Guitar great Herb Ellis's road to fame had only one 'Detour'

Guitarist Herb Ellis died Sunday.  He's shown here with bassist Milt Hinton.

The death of guitarist Herb Ellis on Sunday is one of those stories that comes as a shock, but not a surprise. 

It’s not a surprise, because of his age: without looking it up, I’d have guessed he was in his mid-80s.  (He was actually 88).  His first famous recordings came as part of Oscar Peterson’s drummerless trio more than 50 years ago; when you do the math you realize that, after a long and fruitful career, he had to be up there in years.

But that sizable career – and the fact that he hadn’t recorded in more than a decade (because of Alzheimer’s) – also contribute to the sense of shock.  With hardly a word about him in a dozen years, his music became frozen in the past, and the news of his death seems to come out of nowhere.

Ellis was a marvelous musician, one of several guitarists who took their inspiration from the jazz guitar pioneer Charlie Christian and, in the late 1940s and early 50s, made the hollow-body electric guitar a vital part of jazz.  (The others included Barney Kessel and Charlie Byrd – with whom Ellis worked as “The Great Guitars”  – and also notably Tal Farlow.)   

Like Christian, who was born in Texas and raised in Oklahoma, they all hailed from the south: Ellis was from Texas, Kessel from Oklahoma, Byrd from Virginia, Farlow from North Carolina.  And in the 1950s, they all brought to hard-bop the very thing that Charlie Christian had unexpectedly brought to bebop a decade earlier – a certain country twang, in their guitar tones and even in the inflection of their lines.

Of the bunch, Ellis and Farlow sat in the figurative middle, to the right of Kessel’s wild ebullience but to the left of Byrd’s southern grace.  In particular, Ellis was the country gentleman, calm under pressure, his face working only slightly as he rifled through complicated but perfectly balanced lines at ridiculous tempos.

His demeanor served him well in each of the two groups where he made his reputation after leaving Tommy Dorsey’s big band in 1947.  The first of these was a guitar-piano-bass trio called The Soft Winds.  His work in this group led directly to Ellis joining Oscar Peterson (who led a similarly instrumented trio) in 1952.  
 

Ellis,Frigo,Lou Carter: The Soft Winds, ca.1950

In both groups, but especially Peterson’s, the guitarist’s melodic invention vied with his rhythmic legerdemain.  These bands had no drummer; Ellis filled part of that gap with chunky comp chords or percussive, bell-like harmonics that impressed critics and delighted audiences.

Ellis had an important Chicago connection, too.  The Soft Winds was spearheaded by Chicago jazz legend Johnny Frigo, then a bassist and later a world-famous violinist.  Frigo actually wrote The Soft Winds’ biggest hit, the still-popular ballad “Detour Ahead.” In some preliminary obituaries, Ellis has been credited for writing the song, but that’s not true.  (It is, however, a persistent canard.)

You can read the proof tomorrow; today I come to praise Herb Ellis, not to query him.  Let’s not blame the late guitar great for any confusion about “Detour Ahead” – or at least, let’s not blame him only.  (As you’ll see, and as expected, there was a lawyer in the mix).  Let’s use the occasion to revisit the music of a brilliant technician and splendid musician.