Halleluia, the book is out. And I’m getting a good response…
Here’s a chapter on Emily Remler, an important player in the late 70’s and 80’s who left us too early. She was a trail blazer.
To purchase the book go here: https://amzn.to/3B2QIyF
Emily Remler: Ode to Mali—Transitions (Concord Jazz 1984)
I’d love to talk about Emily Remler from a gender-neutral position. She was a great jazz guitarist, not a great female guitarist. But I can’t. You can’t ignore the fact that in the late 1970’s she was a woman in a completely male dominated world. Multiple sources confirm she could out play most male contemporaries. But still…she was judged under a different metric. There were very few women jazz artists at the time, and virtually no female jazz guitarists. Determined not to concern herself with all that Remler vowed to work harder than anyone else— and she achieved more in her short life than most of us who live into old age.
Emily was born in New Jersey and took up guitar at age 10. While she enjoyed Hendrix and Clapton she quickly fell in love with jazz, went to Berklee for a couple of years, and soon began playing with some of the better players on the scene. For a while Remler was based in New Orleans, and she dated the well-known guitarist Steve Masakowski. Her focus was jazz standards, she played a hollow body guitar with clean tone. She once said, “I may look like a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey, but inside I'm a 50-year-old, heavy-set black man with a big thumb, like Wes Montgomery.”
The great Herb Ellis championed her in the late 70’s and she was signed to Concord Records. This was a big deal, Concord was a substantial label with a roster that included Joe Pass, Ella Fitzgerald, and Oscar Peterson. Her early records, and live performances show a complete command of the jazz language. What set her apart, I think, was her gorgeous phrasing. Her playing is distinctly tuneful, rhythmically joyful and buoyant. Emily was said to be competitive. She kept getting better. She never put down the guitar, she was always practicing. She had no problem “hanging” with the guys, had a good sense of humor, and many is the time she left her contemporaries wide-eyed after a show. She won best guitarist of the year in Downbeat in 1985.
Prejudice is a curious thing. There's absolutely no logic to the idea that gender or skin color might pre-determine ability. With what logic could you say that a black man is incapable of playing country music? Black people have been playing country music for thousands of years. What do you think a Griot is? A singer who tells stories about the culture and accompanies himself with a simple chord progression. Sounds like country music to me. What exactly would lead a man to think a woman couldn’t play jazz?
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