Herb Ellis born 4 August 1921

Mitchell Herbert Ellis (August 4, 1921 – March 28, 2010), known professionally as Herb Ellis, was an American jazz guitarist whose polished, blues-inflected playing earned him critical acclaim as an outstanding soloist and worldwide recognition as a member of the pianist Oscar Peterson’s trio.

Born in Farmersville, Texas, and raised in the suburbs of Dallas, Ellis first heard the electric guitar performed by George Barnes on a radio program. This experience is said to have inspired him to take up the guitar. He became proficient on the instrument by the time he entered North Texas State University. Ellis majored in music, but because they did not yet have a guitar program at that time, he studied the string bass. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, his college days were short-lived. In 1941, Ellis dropped out of college and toured for six months with a band from the University of Kansas.

In 1943, he joined Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra and it was with Gray's band that he got his first recognition in the jazz magazines. After Gray's band, Ellis joined the Jimmy Dorsey band where he played some of his first recorded solos. Ellis remained with Dorsey through 1947, travelling and recording extensively, and playing in dance halls and movie palaces.

Then came a turnabout that would change Ellis's career forever. As pianist Lou Carter told journalist Robert Dupuis in a 1996 interview, "The Dorsey band had a six-week hole in the schedule. The three of us had played together some with the big band. John Frigo, who had already left the band, knew the owner of the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel in Buffalo. We went in there and stayed six months. And that's how the group the Soft Winds were born". Together with Frigo and Lou Carter, Ellis wrote the classic jazz standard "Detour Ahead".

               Here's "Detour Ahead" from above 1959 album.

                              

The Soft Winds group was fashioned after the Nat King Cole Trio. Oscar Peterson saw the group in concert in Buffalo, N.Y. “He liked it. So he and I went out later that night and jammed at some place in Buffalo,” Ellis told The Times in 1993. “I didn’t see him again 

until 1953 when Barney Kessel left his group. That’s when he called me for the job.” The combination of pianist Peterson, bassist Ray Brown and Ellis created “one of the most celebrated trios in jazz history,” according to “The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz” (1999) by Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler.

Ellis became prominent after performing with the Oscar Peterson Trio from 1953 to 1958 along with pianist Peterson and bassist Ray Brown. He was a somewhat controversial member of the trio, because he was the only white person in the group in a time when racism was still very much widespread.

In addition to their great live and recorded work as the Oscar Peterson Trio, this unit usually with the addition of a drummer, served as the virtual "house rhythm section" for Norman Granz's Verve Records, supporting the likes of tenormen Ben Webster and Stan Getz, as well as trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, and Sweets Edison and

 Stan Getz,  Joe Pass, Melvin Rhyne and many more. Ellis was part of the rhythm section but did not solo on every track. With drummer Buddy Rich, they were also the backing band for popular "comeback" albums by the duet of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

The trio were one of the mainstays of Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts as they swept the jazz world, almost constantly touring the United States and Europe. Ellis left the Peterson Trio in November 1958, to be replaced not by a guitarist, but by drummer Ed Thigpen. The years of 1957 through 1960 found Ellis touring with Ella Fitzgerald.

 When jazz fell out of fashion in the 1960s, Mr. Ellis became a busy studio musician in Los Angeles, earning his living mainly on television variety shows.

One of his most memorable ventures was creating the "Great Guitars Show"in 1973, with fellow jazz guitarists Barney Kessel and Charlie Byrd, which at every show was a musical display of guitar dexterity. In his honour the Gibson Guitar Company issued a Herb Ellis ES-165 signature tribute guitar, which after four decades is still in production.

In 1994 he joined the Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame. “There have been changes in jazz and new styles come along. I play straight ahead, what you might call mainstream, jazz,” Ellis told the Columbus Dispatch of Ohio in 1996. “That’s what I played when I started and that’s what I still play. I wish everyone else good luck and God bless, but I’ve found mine and I’m going to stick with it.”

On November 15, 1997 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of North Texas College of Music.

Ellis died of Alzheimer's disease at his Los Angeles home on the morning of March 28, 2010, at the age of 88.

(Edited from Wikipedia & LA Times)

Herb Ellis performs "Georgia (On My Mind)," along with Tal Farlow and Charlie Byrd. From the Vestapol DVD "Great Guitars of Jazz."