Chris Cobbson Quartet, ‘From Dixie to Smooth: The History of Jazz Guitar’, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre, Abergavenny, 26/10/2025.

Chris Cobbson – guitars, banjo, n’goni, Andrew Hooley – tenor saxophone, clarinet, Paul Jefferies – double bass, electric bass, Mike Cypher – drums

For their November 2025 event Black Mountain Jazz featured the Gloucestershire based guitarist and composer Chris Cobbson and his quartet in a themed performance presenting a history of the jazz guitar.

Originally from Ghana, but long based in the UK the likeable Cobbson is a popular figure with Abergavenny audiences and has visited Black Mountain Jazz on numerous previous occasions.

In June 2023 his ‘African Quartet’  featuring featuring guitarist Phil Dawson, bassist Raph Mizraki and percussionist Richard Olatunde Baker performed another themed show, “a jazz celebration of music from around Africa”  that proved to be very popular with the audience. My review of this hugely enjoyable (and educational) event can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/chris-cobbsons-african-jazz-quartet-black-mountain-jazz-melville-centre-abergavenny-18-06-2023

In February 2024 he returned as an invited guest to perform with the ‘house trio’ as part of the excellent and still ongoing BMJ Collective With series. My review of this event, which was also highly enjoyable can be found here.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/bmj-collective-with-chris-cobbson-black-mountain-jazz-melville-centre-abergavenny-11-02-2024

Elsewhere I have enjoyed seeing Cobbson performing on a regular basis with Cheltenham based saxophonist / vocalist Kim Cypher’s group at a variety of different club and festival events. He also appears on several of Kim’s albums and his quartet tonight included Mike Cypher, Kim’s husband drummer.

Kim’s quintet, including Cobbson, featured as part of BMJ’s 2020 all online Virtual Wall2Wall Jazz Festival in a performance filmed and streamed from the Melville Centre. Review here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/kim-cypher-quintet-wall2wall-virtual-jazz-festival-2020-abergavenny

In addition to his work with Cypher and the leadership of his own groups Cobbson is also a member of the Bristol based band Baraka, a group that performs in a variety of musical styles stemming from the African diaspora. The band is fronted by Ghanaian percussionist and vocalist Ben Baddoo and the Caribbean is represented by bassist/vocalist Royston Gage from Dominica, who is joined in the rhythm section by Trinidadian drummer Tony Bailey. 

Baraka describe their music as “a high energy mix of Hi-Life, Township, Soca, Calypso and Reggae” and I’ve been lucky enough to witness a couple of their colourful performances at Festivals in Brecon (2022) and Wall2Wall in Abergavenny (2016). The Abergavenny show also featured the  Irishman Brendan Whitmore,  who added a jazz and blues element via a range of saxophones plus flute and harmonica. At Brecon this role was filled by trumpeter Ryan Porteous.

Cobbson’s career has included a number of high profile engagements, including a stint with UK African music pioneers Osibisa and also as a member of the band of saxophonist / bass clarinettist Courtney Pine. He has also performed in the band of restaurant critic turned jazz pianist Jay Rayner.

In 2022 Cobbson released the solo album “My Favorite Things”, which featured his compositions almost exclusively, the exceptions being the Rodgers & Hammerstein title track and “Malaika”, a song written by the Kenyan singer and composer Fadhili William.

I have to confess that after enjoying Cobbson’s live performances with Pine and Cypher I found the album to be just a little too laid back and tasteful and would have appreciated a few more rough edges. The recording featured a large cast of musicians with the veteran percussionist Karl Vanden Bossche playing a particularly key role. Nationally known names appearing on the album include Courtney Pine, pianist Dave Newton and flautist Gareth Lockrane. My review of the recording can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/chris-santo-cobbson-my-favorite-things

Tonight’s show was both educational and highly entertaining as Cobbson, an informative and witty presenter, traced the history of the jazz guitar from its formative beginnings in pre slave trade Africa up to the 1970s. He was well supported by his three highly competent sidemen, reeds player Andrew Hooley, bassist Paul Jefferies and drummer Mike Cypher.

The evening began with Cobbson solo, playing a Ghanaian variant of the n’goni, an ancient traditional African stringed instrument comprised of goatskin stretched over a calabash to create the sound box and with rope or gut strings attached to a bamboo pole. The number of strings can vary but this opening number demonstrated Cobbson’s considerable virtuosity on an instrument featuring just two strings.

The n’goni and its numerous variants found its way to the southern USA via the slave trade and evolved into the banjo, an instrument more familiar to western musical audiences. The name may have been derived from ‘banjolo’, an African word for the rope that was used for the strings.

The banjo was a popular instrument in early jazz, the music that evolved in New Orleans out of a mix of African and French rhythms, ragtime, blues and marching band music. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band are generally credited with making the first ever jazz recording in 1917.

With Cobbson now moving to banjo the rest of the musicians joined him for a Dixieland style rendition of “Has Anybody Seen My Gal” with Hooley featuring on clarinet, Jefferies on double bass and Cypher on rapidly brushed drums. The solos were shared between Hooley on clarinet and Cobbson on banjo.

The leading banjo player of the era was Johnny St. Cyr, who played with Louis Armstrong, Joe Oliver, Kid Ory and others. Playing a six string banjo, rather than the more conventional four string, he established a particularly distinctive and influential style on the instrument and was very much a star in his day. Next up was a rendition of the spiritual “A Closer Walk With Thee” with Cobbson approximating St. Cyr’s style, albeit on the four string, as he shared the solos with Hooley on clarinet.

In the 1920s the rise of swing and dance big bands saw the banjo being replaced by the guitar, which was still an entirely acoustic instrument at this time. The function of the guitarist in these ensembles was strictly rhythmic, unable to compete with the volume of the horns guitarists rarely soloed. The premier guitarist of the era was Freddie Greene of the Count Basie Orchestra whose playing could cut through the big band sound, albeit still in a primarily rhythmic role. However such was his rhythmic command that Basie considered him to be one of the most important members of his orchestra.

The next tune featured Cobbson playing a Radiotone acoustic archtop guitar manufactured in Czechoslovakia. Tellingly he didn’t take a solo on the quartet’s version of Duke Ellington’s “Take The A Train”, performed in Basie-esque style with Cobbson’s comping emulating that of Green. The solos were taken by Hooley on tenor sax and Jefferies on double bass.

A second Ellington tune, “Perdido”, actually written by Juan Tizol, was performed in the same format with Hooley and Jefferies again the featured soloists.

The role of the guitar began to change in 1932 when the Rickenbacker company invented the electric pickup, allowing guitarists to reach the same volume levels of the horns once the sound of the guitar had been fed through an amplifier. Unfortunately for them Rickenbacker failed to patent their invention and several other instrument makers followed suit and began producing electric guitars, among them Gibson, Gretsch and Guild. The 1936 Gibson ES 150 (ES standing for electro-Spanish) proved to be particularly popular among jazz guitarists, most notably Charlie Christian, a member of Benny Goodman’s Orchestra. Christian continued to play an important rhythmic role in the band’s sound but was also the first big band guitarist to be featured as a soloist. “It was a sound that had never been heard before” declared Cobbson.

By way of tribute to the pioneering Christian the quartet performed “Flying Home”, a tune written for the Goodman band by drummer / vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. The original recording of the piece by Goodman’s sextet included a solo by Christian. Tonight’s rendition featured Cobbson in the Christian role, soloing on electric guitar alongside Hooley on tenor sax.

As Christian was breaking new musical ground in the States a different guitar revolution was taking place in Europe with the rise of gypsy jazz, spearheaded by the brilliant Django Reinhardt. This was still acoustic music and Cobbson reverted to an acoustic guitar for a performance of “Nuages”, one of Reinhardt’s most celebrated compositions. This was performed in a trio format, with Cobbson accompanied by the sounds of double bass and brushed drums.

An excellent first half concluded with Hooley rejoining the group on tenor for a performance of the Ellington tune “Satin Doll”, delivered in a broadly gypsy jazz style and selected to demonstrate the cross-fertilisation between American and European jazz both before and just after the Second World War.

The first set had taken us up to around 1940. The start of the second catapulted us into the bebop era with a sparkling rendition of the Charlie Parker composition “Anthropology”, a slice of pure bebop featuring Cobbson on electric guitar and Hooley on tenor sax, the pair sharing the solos and also entering into a series of exchanges with Cypher’s vigorously brushed drums.

Cobbson described the 1950s as being “the Golden Age of Jazz Guitar” with manufacturers introducing the ‘cutaway” body shape, allowing guitarists to play more notes and in a higher register. For the first time guitarists became bandleaders and recorded under their name as the leaders of small groups. This vanguard of “virtuoso guitarists” included Tal Farlowe, Joe Pass, Barney Kessell, Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery.

Cobbson paid tribute to Joe Pass by playing “Pure Imagination” (from the film “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) in Pass’s style, the tune being delivered in a trio format with Hooley again sitting out. In addition to Cobbson’s own immaculate playing the performance was also notable for a delightfully melodic double bass solo from Jefferies. Incidentally “Pure Imagination” is a song that has also been interpreted by a very modern guitar virtuoso, the UK’s own Ant Law.

The 1960s represented something of an existential crisis for jazz with the music increasingly becoming sidelined with the rise of pop and rock. Record companies encouraged jazz artists to perform in a more contemporary style and to include covers of pop and rock tunes in an attempt to retain audiences. The Blue Note label achieved a degree of success with its hard bop sound, the title track of trumpeter Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” actually becoming a hit single. Thereafter most Blue Note albums featured a “Sidewinder” soundalike, including alto saxophonist’s Lou Donaldson’s 1967 recording “Alligator Boogaloo”, which featured a young guitarist named George Benson, about whom more later. Cobbson and his quartet performed the title track from “Alligator Boogaloo”, a piece bearing more than a passing resemblance to “Th Sidewinder”, with Hooley’s raunchy, earthy tenor sax sharing the solos with Cobbson’s electric guitar.

Meanwhile Wes Montgomery hit pay dirt with an instrumental version of “Going Out Of My Head”, a song by Little Anthony and the Imperials. Montgomery was encouraged by producer Creed Taylor to adopt a lush sound with his guitar augmented by Oliver Nelson’s orchestral arrangements. It was an approach that brought both commercial success and a clutch of music industry awards. Montgomery began to specialise in instrumental covers of pop tunes, as illustrated by the Cobbson’s quartet’s beautiful version of The Beatles song “And I Love Her”, which included a solo guitar cadenza towards the close.

The commercial side-lining of jazz continued into the 1970s but the aforementioned George Benson bucked the trend in 1976 with “Breezin’”, an instrumental version of a song written by soul singer Bobby Womack that brought Benson a huge hit and laid the foundations for his later career as a guitarist / vocalist. “Breezin’” set the classic ‘clean’ jazz guitar sound in a contemporary context with Cobbson arguing that this precipitated the rise of ‘smooth jazz’, with former session guitarists such as Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour and Eric Gale also emerging as leading exponents of the style. Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and even bassist Ron Carter also hitched a ride on the bandwagon. Current guitarists playing in a smooth jazz style include the Briton Peter White and the American Norman Brown and Cobbson is of the opinion that for guitarists smooth jazz is the natural successor to the ‘Golden Age’ of the 1950s.

This completed the story of ‘From Dixie to Smooth” with the quartet playing us out with two George Benson songs, beginning with “Breezin’”, which saw Cypher picking up his sticks for the first time, having performed almost exclusively with brushes thus far. Meanwhile Jefferies had moved to electric bass as Cobbson shared the solos with Hooley’s tenor.

Finally “Give Me The Night” saw Cobbson encouraging a willing audience to sing along in addition to including solo features for all four musicians.

With his relaxed and humorous presenting style Cobbson is masterful at delivering this type of themed show, expertly balancing information with entertainment. Tonight’s show was both educational and fun and the musical illustrations in this story of the jazz guitar were superb, with the playing of all four musicians straight out of the top drawer. Cobbson himself demonstrated an impressive assurance and virtuosity on a variety of stringed instruments and also impressed with the depth of his jazz knowledge. Every audience member tonight would have learned something new, whilst being royally entertained at the same time.

The only disappointment for me was that the story effectively stopped in the 1970s and that there was no mention of any of the more recent giants of the jazz guitar such as John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell and Jon Scofield. Cobbson later told me that this was because they’ve largely moved away from the ‘classic’ jazz guitar sound of the 1950s and deploy a greater use of technological effects more commonly associated with the rock world. He has great admiration for all these players, and also for younger guitarist such as Rob Luft, but to incorporate the music of these performers into the show would require even more guitars and even more hardware, so it’s partly a practical consideration.

However this is a minor personal quibble in the context of an overall excellent performance – both musically and verbally.

 

 

 

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