Guitar Movement Strikes a New, Resurgent Chord

A spate of recent album releases reveals a trend: Jazz guitarists are looking to their roots. And we don’t mean Wes Montgomery or Charlie Christian.

More and more guitarists are employing the R&B;, pop and rock influences of their youth to inspire their improvisational music. Charlie Hunter, a guitarist never far from an R&B; feel, has an album of Bob Marley songs out. John Scofield, who last year teamed with saxophonist Joe Henderson on a mainstream collection of tunes from “Porgy & Bess,” employs low-tech jam band Medeski Martin & Wood (which recently signed with Hunter’s label, Blue Note) as his rhythm section on the upcoming Verve recording “A Go Go.” Guitarist John Abercrombie has embraced the Hammond B-3 in his ECM recordings from the last few years.

Not all the action is on the major labels. And not all bandleaders in front of the guitar movement are guitarists.

Maybe the most representative, and rawest, of the recent guitar-band releases is drummer Bobby Previte’s “My Man in Sydney” with his Latin for Travelers quartet (Enja). In the liner notes to this quartet date recorded live in Sydney, Australia, in 1997, Previte says the album is “a return to some of my earliest experiences in music and to the instruments . . . the drums, the Hammond organ and above all the guitar.”

Previte calls his group a “bar band” and the music bears him out. Two guitarists (Marc Ducret, Jerome Harris) double the quartet’s sizzle and contribute extended (sometimes too extended) solos. The tunes don’t swing as much as they gallop, shuffle and rock. Previte brings an improviser’s sensibilities to his play, keeping the beats accessible, but never quite playing them the same way twice.

Less raw, but equally rock-flavored is Will Bernard’s “Medicine Hat” (Antilles). With a core quartet that includes Hammond B-3 organist Rob Burger and onetime Charlie Hunter Quartet drummer Scott Amendeola, Bernard explores funk, swing, blues and tango, sometimes adding horns to great effect. The San Francisco-based guitarist, who has recorded with Don Cherry, Peter Apfelbaum and Jai Uttal, plays in modes that range from electrically scorching to pensive.

Most thoughtful of the lot is Ben Monder’s “Dust” (Arabesque). Monder, a New Yorker who’s recorded with Maria Schneider, Marc Johnson, Dave Binney and other emerging East Coast artists, shows sensitivity and an interesting sense of harmonics on this trio date of his originals. Listeners who can get into Monder’s sense of cool will be open enough to follow improvisational music wherever it leads.

Other recordings with the potential to attract a crossover audience include Bill Frisell’s new, folk-influenced trio date “Gone, Just Like a Train,” with celebrated rock-session drummer Jim Keltner, and Steve Kahn’s “Got My Mental” on Evidence with bassist John Patitucci and Jack DeJohnette. Bassist Marc Johnson’s “The Sound of Summer Running” (due in February from Verve) is a down-home, two-guitar quartet date that brings Frisell together with one of the jazz world’s biggest crossover attractions, Pat Metheny. (Surprise! The two guitarists end up sounding much alike.)

What remains to be seen is if the current crop of guitar albums will enlarge and enliven the audience for jazz in general.

Leimert of Late: The jazz scene centered on Leimert Park in the Crenshaw district has undergone some recent changes. 5th St. Dick’s is set to reopen tonight in its new location at 3335 W. 43rd Place (the former Great Negrus performance space), three doors east of the old location. Guitarist Ron Muldrow’s band with vibraphonist Miller Pertu, bassist Bill Markus and drummer Lorca Hart (son of drummer Billy Hart) appears through Sunday; the Dale Fielder quartet is in Jan. 29. As usual, late-night jam sessions go until 4 a.m. on weekends; (213) 296-3970. . . . Shabazz Restaurant, at 3405 W. 43rd St., has reopened after remodeling and will host a jam session led by pianist Rose Gales, every Sunday beginning Feb. 1. Friday and Saturday night shows will be reinstituted later that month; (213) 299-8688. . . . Oldest of the Leimert Park venues, the World Stage, hosts pianist Bobby West’s trio tonight and Saturday; (213) 293-2451.

Classical Crossover: Bassist Mark Dresser performs two of his chamber compositions, “Banquet” (with Zurich Chamber Orchestra flutist Matthias Ziegler) and “Loss of the Innocents” for clarinet, cello and tuba at 8 p.m. Monday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theatre, $6-$15; (213) 857-6000.

In the Bins: New and noteworthy releases from Los Angeles-based musicians include bassist Mark Shelby, “Un Faux Pas!” (Noir); guitarist Hideaki Tokunaga, “The Wind Told Me” (Moo Records); saxophonist Teddy Edwards, “Midnight Creeper” (High Note); and trombonists Buster Cooper and the late Thurman Green, “E-bone-ix” (Blue Lady Records).