Jim Hall (musician)

This article is about jazz guitarist Jim Hall. For the other guitarist, a retired professor from the University of South Carolina School of Music, see James A. Hall.

Jim Hall
Jazz guitarist Jim Hall, in 2010
Background information
Birth name	James Stanley Hall
Born	December 4, 1930 (1930-12-04)
Origin	Buffalo, New York
Genres	Jazz, cool jazz, post-bop
Occupations	Guitarist, composer, arranger
Instruments	Guitar
Years active	1955–present
Labels	ArtistShare, Telarc, A&M
Associated acts	Chico Hamilton Quintet, Jimmy Giuffre Three, Art Farmer Quartet
Website	www.jimhallmusic.com

James Stanley Hall (born December 4, 1930, Buffalo, New York) is an American jazz guitarist.

Biography

Educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s. There he studied classic guitar with Vincente Gómez.

He played with Chico Hamilton Quintet, (1955–1956), Jimmy Giuffre Trio (1956–1959), Ella Fitzgerald (1960–1961), Ben Webster, Hampton Hawes, Bob Brookmeyer, John Lewis, Zoot Sims, Paul Desmond, Lee Konitz and Bill Evans. By 1960 Jim had arrived in New York to work with Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer, among others. His live and recorded collaborations there with Bill Evans, Paul Desmond and Ron Carter have become legendary.

Formal recognition as a composer came in 1997, when Hall won the New York Jazz Critics Circle Award for Best Jazz Composer/Arranger. His pieces for string, brass, and vocal ensembles can be heard on his Textures and By Arrangement recordings. His original composition, Quartet Plus Four, a piece for jazz quartet augmented by the Zapolski string quartet, was debuted in Denmark during the concert and ceremony where he was awarded the coveted Jazzpar Prize, and later released on CD.

His most recent large-scale composition was a concerto for guitar and orchestra, commissioned by Towson University in Maryland for The First World Guitar Congress, which was debuted in June 2004 with the Baltimore Symphony. He was awarded an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship award in January 2004. Jim was one of the first artists to join the fan-funded label ArtistShare and released his first recording "Magic Meeting" in 2005. In November, 2008 the double-disc album Hemispheres was released through the ArtistShare label featuring fellow guitarist and former student Bill Frisell with Scott Colley (bass) and Joey Baron (drums).

Equipment

Jim Hall has always used an extremely simple approach regarding his gear. In the early stages of his career, playing with Chico Hamilton, he used a Gibson Les Paul Custom. From that moment on, he has been associated with the Gibson ES-175 guitar. This guitar, originally with a single P90 pickup, was used with a Gibson GA50 amplifier. He then switched to a humbucking pickup before adopting a custom made D'Aquisto guitar. After the GA50 he started using solid-state amplifiers, mostly Polytones (although he also used Walter Woods Amp and Harry Kolbe GP-1 Pre-Amp and Cab). Currently he is using his signature Sadowsky guitar, based on his original D'Aquisto.

He uses flatwound strings gauges 11, 15, 20 (plain), 30, 40, 50 (from high E to low E) and small teardrop picks of heavy gauge. It's not rare to see him using a Boss Chorus pedal and a Digitech whammy pedal.

When asked if he ever tried playing solid-body guitars again, he said "solid bodies are strange to me, I need to feel the body resonating". Jim Hall considers himself a musician first and a guitar player second, and his whole approach to gear reflects this.

Discography

As leader

• Jazz Guitar (Pacific Jazz, 1957)
• It's Nice to Be With You (MPS Records, 1969)
• Where Would I Be? ((Milestone, 1971)
• Alone Together (Milestone, 1972) - with Ron Carter
• Concierto (CTI, 1975)
• Jim Hall Live! (Verve, 1975)
• Jim Hall Live in Tokyo (Paddle Wheel, 1976)
• Commitment (A&M, 1976)
• Jim Hall and Red Mitchell (Artists House, 1978) - duo recorded live at Sweet Basil
• Big Blues (CTI, 1978) - with Art Farmer
• Circles (Concord, 1981)
• Studio Trieste (CTI, 1982)
• Telephone (Concord, 1985) - with Ron Carter
• Power of Three (Blue Note, 1986) - with Michel Petrucciani and Wayne Shorter
• Jim Hall's Three (Concord, 1986) - with Steve La Spina and Akira Tana
• These Rooms (Denon, 1988)
• All Across the City (Concord, 1989)
• Live at Town Hall, Vol. 1 (Music Masters, 1990)
• Live at Town Hall, Vol. 2 (Music Masters, 1990)
• Subsequently (Music Masters, 1991)
• Youkali (CTI, 1993)
• Something Special (Inner City, 1993)
• Dedications & Inspirations (Telarc, 1993)
• Dialogues (Telarc, 1995)
• Live at the Village West (Concord, 1995) - with Ron Carter
• Textures (Telarc, 1996)
• Panorama: Live at the Village Vanguard (Telarc, 1997)
• By Arrangement (Telarc, 1998)
• Jim Hall & Pat Metheny (Telarc, 1999)
• Grand Slam: Live at the Regatta Bar (Telarc, 2000) - with Joe Lovano
• Jim Hall & Basses (Telarc, 2001)
• Magic Meeting (ArtistShare, 2005) - with Scott Colley and Lewis Nash
• Free Association (ArtistShare, 2006) with Geoffrey Keezer
• Hemispheres (ArtistShare, 2008) - with Bill Frisell, Joey Baron and Scott Colley
• Conversations (ArtistShare, 2010) - with Joey Baron

As sideman

With Manny Albam

• Jazz Goes to the Movies (Impulse!, 1962)

With Bob Brookmeyer

• Street Swingers (Disques Vogue, 1957)

With Gary Burton

• Something's Coming! (RCA, 1963)

With Ornette Coleman

• Broken Shadows (Columbia, 1972 [1982])

With Paul Desmond

• The Paul Desmond Quartet with Jim Hall (Giants of Jazz/ita, 1995)

With Bill Evans

• Interplay (Riverside, 1962)
• Undercurrent (Blue Note, 1963)
• Intermodulation (Verve, 1966)
• Loose Blues (Milestone, 1982) (recorded 1962)

With Art Farmer

• To Sweden with Love (Atlantic, 1964)
• Interaction (Atlantic, 1963)

With the Kronos Quartet

• Music of Bill Evans (Savoy Jazz, 1986)

With Jimmy Giuffre

• The Jimmy Giuffre 3 (Atlantic, 1957)
• Trav'lin' Light (Atlantic, 1958)
• The Four Brothers Sound (Atlantic, 1958)
• Western Suite (Atlantic, 1958)
• The Easy Way (Verve, 1959)
• The Train and the River (Atlantic, 1959)
• 7 Pieces (Verve, 1959)
• Herb Ellis Meets Jimmy Giuffre (PolyGram, 1959)
• The Jimmy Giuffre Quartet In Person (Verve, 1960)
• Hollywood & Newport 1957-1958 (Fresh Sound, 1992)
• Complete Studio Recordings (Gambit Spain, 2005)

With the Modest Jazz Trio

• Good Friday Blues (Disques Vogue, 1960)

With Helen Merrill

• Something Special (Inner City, 1967)
• A Shade of Difference (Milestone, 1968)

With Greg Osby

• The Invisible Hand (Blue Note, 2000)

With Sonny Rollins

• The Bridge (Bluebird, 1962)
• The Standard Sonny Rollins (RCA Victor, 1964)
• Road Shows Vol. 2 (EmArcy, 2011)

With Sonny Stitt

• Stitt Plays Bird (Atlantic, 1964)

External links

• Jim Hall's official website
• Jim Hall's fan website
• Jim Hall at Allmusic
• Profile at the Europe Jazz Network
• A fan page
• Jim Hall guitar tabs
• "In Conversation with Jim Hall" by Patrick Spurling (Jazz.com)