Dave Gelly 

Wes Montgomery: The Unissued 1965 Half Note Broadcasts review – a mellow broadcast from the past

A relaxed and fluent night’s entertainment from the great guitarist and the Wynton Kelly trio, captured in New York’s Greenwich Village
  
  

Wes Montgomery
'Still a powerful influence' … guitarist Wes Montgomery. Photograph: Unknown

New York’s night-time airwaves used to be full of stuff like this: casual live broadcasts from Manhattan jazz clubs. Not programmes exactly, more slices of reality-jazz radio. Here we have the late Wes Montgomery, still a powerful influence on today’s guitarists, and the Wynton Kelly Trio at the Half Note, a comfortable little joint in the Village. Like most unmediated recordings, this has its ups and downs, but Montgomery’s fluency and the whole band’s relaxed togetherness are impressive. They play some blues, a few standards and several Montgomery originals. Customers call out requests, the MC points out a distinguished visitor or two, glasses clink, everything’s mellow. That’s the way it was, half a century ago.

 

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