For years, it seemed as if we’d heard all there was to hear from the late Wes Montgomery. Save for a posthumous 1968 collection titled Willow Weep for Me, there had been precious little beyond the canonical favorites to reminds us of Montgomery’s easy-going greatness.
That is, until more recently. First came 2012’s Echoes of Indiana Avenue, an incisive early recording that archivists surmised was put together in order to win a young Wes Montgomery his first label deal in 1958. That album reminded us, in fizzy detail, of all of the complexities of his playing, long before Montgomery started became a hitmaking pop star.
In the Beginning, due today via Resonance Records, takes us further back still — to 1949, when Montgomery was working as a sideman on a Gene Morris-led date for Spire Records, to recordings with his brothers Buddy and Monk Montgomery at Columbia Studios in 1955, to remarkable live performances at Chicago’s C&C Music Lounge from 1957 and a Indianapolis’ Missile Lounge in 1958.
Naturally, some of In the Beginning — largely constructed from unheard tapes provided courtesy of Buddy Montgomery’s widow — is of variable sound quality. That’s the nature of long-lost recordings, after all. The magic, and the mystery, is in hearing Wes Montgomery begin his journey. There’s a sharper edge, a more countrified twang, a frisky looseness that had been bred out of his sound by the time Montgomery rose to fame in the more refined atmosphere of Pacific Jazz.
In the Beginning sets the stage beautifully, not just with the hearty 26 musical tracks, but also with a sprawling 55-page booklet with thoughts from journalist Ashley Kahn, producer Quincy Jones and fellow guitarist Pete Townshend, among others. Wait, the Who guitarist, you say? Actually, Townshend — the old rocker who gushes over the sense of “fun and discovery … mischief and experiment” found on In the Beginning — is the perfect person to help frame this early era.
We aren’t dealing here with Wes Montgomery, the incurable romantic, the thumb-plucking sophisticate. This is someone still finding the edges of his own considerable frontiers, someone with as much raw talent as vim-filled gumption. He’s going places, but he’s just getting started.
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