Sugarfoot

Hank Garland died December 28, 2004. Unless you're a guitarist or a Nashville musician, you may never have heard of him, but during his short professional career, he helped both define and re-define the role of guitar in country, early rock, and rockabilly. Garland also played a major role breaking be-bop guitar out of the famous upscale jazz clubs of New York and Chicago and taking it to the larger world, as well as legitimizing modern jazz and modern jazz influences to country, blues, and rock players.

I never met Hank Garland, but I've occasionally stood in his shadow. He started out as a Nashville guitar wünderkind, doing his first professional gigs at age twelve, getting kicked out of Nashville at age fifteen by the musician's union for being under age after playing the Opry with Paul Howard and his Arkansas Cotton Pickers, and at age nineteen landing his first million-selling tune (1949's "Sugarfoot Rag") with Red Foley. Garland rapidly became into the most-sought (and highest paid) session guitarist in town. Garland helped set the standard by which session axe-slingers have been measured ever since. You know that image in your head about the guitarist who walks into a recording session, doesn't say much, learns the song while tuning up his guitar, then lays down three, four, five perfect takes, all with different, inventive lines? That image is largely Hank Garland (and the rest of the image is fellow Nashville picker Chet Atkins).

In Nashville, Garland performed and recorded with the likes of Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Conway Twitty, Roy Orbison, and—most famously—Elvis Presley from 1958 to 1961. (Elvis's first manager and guitarist was the inimitable Scotty Moore.) But more significantly, Garland frequently took leave of his (reported) contractual obligations to play only country music in Nashville, and headed to New York City's Birdland Club where he played furious, blues-tinged be-bop with Charlie Parker, George Shearing, and others. Garland recorded three jazz albums—the most influential being 1960's Jazz Winds from a New Direction— which feature some stunning, virtuoso playing with a blend of extended 1950s be-bop harmony with blues-and-country tinged riffs, techniques, and tones. (One—I can't remember which—also featured a cover of "Pop Goes the Weasel.") Jazz Winds... was possibly the first world-class jazz album to be recorded in Nashville with mostly Nashville players, including Boots Randolf and a seventeen year-old Gary Burton. The albums were not commercial successes, but they fueled a generation of be-bop and jazz guitarists outside the heart of the urban jazz scene, including a young George Benson. I remember hearing Jazz Winds... when I was thirteen and not being able to understand it; at nineteen, I started to understand it, but couldn't quite believe it.

Garland also tampered with his guitars. A little-known aspect of Garland's legacy is the Gibson Byrdland, which—legend says—he designed with Billy Byrd (a versatile country guitarist who died in 2001). It seems more likely Gibson already had something like the Byrdland design (maybe the ES-350T), approached the two about endorsing it, and implemented a few tweaks they suggested. The Byrdland is a thin archtop guitar, comfortable for smaller players, and less prone to feedback on stage than larger-bodied archtops like the Gibson L5. But the Byrdland's most unique feature is its short scale (23.5 inches, a full two inches shorter than what's today considered standard scale length) and an unusually narrow neck, making the space between strings smaller. The result is a fast, smooth guitar on which it's easy to play some things which would be difficult or impossible on a standard scale length. And, for those of us with big fingers, on which it's maddeningly difficult to play chord-melody or fingerstyle.

Garland's career ended in September 1961 with an automobile crash. He was thirty years old. Accounts vary; Garland's brother Billy claimed the crash was an attempt on Hank's life by someone in the Nashville music scene; other accounts claim that after an argument with his wife, Hank drove off in his wife's station wagon, which hadn't had the wheel lugs tightened following a tune-up. Regardless of the cause, the accident left Garland in a coma for months, and he never fully recovered. Through electro-shock therapy and sheer determination, Garland regained the ability to walk and eventually re-learned how to play guitar (culminating in an emotional 1976 appearance at Nashville's Fan Fair Reunion Show). However, Garland spent the remainder of his life in poor health, and—like many artists of his day—obstinantly fighting record companies for back royalties (and co-writing credit for the holiday tune "Jingle Bell Rock.") For years there's been talk of a film based on Garland's life; I doubt such a thing would pry away any of the mystery or establish facts, but it might tune a broader audience into the stellar performances from this guitar phenom.

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