After last month’s dive into Red Norvo (and his singing wife, Mildred Bailey), I dug a little farther into an earlier Norvo group. I became captivated by one of those records (which will likely become the subject of a future look) which included a guitar solo by a guy named George Van Eps. Who, I wondered, was George Van Eps, and did he ever do anything else worth listening to? I soon learned that Van Eps was one of those players who spent a lifetime being obscure to the listening public, but who was a giant among his peers. And for good reason.

“It is difficult to convey to the uninitiated the awe that the work of George Van Eps inspires among guitarists. ‘He’s the world’s greatest guitar player,’ says Allen Reuss, and there are plenty of other players from the top ranks of guitardom who speak of Van Eps in tones of near reverence.” (1) This quotation opens the section on Van Eps in an anthology on jazz guitar. Some liner notes on an old album quote a former Van Eps student who said that he can find “notes on the guitar that just aren’t there.” (2) All that I can add is that some time spent listening to him impresses this non-guitar-playing blogger plenty.

George Van Eps was born in Plainfield, NJ on August 7, 1913. His father was a well-known ragtime banjo player who was a friend of George Gershwin, and his mother was accomplished on the piano. One of four musical siblings, George had learned the banjo by age 11, and was good enough to do some playing in public as a member of the musicians’ union. However, hearing Eddie Lang’s guitar work on an early crystal radio set a couple of years later convinced him to pick up the guitar instead.

Van Eps played professionally with some bands in the first half of the 1930’s, including the one that Benny Goodman rode to a breakout success in 1935-36. Even then, the young Van Eps was displaying a unique style that has been described as guitar played with the mind of a piano player. By the mid 30’s, Van Eps had apparently had enough of the life of a touring musician and moved to the Los Angeles area where he made a life as a studio musician, blending into the background of records made by a Who’s Who of mid-century music. Being part of the orchestra behind some of Sinatra’s classic 1950’s records was no way to show off his jazz chops, but it certainly paid well enough to support a life that was much more stable than those lived by more famous names.

It was early in this part of his career (1938) that he asked the makers of his Epiphone guitar to reconfigure his six-string instrument by adding an additional bass string, thus making him the pioneer of the 7-string jazz guitar. It was this unusual setup, as well as his unique approach to playing it, that led to his publishing a lesson book for his 7-string method (one that was updated and expanded in the early 1980’s).

Finding some Van Eps recordings to feature here proved daunting. There are several examples of his early work with a handful of early big bands, that while interesting, restrict us to short solos within a larger band. Then there was a series of recordings he did starting in the 1950’s and that lasted well into the 1990’s. Those show the fully mature Van Eps, but one that gravitated towards a more sedate (though very satisfying) style. Fortunately, Van Eps sat for a pair of 1949 recording sessions for the obscure Jump label which, for me, present a Goldilocks-like balance between his early and late selves.

“Kay’s Fantasy” is one of Van Eps’ own compositions, recorded June 13, 1949 and named for his then-11-year-old daughter. Some jazz guitarists were known for a “single note” style that mimicked a horn’s sound, while others did more with chords. Van Eps did both, and both at the same time. It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that there are two guitars in front of the bass (Phil Stephens) and drums (Nick Fatool), but no – it was just George Van Eps doing what came so naturally to him. (3)

This is a complex tune that is augmented with some complex chords that sound almost like something from Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop style that was the cutting edge of jazz. At the same time, this piece swings like crazy and never loses a toe-tapping beat.

“I Wrote It For Jo” is another Van Eps composition that is slower and more in line with his later work. Many times, Van Eps referred to his guitar as a “lap piano”. He did not think in terms of basic chords or of a melody line, but rather, multiple continuous lines that came together in chords, but were always coming from somewhere and heading to somewhere. These “lines” made for multiple “voices” that often came out in a kind of counterpoint – easy for a two-handed piano player, but not so much on a guitar.

Van Eps was universally described as a kind and unassuming man, and also as being a brilliant intellect – two traits that are not often enough seen in the same person. But those characteristics come through on this track, recorded April 1, 1949, with bassist Jack Ryan and drummer Nick Fatool. Jo, incidentally, was also known as Mrs. Van Eps.

Finally, we have Van Eps’ treatment of a lesser-known standard, “Once In A While”, from the June, 1949 session noted above. I think this video chops the first couple of notes from the beginning of the piece, but with material so difficult to find online, allowances must be made. This version is interesting because someone has transcribed the notes to allow any guitarist with mad sight reading skills to try and play along. Van Eps takes this piece at a much faster tempo than normal, and his piano-like approach really comes through in a piece that can wow us all these years later, both for the performer’s technical mastery and for how listenable it is for we poor dumb non-guitar guys.

There was a fourth record released as part of the original 2-disc set, the well-known “Tea For Two”. I was not able to find the version originally released by Jump, but there is an un-released alternative take that has found its way online (here).

After listening to George Van Eps intricate playing, it should come as no surprise that some of his non-musical hobbies included watch-making (which he learned from his grandfather) and the building of both a full-sized seaplane in his garage and the world’s smallest (1/10th inch scale) operating steam locomotive. Imagination and hard work came out of Van Eps in all kinds of interesting ways.

Van Eps eventually recorded a full album in the 1950’s (“Mellow Guitar”) and at least three others the following decade, including 1969’s “Soliloquy”. It was not until the 1990’s that his album output really got going, with at least 5 albums released on the Concord Jazz label, most of which were duets with other jazz guitarists, including another 7-string player, Howard Alden. George Van Eps continued playing in public (and sharing anecdotes from his long life) almost right up until his death on November 29, 1998 at the age of 85. His obituary in the Los Angeles Times reported that the bass player who managed their little group had to hire two guitarists to replace Van Eps.

You might think that after a solid 50+ year stretch of listening to old jazz from the heyday of the 78 rpm record, I would have heard it all. But every time I start to wonder if I have hit the farthest edges of what is available, I surprise myself with a rich new vein, like this one. The older I get the more I appreciate the jazz guitar. We have featured a couple of early stars of the guitar like Eddie Lang and Charlie Christian. Those two, along with Django Reinhardt (whose day here will come) are the best known, but this dive into my latest rabbit hole proves that there are others worth knowing. And George Van Eps is indisputably one of them.

Notes:

(1) The Guitar In Jazz, An Anthology, James Sallis, editor, 1996, at p. 97.

(2) 1949 Jump Records release of The Guitar Of George Van Eps.

(3) Discography information from album notes of a Jump Records release of this material.