Artist Features
L.A.’s Pre-Bebop Acoustic Guitarist, Jonathan Stout
Jazz Guitar Today’s Joe Barth interviews an expert in historic jazz, guitarist Jonathan Stout.
Los Angeles’ Jonathan Stout loves acoustic music. He also loves to swing dance, and dancing has motivated him to explore traditional swing music. He is an expert in historic jazz and the kind of traditional music that people love to dance to. Add to that, he is a pretty good lawyer but, in this article, I talk music with him (and just a little law).
JB: Growing up in Los Angeles you started with 90s grunge music, so what motivated you to play jazz guitar?
JS: I actually started playing guitar right before grunge took hold of rock culture, so bands like Metallica and Guns and Roses were of interest before the Seattle wave took over. I got my first CD player the same Christmas as my first guitar, and the first two CD’s I got were Pearl Jam’s Ten and Joe Satriani’s The Extremist, so I always had an enjoyment and appreciation for virtuosity. My appreciation for jazz started when I started swing dancing in high school – this was pretty “Swingers”, pre-“Gap Ad”. I got really into hard bop, things like Grant Green and Kenny Burrell, and Cannonball Adderley – there’s a parallel universe somewhere where I lead an organ trio that adds a full horn section to play Stax-Volt and Atlantic soul on the second set. But when I started college, I decided to add a second major at USC’s Studio Jazz Guitar Program. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good fit for somebody who was just doing it “for fun”. But because I got a bit bummed out with guitar playing for my freshman year, I actually started swing dancing more than I ever had before, and it took over my life a bit. After that freshman year, I decided to quit playing guitar, quit the second major, and just swing dance for fun and get a history degree. Thankfully, a month into my summer break, I saw the movie “Sweet and Lowdown”, with Sean Penn playing a fictional 1930’s rival to Django, with the soundtrack having been played by Howard Alden. I realized that I really should take my guitar playing in that direction instead of the hard bop thing.
JB: Talk about Disneyland’s John Reynolds influence upon you.
JS: So that summer, I asked my uncle David, a pro trombone player and arranger in Los Angeles if he could get me a lesson with someone who played “Swing Guitar”. And without realizing who I was going to see, he got me a lesson with John Reynolds. I never saw John at Disneyland, but he was in one of my favorite bands, Mora’s Modern Rhythmists, an 11-piece 1920s-1930s style big band, so I was very familiar with his playing. That “lesson”, which was more of a “hang” was hugely impactful, because he showed me a few things, and mostly just jammed with me, and let me know what things in my playing were already heading in the right direction. Ever since then, he’s been a hero figure to me – he’s really this unsung, amazing, mad genius of “Interbellum” jazz guitar and banjo – and “the real thing” if there ever was one.
JB: Did you immerse in modern and fusion jazz guitar and then return to pre-bebop acoustic jazz?
JS: I honestly could never find anything of interest past 1964 in jazz, except for some of the hard bop/soul jazz/boogaloo cross-over stuff in the late 1960s. The years 1958-1961 were basically the high water mark for me back then, but I never really properly learned to bebop. My ability to transcribe didn’t develop until after I started playing swing, so I never really got the vocabulary internalized, save for the kind of bluesy double-stop licks somebody like Green or Burrell would play in between their bebop.
Once I started studying Swing music, I really started to bristle at the aesthetics of straight-ahead jazz which was really different from Swing-era Jazz, and I felt a strong derogatory attitude from a lot of jazz musicians (and promoters, and historians, etc.) that “Swing” was something “less than” the later forms of jazz. So, a lot of those aesthetic differences were things that I really leaned into – things like having arrangements, not just blowing tunes, keeping solos short like they were on 78 rpm records, swing-era harmony, and most importantly swing-era time-feel. Plus, as a dancer, I could feel how the time-feel of “straight ahead” jazz was completely wrong for driving a dance floor – having a relaxed, ride cymbal pattern anchored around the backbeat really lays the beat back in a way that completely robs it of the energy needed to drive a dance floor. Because of having to fight to so hard to keep things that were actually the defining parts of the genre, I had to stop listening to later styles of jazz completely, because I really didn’t want to bring those aesthetic values into a place where they didn’t really fit.
JB: Has the guitar always been a hobby to your lawyer work?
JS: It was for about 15 years of my career, and then we were getting enough fly-out dates in the swing dance world that I needed to quit my day job, and being a lawyer is now more of the “side hustle.” That said, the pandemic was really tough timing, because not only did it really manage to stall what I had been building, but a lot of the legal work I’d been using to subsidize things dried up. But of course, during that time I started to leverage things like live streams and Instagram in a way that has led me to the attention of lots of people outside the swing dance world for the first time, so I’ve been managing to build a career with a whole different audience.
JB: Talk about the impact Allan Reuss’ approach has upon you. What are two or three of the most influential jazz rhythm guitar players and why?
JS: Reuss was one of the most important guitar players of the era, but got completely erased once electric guitar came in. His rhythm playing was definitive. Between 1935 and 1937 when “Swing” was really coalescing as a genre, his rhythm playing with Benny Goodman was the gold standard – and he focusing in on the kind of “four to the bar” playing we usually call “Freddie Green”-style was really codified by Allan. So much so that Steve Jordan tells the story in his book that Freddie actually took lessons from Allan when he got to NYC from South Carolina. Once Benny heard the Basie band in late 1937 into 1938, he fell in love it’s slightly more relaxed Kansas City-feel, so he told Allan that he should take lessons from Freddie, and Allan answered back something like, “Whatdya mean, he’s been taking lessons from me for six months!”. I know Freddie’s son Al doesn’t believe that was the case, but I’ve seen it from several sources, and with the chronology and evolution of the music, it tracks. Plus, when the BG band was in NYC, Allan taught out of the “New York Band” store, which was the Gibson showroom in NY.
But of course, his evolution of George Van Eps’s chord-melody soloing is the other big part of his legacy. Because there’s never been any album compiling his solos, it’s really hard to track down all of the various recordings he did take solos on. With the help of a few friends on the internet and also discography websites, I’ve been able to track down almost everything he recorded through the late 1940s and compile all of his solos for myself. His style was taking George’s already great approach and making it SWING even more – and all of the other great swing-era chord melody players (all of whom I really do dig) are a bit stilted in comparison. The big breakthrough for me with Reuss was during the pandemic, where I figured out how to use soundslice.com not just as a lesson platform, but a platform to use to make transcriptions. I had worked with a slowdowner and finale, but having all of the tools in one platform really made me get over the hump. Within a couple of months, I was able to transcribe almost his whole solography, and really understand the framework of his technique.
The crazy thing about Reuss is that he’s actually “cheating” a lot more than somebody like Joe Pass. Because he’s sliding chords around, Reuss is using simple triads as “partial chords”, so he doesn’t have to actually fully voice anything. It’s very different than when one plays “solo guitar”, and you have to carry ALL of the harmonic information. Reuss could kind of float above something like a ii-V vamp on a tune like “Honeysuckle Rose” – jumping back and forth between things shaped like V and IV (because IV6 is iim7), and not having to strictly outline the resolutions between ii to V.
JB: What is most rewarding about playing in the Campus Five Band with singer Hilary Alexander?
JS: I couldn’t have picked a better business and creative partner. Hilary’s love and dedication to honoring the dance and music culture of the swing era was a big part of my desire to do the same. Her “Day Job” is running one of the largest and most important swing dance weekend conventions in the world, “Camp Hollywood”, and the vision of that event was very formative for me. It wasn’t just a lip-service, surface-level pean to Swing, it was “real.” We actually got to meet and learn from original era dancers and hear music that was 1930’s Basie, not 1950’s Basie. That love of the culture, but more so the people who created it and their stories became deeply important to me, hence trying to burnish the legacies of people like Charlie Christian and Allan Reuss – and of course, if they were as well represented as I think they should be, I wouldn’t need to do what I do.
JB: Talk about the gigs you do with the Jonathan Stout Orchestra.
JS: I really didn’t know that much about bandleading when I started the Campus Five, but I did very quickly notice the things that worked and didn’t work for our swing dance audience, of which I would’ve been one. It helped that I had been DJing in that world, so I knew a lot of tunes, and specifically arrangements, that “worked.” Our whole modern swing dance culture is mostly based around DJ’s, and the way in which a DJ can cherry pick any recording from all of history, so the culture had really created its own set of tempo and song length expectations that had nothing to do with anything “authentic” to the swing-era (amusingly it took me 15 years to actually realize that). Since the Campus Five had very quickly cracked the code on how to play for dancers, we were asked to start a big band after that first year.
The big band specializes more in playing exacting arrangements of original era bands, and less on original material or arrangements. Many of the events we do with it are specifically themed around one night for a given historical bandleader: a Basie night, a Goodman night etc. Of course, a big band is really a whole different animal than even a relatively arranged 7 piece, because the power and variety in a big band are unmatched. There’s not a lot of guitar soloing with the big band, of course, but we do play two of the tunes Charlie Christian played with the Benny Goodman Orchestra, and I’ve got a couple other places I’ll add an electric guitar solo as well.
JB: Tell us about the main guitars you play.
JS: For most Campus Five or Orchestra gigs, I’ll bring both a 1939 Gibson L-5 and a 1937 ES-150. I’ve seen pictures of Allan Reuss and Barney Kessel in the mid-1940s where they’re still clearly playing acoustic rhythm guitar in a big band, but also have an electric to take solos. For me, playing non-electric rhythm guitar is one of my core “beliefs” as a musician. I really feel like electric and acoustic guitars are very different instruments and deserve to be respected on their own terms.
I’ve also got a 1932 Gibson L-5 that I often play with my trio instead of the 1939, or when I can only bring one guitar on a trip. When I have to go down to one guitar, I’ll add a 1950’s DeArmond Guitar Mike with a “monkey stick.” It’s not ideal, but it allows the guitar to remain as acoustic as possible for my rhythm and chord-melody playing, but I can also switch to “electric” for Charlie-type solos.
JB: Is it always acoustic or do you amplify your volume and if so, how?
JS: I do always amplify the acoustic archtops using a DPA4099 gooseneck condenser microphone – using either the “cello” mount for the trapeze tailpiece of my 1932 or the “sax/trumpet clip” on the tailpiece of the 1939. Having a really high quality microphone mounted to the guitar has been a “game changer” in allowing me to play “acoustically” on stage. I don’t believe that any transducer or magnetic pickup can really deliver the timbre of an acoustic archtop properly. That said, I do have to make sure any monitors aren’t pointing directly at the top of the guitar (and thus bouncing right into the mic), but if I put my monitor so that it’s pointing right down the neckline, it’s 90° to the mic and the feedback rejection is excellent. Also key is having a “mute pedal” on the floor, because there’s no volume knob to turn down on the guitar. Lastly, when I can I also use an A/B switcher pedal, so that I can jump between two channels in FOH, one normal for rhythm, and one slightly boosted if I need to pop out for a solo. I find it works great, because even a great sound tech is going to lag momentarily in turning up my fader in time for a solo, and because of the style of music, the solos are often over before they find it. This way, I still give them the control of independent volume level for each (and not a predetermined boost), but I control which channel I’m on. After playing “acoustic archtop” live for 22 years, it’s really the best solution.
For smaller gigs, I’ll run the same system into an AER Compact 60, or just use one channel for the mic, and use the other for the “electric” using Combs Instruments’ JJ-150 pedal (basically a transistorized version of the EH-150 amp circuit in pedal form) as a preamp. I use that pedal for all of my flyout dates where I can’t count on having access to a 1930’s Gibson amp in working condition or something like Vintage ’47 amp’s similarly styled VA-185G. That pedal into the FX return of a backline Hot Rod Deluxe gets me enough of that essential “octal tube” character of those amps to be able to comfortably get the sound.
JB: Please discuss your musical collaborations with Matt Munisteri.
JS: Matt is a legend and an inspiration, to be sure, but he’s also really great with support and encouragement once you get on the right track, which given his occasionally gruff persona can be kind of a surprise at first. I was honored when he asked me to be a “virtual panelist” for his annual Red Hot Strings camp during the pandemic (on panel about “Swing Guitar” with him, another hero of mine, Howard Alden). I took advantage and sat in a bunch of the virtual lessons, and after that he asked me to teach the following year. I ended up finally getting COVID that week and had to teach virtually from home, but I’ve taught there in person the last two years. Red Hot Strings is a really special camp, and I really managed to get some breakthroughs in teaching Reuss-style chord-melody playing to the campers. The funny thing is that we haven’t played together at all outside of the camp, but we ended up doing a bunch of duet playing in and around the camp and also playing together in the various staff concerts, and it really inspired and elevated my playing. I jump at any opportunity to play with him, and we’ll actually be doing a set special “Swing Guitar Summit” together with John Reyolds at the Redwood Coast Music Festival in Eureka, CA 10/3-10/6, where I’ll be playing sets with my Campus Five, and guesting with several other bands.
JB: Talk about how you mix your music and law career in Los Angeles work for you.
JS: I started my music career having been an occasional sideman for six months during college but then started a band, and I’ve been leading that band (my “Campus Five”) and my other projects (my big band, my trio, and several other small bands) all while I finished college, went to law school, studied for the bar, passed the bar, became a practicing attorney. I lucked into a job with an incredibly flexible schedule – and as long as my cases got handled, I could do flyout gigs regularly. By 2018, I had so many flyout gigs that I was starting to think I was going to need to quit my day job, and after a court computer system change made it impractical to reschedule appearances easily, I realized I was going to have to quit, and did. Ever since then, I’ve basically been a regular “sub” for other attorneys I know who are double booked for multiple appearances every day, and I can take them or turn them down as my availability permits.
But I think the biggest thing is that almost any professional musician has to find ways to diversify their income stream and monetize a bunch of stuff in addition to live gigs and sales of recordings, and it helps to have one that’s not music-related to similarly diversify burn out.
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