Artist: George van Epps
George Abel van Eps was an American swing and mainstream jazz guitarist.
van Eps was born in 1913 in Plainfield, New Jersey, United States. By the age of thirteen, in 1926, he was performing on the radio. Through the middle of the 1930s, he played with Harry Reser, Smith Ballew, Freddy Martin, Benny Goodman, and Ray Noble. van Eps moved to California and spent most of his remaining career as a studio musician, playing on many commercials and movie soundtracks.
In the 1930s, he invented a model of guitar with another bass string added to the common six-string guitar. The seven-string guitar allowed him to play basslines below his chord voicings, unlike the single-string style of Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. He called his technique "lap piano," and it anticipated the fingerpicking style of country guitarists Chet Atkins and Merle Travis, and inspired jazz guitarists Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli, and Howard Alden to pick up the seven-string.
Dixieland had a following in Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s, and he played in groups led by Bob Crosby and Matty Matlock and appeared in the film Pete Kelly's Blues. He played guitar on Frank Sinatra's 1955 album, In the Wee Small Hours.
van Eps played guitar into his eighties, having built a career that lasted over sixty years.
Further information about George van Epps is found here.
This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Van_Eps, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
1956 STARS OF JAZZ featuring Jack Teagarden, George Van Eps guitar solo (Ai Enhanced)
George van Epps: Videos
George Van Eps and Howard Alden-Stompin' at the Savoy
Howard Alden & George Van Eps-Just You, Just Me