Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Howard Roberts was born on October 2, 1929 in Phoenix, Arizona and began playing guitar at age 8. By age15 he was playing professionally locally. 1950 saw him moving to Los Angeles where he began playing with musicians like Bobby Troup, Chico Hamilton and Barney Kessell. Around 1956, Bobby Troup signed him to Verve Records and he decided to concentrate on recording, both as a solo artist and session musician.

Roberts played rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass and mandolin in the studio, for television and movie projects on such projects as The Twilight Zone, The Munsters, I Dream of Jeannie. He would work on Julie London’s Blue Moon recording, with Peggy Lee, George Auld, Shelley Fabares, Chet Atkins, Dean Martin, The Monkees, Roy Clark and many others.

In 1961, Howard designed a signature guitar with a round sound hole and single pickup that was originally produced by Gibson’s Epiphone division. Two years later he recorded his first two albums of nine with Capitol, before signing with ABC/Impulse Records. From the late 1960s, Roberts began to focus on teaching, traveling around the country giving guitar seminars, and writing several instructional books.

For some years he also wrote an acclaimed column “Jazz Improvisation” for Guitar Player magazine and founded the Guitar Institute of Technology and Playback Publishing. Guitarist Howard Roberts died of prostate cancer in Seattle, Washington on June 28, 1992, leaving a jazz catalogue of more than two-dozen albums as a leader and sideman.

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