Dick McDonough: jazz guitar virtuoso from the 30's

Dick McDonough (1904-1938) was one of the top guitarists of the 30's jazz scene. His style stemmed directly from Eddie Lang's one and he was probably the truest follower of Lang's ideas. One of the busiest studio musicians of those days, McDonough is present on dozens of recordings but (as with all the guitar players of that era) the space reserved to his solos was generally limited to eight or sixteen bars. So, in order to enjoy his great talent and virtuosity we need to listen to the wonderful guitar duets he recorded with Carl Kress. But here (1934) he is totally alone with his personal rendition of a Fats Waller's classic. McDonough was not the first one to record an unaccompanied guitar solo: both Lang and Lonnie Johnson did it around 1927/1928. But Lang's ones (we're excluding here the works with piano comping) were Rachmaninoff's Prelude op. 3 n.2 and 'A little love, a little kiss', a sort of folk-flavoured serenade while Johnson's sides were basically blues-based improvisations. So, this recording of McDonough has to be considered the first 'guitar solo' rendition of a jazz standard (it seems that New Orleans' guitarist Snoozer Quinn did the same in the 20's before everybody else: but those recordings were never issued and, until now, are considered totally lost). The 'guitar unaccompanied solo' tradition went on with (among others) Carl Kress, Oscar Aleman, Django Reinhardt, George Van Eps, Al Viola; in the 70s, Joe Pass brought it to a new level and, since then, so many others refined this particular side of guitar playing. But all of them did it after 1934, when the great Dick McDonough with his acoustic L5 gave to guitar a new dimension.