GUITAR SOUND The Howard Roberts Guitar Sound
by Wolf Marshall
Howard Roberts was once described as a jazz guitarist who could play anything. Add: with a sound to match. A true musical chameleon he was one of the genre's greatest jazz players and also one of the most recorded guitarists in commercial music history. When performing in the studio as a "first call" guitarist he reached into a large trunk and invariably came up with the right tool for the job everytime. By the late seventies his studio trunk contained a large number of instruments: a 6-string bass, a flat-top acoustic, an arch-top acoustic, a 12-string acoustic, a couple of hollow-body electrics, a mandolin, a ukelele, a banjo, a Les Paul, an ES-335, and other solid bodies. For rock sessions Roberts generally used an old Fender Broadcaster with light strings.
As a jazz instrumentalist Howard Roberts played a number of guitars during his career. In 1950, when he first arrived in L.A., Roberts had a Gibson L-5 acoustic cutaway model with a DeArmond pickup. Howard's later publicity shots from the Verve Records stint as well as the cover of Mr.Roberts Plays Guitar | |
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