Martin Taylor
Born 20 October 1956 (age 60)
Harlow, England
Genres Jazz
Occupation(s) Musician
Instruments Guitar
Martin Taylor – jazz fingerstyle guitarist
Martin Taylor, MBE (born 20 October 1956) is a British jazz guitarist who has performed in groups, guitar ensembles and as an accompanist. He is best known for his solo fingerstyle performances, in which he provides bass and chordal accompaniment in addition to a melody.
Taylor was born in Harlow, Essex, into a family with a musical heritage and a gypsy/traveller tradition, although he did not strictly lead the traditional gypsy lifestyle. At the age of four he received his first guitar from his father, jazz bassist William ‘Buck’ Taylor. His father, though only taking up music at 30, later frequently played the music of the Quintette du Hot Club de France and Taylor became inspired by their legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt. At age eight he was playing regularly in his father’s band and at 15 he quit school to become a professional musician.
At the age of 15 Martin joined the band of Lennie Hastings a highly respected jazz drummer who spent many years with the Alex Welsh band. Lennie, although famous for his cod-German routines as Herr Lennie Hastings. complete with irish (wig) and penny monocle was an extremely talented drummer. He had left the Welsh band and tried to make a go of it with his own band in 1973. The band attracted many fine musicians like Nick Stevenson (trumpet), Peter Skivington (bass guitar), Ron Brown (trombone) and Jamie Evans (piano). Lennie was able to attract high calibre guests like George Chisholm, Beryl Bryden and others. Although the band only lasted for less than a year, Martin (driven to gigs by his father Buck) has said that he learned a lot during that period and has many happy memories of playing with the Oo-Yah band (as it was often known).
Over the next few years Taylor played in numerous bands, holiday camps, radio dates, and cruise ships (one cruise led to playing with the Count Basie orchestra). Performing dates in and around London soon brought him into contact with jazz guitarist Ike Isaacs who took the younger man under his wing. In addition to performing with Taylor as a duet, Isaacs helped develop his sense of jazz harmony and started him on the road to developing his fingerstyle technique.
Taylor attributes his musical talent to beginning to learn the guitar at an early age, playing frequently, and having many musicians on his father’s side of the family.
Through Isaacs, Taylor was introduced to Stéphane Grappelli, former violinist in Quintette du Hot Club de France with Django Reinhardt. When one of Grappelli’s regular band members was injured, Taylor was invited to play a few European dates. Suitably impressed, Grappelli invited him to join full-time. He accepted, and performed and recorded with the Frenchman for the next eleven years—occupying the position once held by his idol, Reinhardt.
His success with Grappelli allowed him more freedom in his career. He reduced some of his commitments and relocated to Scotland where he still lives. (He is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Scottish.) Another benefit of his Grappelli association was that he began to tour North America regularly, helping him reach a new audience and build new relationships. He came to know musicians such as Chet Atkins and David Grisman, with whom he would both record, while another contact financed the production of an album, Sarabanda. The album received substantial airplay but financial difficulties at the record label prevented any major success.
This success was tempered by a difficult period in the mid 80s after Grappelli suffered a heart attack. Although he made a full recovery, it was some time before he could tour again. Taylor found it difficult to replace the Grappelli gig with other work, and fell into a period of financial hardship, selling his guitars to survive. He became disenchanted with music, and virtually didn’t touch guitar for almost a year. He finally agreed on a price for his one remaining guitar, a gift from mentor Isaacs, but, on the way to close the deal he pulled his car over to allow himself a final play of the instrument and suddenly found his passion for playing re-ignited. He called off the deal, and this was a catalyst in the next stage of his career.
Keen to avoid relying on other musicians for income, Taylor started to perform as a solo act. His individual style and engaging stage personality paid off and the gigs proved successful. After a few years he stopped touring with Grappelli and, aided by a recording contract with Scottish label Linn Records, he concentrated on his solo career. Primarily a manufacturer of high-end audio equipment, Linn felt that Taylor’s intimate and intricate style and tone ably demonstrated the quality of their equipment. These Linn recordings include solo work (Artistry and Portraits, which featured Chet Atkins) and some recorded as a modern jazz quartet (Don’t Fret). The relative success of these albums, and his concert dates, raised his profile in the guitar community as his peers became interested in his unique style.
In 1991 Taylor performed in Australia, giving a solo performance on the Hey Hey It’s Saturday show. Tommy Emmanuel spotted him on the show and contacted him and the two became close friends and frequent collaborators. Taylor has stated that though their backgrounds were different, they shared many similarities and found that they’d been living “parallel lives” on the opposite side of the world.
Equipment
Martin Taylor often uses guitars built by Scottish-based luthier Mike Vanden. Together they produced the ‘Martin Taylor Artistry’ archtop with another, nylon-stringed, archtop used for Spirit of Django. Throughout the ’90s he played a Yamaha AEX1500, which he helped develop.
In January 2012, Peerless guitars announced the release of two guitars endorsed by Martin, the higher-spec Maestro and the Virtuoso.
Discography
1979 Vintage 1981 (with Stéphane Grappelli, Mike Gari and Jack Sewing)
1981 Triple Libra (with Peter Ind) (Pinnacle)
1981 Skye Boat (Concord Jazz)
1984 Buddy DeFranco Meets Martin Taylor (Hep)
1985 Acoustic Guitar Duets (with Louis Stewart)
1989 Sarabanda (Gramavision)
1990 Don’t Fret (Linn)
1991 Change of Heart (Linn)
1992 Artistry (Linn)
1993 Réunion (with Stéphane Grappelli) (Linn)
1994 Spirit of Django (Linn)
1995 Portraits (with Chet Atkins) (Linn)
1995 Tone Poems 2 (with David Grisman) (Acoustic Disc)
1999 Two’s Company (Linn)
1999 I’m Beginning to See the Light with David Grisman (Acoustic Disc)
1999 Kiss & Tell (Columbia)
2000 Gypsy (Linn)
2000 In Concert (Milestone)
2001 Nitelife (Columbia/Sony)
2002 Solo (P3)
2003 Masterpiece Guitars with (Steve Howe) (P3)
2004 The Valley (P3)
2005 Gypsy Journey (P3)
2006 Sketches: A Tribute to Art Tatum (P3)
2007 Freternity (P3)
2008 1 a.m. (P3) (with Alison Burns)
2008 Double Standards (P3)
2009 Celebrating Grappelli
2010 Last Train to Hauteville (P3)
2011 Live at Wigmore Hall 4/21/96 (Acoustic Disc)
2011 Two for the Road (Woodville)
2012 One for the Road (with Alan Barnes)
2012 First Time Together! (with Frank Vignola and David Grisman)
2013 The Colonel and the Governor (with Tommy Emmanuel) (Mesa/Bluemoon)
2015 One Day (P3)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia