1. Barney Kessel was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1923 to a Jewish family.
17 Facts About Barney Kessel
1. 2.
Barney Kessel's father was an immigrant from Hungary who owned and operated a shoe shop.
3.
Barney Kessel began his career as a teenager, touring with local swing bands.
4.
Barney Kessel gained recognition due in part to his youth, and in part to being the only white musician playing in all-African-American bands at black clubs.
5.
Barney Kessel worked in Jazz at the Philharmonic and for one year in the early 1950s he was a member of the Oscar Peterson trio.
6.
Barney Kessel recorded a series of albums with Ray Brown and Shelly Manne as The Poll Winners because the three of them often won polls conducted by Metronome and DownBeat magazines.
7.
Barney Kessel was the guitarist on the album Julie Is Her Name by Julie London, which includes the standard "Cry Me a River", selling a million copies and demonstrated Kessel's chordal approach to guitar.
8.
Barney Kessel eventually left studio work to concentrate on his jazz career both onstage and on records.
9.
Barney Kessel was rated the No 1 guitarist in Esquire, DownBeat, and Playboy magazine polls between 1947 and 1960.
10.
Jazz music educator Wolf Marshall said the style that Barney Kessel employed in his music was "the natural outgrowth of the electric guitar tone fostered by Charlie Christian and embraced by virtually every exponent of the post-Christian school".
11.
Barney Kessel was influenced by post-bop modal jazz, hard bop, and free jazz.
12.
Additionally, Barney Kessel's music had a strong blues influence "in both chord- and single-note form".
13.
Barney Kessel was known for his chord stylings and single-note solos.
14.
Barney Kessel replaced the original pickup with a "Charlie Christian" bar pickup, replaced the original volume and tone knobs with those taken off of a record player, omitted the pickguard, and installed dot inlays to replace the original fingerboard.
15.
Barney Kessel used a heavy-gauge rounded pick and used medium-gauge Darco-wound polished guitar strings.
16.
Barney Kessel was married to Gail Genovia Farmer throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
17.
Barney Kessel was in poor health after suffering a stroke in 1992, which effectively ended his career.