Eddie Lang

The first jazz guitar virtuoso, Eddie Lang was everywhere in the late '20s; all of his fellow musicians knew that he was the best. A boyhood friend of <a href="spotify:artist:7rOldyBQnbp9DtBGoKEiwl">Joe Venuti</a>, Lang took violin lessons for 11 years but switched to guitar before he turned professional. In 1924, he debuted with <a href="spotify:artist:7jFdXqDV7DClHi5HiEN6MZ">the Mound City Blue Blowers</a> and was soon in great demand for recording dates, both in the jazz world and in commercial settings. His sophisticated chord patterns made him a superior accompanist who uplifted everyone else's music, and he was also a fine single-note soloist. He often teamed up with violinist <a href="spotify:artist:7rOldyBQnbp9DtBGoKEiwl">Venuti</a> (including some classic duets) and played with <a href="spotify:artist:0lKHVrznMIh4noTdNQJ1qw">Red Nichols' Five Pennies</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1wZJPrJG9p0ZkiP1sGTaS7">Frankie Trumbauer</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:3kfbYBrL3MCPAMUwKDRpc7">Bix Beiderbecke</a> (most memorably on "Singing the Blues"), the orchestras of <a href="spotify:artist:29QmuvE0ycnc6r57M2AUYf">Roger Wolfe Kahn</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2rtPSgv5K948tiLuIFkXMQ">Jean Goldkette</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:1mZm40boQmdGKicfbNkd0r">Paul Whiteman</a> (appearing on one short number with <a href="spotify:artist:7rOldyBQnbp9DtBGoKEiwl">Venuti</a> in <a href="spotify:artist:1mZm40boQmdGKicfbNkd0r">Whiteman</a>'s 1930 film The King of Jazz), and anyone else who could hire him. A measure of Lang's versatility and talents is that he mostly played the chordal parts on a series of duets with <a href="spotify:artist:74g0xdNndEjFzMKSRFUMNM">Lonnie Johnson</a> (during which he used the pseudonym <a href="spotify:artist:4PoGJFPuH3eXNWetQ3139K">Blind Willie Dunn</a>), yet on his two duets with <a href="spotify:artist:0KL26rUVFAqUcfnXbJRksT">Carl Kress</a> (whose chord voicings were an advancement on Lang's), he played the single-note leads. Eddie Lang, who led some dates of his own during 1927-1929, worked regularly with <a href="spotify:artist:6ZjFtWeHP9XN7FeKSUe80S">Bing Crosby</a> during the early '30s in addition to recording many sessions with <a href="spotify:artist:7rOldyBQnbp9DtBGoKEiwl">Venuti</a>. Tragically his premature death was caused by a botched operation on a tonsillectomy. ~ Scott Yanow, Rovi