So, if you’re into the swing-era guitar playing, Allan Reuss was Benny Goodman’s acoustic rhythm player before Charlie Christian ever joined the Goodman band.
Plenty has been written about Reuss from other sources, so you can read up on him here:
- Allan Reuss’ Wikipedia Page
- ClassicJazzGuitar.com‘s page on him
- A bit more of a character study on this blog.
- Finally, an article from Jonathan Stout’s Swing Guitar Blog – If it weren’t for Jonathan, I would likely have never paid much attention to Reuss.
I’ve transcribed Allan Reuss’ solo on the song “Bye Bye Blues” – I really dig this solo for the way it sequences ideas, many of which are built on a two/three-finger fixed chord-position and uses the fourth finger to add on ornaments. Also, the song itself, while not a favorite, does have the really weird C-Major to Ab7-Dominant back to C-Major movement which is pretty unique.
Here’s the file as a two page PDF. Enjoy! – Allan Reuss -Bye Bye Blues Solo