Jimmy Gourley: Cool Guitar

September 28, 2021

Jimmy Gourley: Cool Guitar

I last posted about guitarist Jimmy Gourley in 2020 (go here). As noted at the time, Gourley was an American born in St. Louis who moved to Paris in 1951 and died in France in 2008. Enamored of Jimmy Raney's playing style, a combination of several picking techniques, Gourley performed and recorded with a range of French jazz artists in Paris as well as with touring Americans. [Photo above of Jimmy Gourley]

Why did he move to Paris in the first place? Apparently, Chicago was too bleak and depressing for Gourley in the late 1940s given the morass of jazz musicians hooked on heroin. He was told that Paris had a different, more upbeat and exciting scene. The event that likely convinced Gourley to remain in Paris was the shocking death of his friend and guitarist Ronnie Singer, who had become a heroin addict. [Photo above of Ronnie Singer]

Singer and his wife, Jeannie, were married in 1951. Based on my research, in December 1953, they were found dead, fully clothed, on a bed in New York's Colborne Hotel at 79 Washington Place in Greenwich Village. Their deaths were listed as a suicide pact. A note was found written by Singer's wife outlining where she wanted her personal items sent. [Photo above of the former Colborne Hotel]

In Paris, Gourley soared. To quote from Jordi Pujol's liner notes in a recently issued release, The Cool Guitar of Jimmy Gourley: Quartet & Trio Sessions 1953-1961:

Gourley had been told that France had a good jazz scene, and he thought that it could be a good country to start a new stage in his life. So he applied for a scholarship for former American combatants under the G.I. Bill... Gourley arrived in Paris sometime in April 1951 to study piano and French. But his true calling was jazz, and so it didn't take him long to meet Henri Renaud, a young pianist, a staunch follower of Al Haig and an enthusiast of cool jazz.

What we hear on the new Fresh Sound release are four sessions—one with Renaud (above) in October 1963, one with American bassist Buddy Banks in October 1954, and two with Gourley as the leader of a quartet, in January and October of 1961. All showcase Gourley's ringing guitar sound and swinging style. His taste level was extraordinary. Like many top guitars of the period, he could take any song and turn it into a gorgeous, hip expression.

As for Ronnie Singer, Gourley was said to have tapes of the unrecorded guitarist whom Gourley thought was on par with Raney or better. At the time of his death in 2008, Gourley was supposedly trying to get them issued. It's unclear what happened to the tapes.