Tal Farlow - An Obituary

What they didn't know was that each of them was talking about Tal Farlow. The then unknown Farlow was to become one of the most tasteful of the jazz guitar players and the best technician - his devastating abilities earned him his nickname "The Octopus".

Farlow had pages written about him in all the jazz magazines, and won innumerable jazz awards. One publication devoted a whole issue to his work. But this was the magazine 'Sign Craft' for, apart from his guitar playing, Farlow was an accomplished sign-painter who became one of the best in that field, too. He had an illustrious forebear because, in his early years, Duke Ellington also earned his living as a sign- writer. Farlow chose, for his career, to spend more of his time painting signs than playing the guitar and still, as a virtual part-timer on the instrument, remained the best of the thinking man's guitarists.

Farlow was 15 when he graduated from high school in Greensboro, North Carolina. Most of his fellow students went to work in the local textile mills. His father, who played the violin, banjo, ukulele and guitar, thought it better for Farlow's health to have him apprenticed to a sign-making shop. Farlow taught himself to play on his father's guitar. "As long as I can remember I could always play a little guitar. But at that time I wanted to make commercial art a career." Farlow never considered a career in music as possible until, at the comparatively late age of 22, he was able to turn professional. He listened to the records Benny Goodman made in the early Forties, and it was here that he first heard Goodman's guitarist Charlie Christian, the man who was the father of modern jazz guitar and who remains to this day a potent influence on young players.

Farlow moved north several times during the war but always returned to Greensboro and the sign-writing. After the war ended he joined a group led by the female entertainer Dardanelle, who sang and played piano and vibraphone. The group toured and was eventually booked for a six-month residence at New York's Copa Lounge. This gave Farlow a chance to listen to some of the contemporary progressive jazz, primarily at the feet of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker. Parker's astonishing ideas and undreamed-of speed fired the young guitarist to emulate him. He learned to play Parker's recorded solos by heart. In a magnificent understatement he described this as "It helps the development not to go for the easy stuff."

Leaving Dardanelle, Farlow went back home to sign-write. But he itched for New York and the new music. He returned to the city and began playing at society dances in the dull but worthy Marshall Grant Society Band. He kept on with the sign-writing, too. On one occasion he was up a ladder painting the sign on a New York store when Charlie Parker arrived below and, unaware of Farlow's other life, stood roaring with laughter for several minutes.

It was at this time, in 1949, that the thoughts of Red Norvo and Mundell Lowe converged on him. Farlow joined Norvo's unique trio of vibraphone, guitar and string bass. Its music was a gentle, tasteful and incredibly adroit form of Bebop. Although he had no firm prospects there, Norvo persuaded Farlow to go with him to California. At first the third member of the trio was bassist Red Kelly but he soon left to be replaced by Charlie Mingus, another jazz giant in the making. The absence of a piano and drums gave the three instruments enormous flexibility and the opportunity to play at great speed. Remarkably, the self-taught Farlow never learned to read music properly, thus disqualifying himself from the chance of studio work.

"Tal used to quit every night," remembered Norvo. "He said 'I can't play that fast. I can't play like you do. I'm not used to playing in that tempo!' I told him 'Tal, as a trio we don't have drums or any volume control like that. For loudness or softness we've got to use speed as our main device.'"

"Now Red plays very fast, you know," said Farlow. "He just naturally assumed that I could keep up with him. Well, I couldn't. It was very embarrassing for me every time we'd start going 80 miles an hour on some song. Red didn't say anything about it. It was up to me to work out my own problems. And I did. I worked at it. We went out on tour and by the time we hit L.A., months after I had joined the trio I was able finally to hold my own in the speed department.' He had become the fastest guitar player in jazz.

"Because there were only three of us, and because of the instruments we played, each musician had to make a major contribution. It was not the kind of group where you could sit back and hope things would happen. You had to keep thinking ahead, responding to the other guys and their ideas."

The years with Norvo determined the rest of Farlow's career. The vast spaces left by the sparse line-up meant that he had to be a comprehensive soloist and he developed a highly sophisticated harmonic approach that was unique, as well as becoming an awe-inspiring rhythm player as he backed solos by Norvo and Mingus. To power his dexterity he used his thumb instead of a plectrum and was able to treat as routine his own stratagems - like his double octave work - that would have felled any other guitarist who tried to incorporate them. The many recordings that the trio made still take the breath away almost 50 years later and this, rather than the more celebrated Gerry Mulligan Quartet of a few years later, was the first modern jazz group to dispense with a piano and use the resulting freedom to telling effect.

Farlow left Norvo in 1953 to join Artie Shaw's Gramercy Five, although he and Norvo were to reunite several times in later years. Shaw, on the other hand, was nearing the end of his career. This was a tragedy for he was one of the most inventive jazz clarinettists, his work being regarded by many of the best players as superior to that of Benny Goodman. But Shaw was fired by demons and was soon to turn his back on the music in disgust. For six months Farlow was involved in Shaw's final thrust, a delicate group that included another emergent giant, pianist Hank Jones. "Shaw was a tremendous musician," said Farlow, " but the music we played wasn't really in my bag."

It was while he was with Shaw that Farlow made his first albums under his own name, first for the Blue Note label, and then, in 1954 and 1955 for Norman Granz's Norgran label. He returned to Norvo briefly in 1955 and then went back to the East Coast in 1956 and formed his own trio, including the remarkable pianist Eddie Costa. This lasted until 1958 with a break for sign-writing. Then Farlow married his first wife, Tina, and retired from the jazz field for a decade, occasionally teaching guitar and occasionally sitting in at local jazz clubs near his New Jersey home.

Emerging in 1967 Farlow began recording albums again, appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival and, in 1969, toured with the George Wein All Stars, a band that included Red Norvo and cornettist Ruby Braff. But he still chose to work sporadically and it was not until the late Seventies that he committed himself to his jazz career. In 1981 he was the subject of a one-hour documentary film, "Talmadge Farlow". He joined Norvo's trio again, toured extensively in Europe, including a stay at the Nice Jazz Festival in 1984. He also combined with Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd to tour as the band Great Guitars. He now visited the recording studios regularly and some of his albums are still awaiting release.

He had begun working with the English entrepreneur Ernie Garside, who had also started life as a sign-writer. In 1983 Garside began booking the guitarist to play in Britain for four or five weeks every year and continued until Farlow's health deteriorated in 1995 to the point where he no longer wished to travel. On these trips Garside often teamed Farlow with the British vibraphone player Bill le Sage. The guitarist based himself at Garside's Manchester home. "He played the guitar all the time, even when we were watching the television," said Garside. "He didn't need much sleep. Several times I went to bed and left him downstairs playing quietly, and when I'd get up the next morning he'd still be there in exactly the same position, still playing."

Farlow appeared in several films, including "I'll Get By" (1950) with the Harry James band and the Red Norvo Trio and "Texas Carnival" (1951) a musical with Esther Williams and Howard Keel. The other films were made up of short jazz programmes.