Leonard Ware

Leonard Ware (right) with Billy Taylor and Zutty Singleton in New York in the mid-1940s.
Photography by William P. Gottlieb .

Leonard Ware (born December 28, 1909 in Richmond , Virginia , † March 30, 1974 in New York City , New York ) was an American jazz guitarist and composer . He is considered one of the pioneers of the electrically amplified guitar in jazz .

Live and act

Goods studied oboe at Tuskeegee Institute and joined the late '30s guitar. From the mid-1930s he played in New York in various smaller ensembles and participated in 1938 with recordings of Sidney Bechet for Vocalion with (What a Dream, Jungle Drums). Bechet then put together a combo with Ware and another guitarist, Jimmy Shirley , who is probably one of the first groups with two electric guitarists. The end of 1938 came good with the Kansas City Six to Lester Young and Buck Clayton in Carnegie Hall on ( After You've Gone ); In 1939, he took with Benny Goodman at (Umbrella Man).

In the early 1940s he played with his own trio in Greenwich Village . In 1941 he made recordings with Big Joe Turner (Ice Man, Somebody's Got to Go, Nobody in My Mind and Chewed Up Grass), as well as with Herbie Fields , Don Byas (1945), Buddy Johnson and Albinia Jones (Salty Papa Blues). At the end of the 1940s he withdrew from the music scene and worked in the postal service.

With Charlie Christian, Ware is one of the first in jazz to play the electric guitar. He composed the pieces Hold Tight (which he recorded with Bechet) and I Dreamed I Dwelt in Harlem, which was later recorded by Glenn Miller and The Delta Rhythm Boys , among others .

The guitarist is not to be confused with the blues bassist of the same name who played with Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson II .

Lexical entries

• Bielefeld Catalog 1988
• Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
• Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-532000-X .
• John Jörgensen, Erik Wiedemann : Jazz Lexicon . Mosaic, Munich, 1967

Web links

• Leonard Ware in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Chris Kelsey : Leonard Ware at Allmusic (English)
• Leonard Ware at Discogs (English)