Wes Montgomery

The first Verve album and the beginning of the phase that confused critics and pleased audiences in roughly equal measure. Verve and producer Creed Taylor wanted Wes in a more commercial format: bigger charts, broader appeal, a sound that could move units outside the core jazz market. Johnny Pate’s arrangements are better than they needed to be for this purpose, treating Wes as a soloist embedded in the orchestra rather than a jazz guitar feature with strings draped over it.

The tempos are broader, the grooves softer, but Wes sounds genuinely engaged rather than merely accommodating. "Caravan" is a highlight, Wes cutting through the Pate orchestration with his usual authority, the octave lines landing with full force even in the lush arrangement. The purists complained loudly. Wes sold records. Both things were true at the same time.

A smooth transition into the Verve years. Less essential than what came before, more honest than its critics gave it credit for.

The Verve sound solidifies here. Don Sebesky’s arrangements are lush and swinging, the rhythm section full-toned, and Wes sounds settled into the larger format in a way he was still finding his footing on Movin’ Wes. The title track, "Bumpin’", became one of his signature recordings: a gently grooving piece that sounds unlike anything else in his catalog, the melody stated with such complete ease that it feels like it was always there waiting for him to find it.

Sebesky understood that the purpose of the orchestra was to support and enhance, not to substitute for jazz energy, and on the best tracks here he keeps that principle intact. Wes responds by playing with a melodic generosity that rewards the restraint of the arrangement. The commercial format was working, and he was making it work honestly.

The Verve concept at its most effective. Sebesky and Wes found each other here.

The reunion that delivered everything the earlier collaborations had promised. Verve sent a tape machine to the Half Note club in New York and the Wynton Kelly Trio with Wes Montgomery proceeded to record what many consider the definitive jazz guitar document. Kelly's comping behind Wes is a masterclass in responsive accompaniment: he hears what Wes is about to do and is already there when he arrives. That is not a metaphor. You can hear it on the record.

"No Blues" from the Miles Davis playbook gets a reading that may improve on the original. "Four on Six" revisited from The Incredible Jazz Guitar shows how much Wes had developed since the Riverside recording. He is not showing off. He is thinking out loud, and the thought is complete in a way that thinking-out-loud rarely is. Paul Chambers plays bass like he owns the bottom of every song. He does.

Only the first side was cut at the club (the second side was recorded at Van Gelder's studio in September), but this is the other live album you have to own. Different from Full House: warmer, more settled, the product of a quartet that had been playing together for years.

A second tape from the same working unit that made Smokin’ at the Half Note, recorded less than a year later at the Penthouse in Seattle and left unissued for five decades. Paul Chambers had been replaced by Ron McClure on bass; Wynton Kelly and Jimmy Cobb were still there, and the chemistry that made the Half Note dates essential was fully intact. Resonance Records producers Zev Feldman and George Klabin issued them in 2017, and the sound quality (recorded by Jim Wilke for his KING-FM radio broadcasts) is remarkably clean for a document that sat unheard that long.

“If You Could See Me Now” turns up again here, but as a trio feature for Kelly with Wes sitting out. Kelly’s comping is as responsive as ever, McClure holds his own without trying to be Chambers, and Cobb keeps the whole thing moving with the same easy authority. This is not a lesser sequel. It is a second night with the same great band, captured almost by accident.

Essential for anyone who loves Smokin’ at the Half Note. A little rougher around the edges, but that is part of what makes it worth hearing.

The breakthrough pop hit that ended the purists’ goodwill and introduced Wes to a mainstream audience that had no idea he existed. The title track had been a pop song by Little Anthony and the Imperials, and Wes played it with the same gravity and tenderness he brought to everything else, as if the tune had always been a jazz vehicle and had only been waiting for the right player to recognize it.

The album won a Grammy. Creed Taylor's strategy was not wrong. He just knew something the critics did not want to admit.

The commercial peak of the Verve years and one of the best arguments for the pop-orchestral format. The Grammy was deserved.

By 1966 the formula was fully in place and Tequila is the sound of it operating at full efficiency. Ogerman's charts are professional. The material is a mix of pop titles and careful originals. Wes plays beautifully throughout, as he always did, because playing beautifully was not a decision he made but a reflex he had.

"Bumpin' on Sunset" is the standout, Wes finding the bittersweet center of the song with his usual precision, the melody passed through his thumb and fingers and arriving at the microphone as something both familiar and new. The title track is an unlikely vehicle and he makes something of it. The rest covers familiar ground without adding much to it. It sells. It is fine. It is not Full House, and nothing from this period was going to be Full House.

The formula works less consistently here. The essential track is "Bumpin' on Sunset."

The Mamas and the Papas song in a jazz guitar setting is either a stroke of commercial genius or a category error, depending on where you stood in 1966. The title track is actually fine: Wes finds a line through the chord sequence that has genuine swing, and Sebesky's arrangement does not get in his way. There is a moment midway through the guitar solo where the octaves arrive and the pop song becomes something else entirely, briefly, before the arrangement reasserts itself.

The rest of the album continues in the same pop-orchestral mode, each track a melody statement with brief development before the strings come back. Sebesky's writing is consistently good. The problem is not the arrangements. The problem is the format's structural limitation on solo development. Wes could improvise for twelve minutes. He gets two choruses, then the orchestra closes it out.

Not without merit, but the weakest of the Verve orchestral records. The formula is coasting by this point.

Two heavyweights in the same room with a shared language: blues, groove, swing. Jimmy Smith on organ and Wes Montgomery on guitar had been making albums separately for Verve and the label put them together to see what would happen. Oliver Nelson wrote the big-band arrangements on three of the five tracks, tight and punchy, framing both players without crowding them. What happened is exactly what you hope for when two players of this caliber meet: both men playing to each other’s strengths rather than trying to out-solo each other, which would have been the lesser choice.

Smith’s organ provides the bottom and the heat, that distinctive B-3 growl running through everything like a second rhythm section. Wes rides on top with lines that are simultaneously relaxed and precise. Richard Davis anchors the bass on the big-band tracks, Grady Tate’s drumming keeps the groove without complicating it, and Ray Barretto’s congas add a warmth that the format specifically benefits from. The soul-jazz setting suits both of them. This is music that wants your body moving.

A genuine collaboration rather than a collision. A sequel, Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes, followed from the same sessions; it is usually dated 1968, though jazzdisco and Discogs list it as 1969.

Recorded in 1963 but released after Wes had already moved to Verve, Portrait of Wes arrived as a document of a musician who no longer existed commercially. The Wes on these tracks is the Riverside Wes: direct, blues-soaked, playing in a trio format that required nothing of him but his best improvisational instincts. There was no orchestra, no string section, no commercial brief. Just Mel Rhyne holding the bottom and George Brown keeping time.

The slight delay in release means it arrived alongside the orchestral Verve records as a reminder of what the stripped-down format produced. On its own terms it is one of the stronger organ trio dates from the Riverside catalog: Wes at full confidence, Rhyne responsive and unobtrusive, the blues running through everything like a groove worn into wood. Intimate rather than triumphant.

A fine addition to the organ trio catalog. The late release makes it feel like a farewell to the Riverside years.