach Boys and the Monkees in studio recordings--died Sunday in a Seattle hospital. He was 62.

Roberts, who headed one of the first jazz combos to appear at Donte’s in North Hollywood when the club opened in 1966, had a repertoire than spanned Bach to rock.

His guitar riffs have underscored soundtracks from popular American television shows including “Gilligan’s Island,” “I Love Lucy,” “Get Smart,” “The Flintstones” and “The Addams Family” and such big-screen hits as “Camelot” and “West Side Story.”

It was his guitar that struck the eerie opening notes of “The Twilight Zone” theme as well as the bluegrass tones of “The Beverly Hillbillies” soundtracks.

He also performed as a backup musician for such vocalists as Ray Charles, Sonny and Cher, the Jackson Five, Ella Fitzgerald and Nat (King) Cole. One critic called him the “most listened-to guitarist” in modern music.

Born in Phoenix, Roberts moved to Los Angeles in 1950 after playing in school dance bands as early as age 11. Primarily self-taught, he studied jazz here with trumpeter-composer Shorty Rogers and appeared locally with Rogers, Buddy De Franco, Pete and Conte Candoli, Paul Horn and Bud Shank.

He told Times jazz critic Leonard Feather that from 1966 to 1976 he had made 2,000 albums, only a small percentage of them jazz for such greats as Gerry Mulligan and Theolonius Monk. Studio work, he said in a 1985 Times interview, was “90% boredom and 10% sheer terror.”

In 1977 he founded the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood, which became the Musicians Institute, a school for aspiring musicians.

Most recently Roberts had moved to Edmonds, Wash., near Seattle, where he had conducted guitar seminars.