Here's a guitar player I bet most of you guys don't know. I remember playing Chet Baker's Last Great Concert from 1988 in my car stereo all the time somewhere in the mid 90s. The album had been recorded just 2 weeks before he fell out of that hotel window in Amsterdam. Besides being a really great album with Chet playing superbly, what struck me at the time was the guitarist that played so fine on it. His name was John Schröder and he was German but surprisingly I had never heard of him. Over the years I kept on returning to that album and kept marvelling at this guy's playing. His solo's on that album are short - he does not get that much space - but are so lyrical and hip. Then I met Jesse van Ruller in 2000 when I jammed with him at the Crow and when we talked about guitar players that had inspired him and he soon mentioned John Schröder's solo on "In Your Own Sweet Way" on that album as a great source of inspiration. So time for you to check it out. It's magnificent and among Cher's best work IMHO. The guitar work by John on "Summertime" and "In Your Own Sweet Way" is superb.
A year earlier, in 1987, a young John Schröder (23) is to be heard as a sideman on the live recording "Clifford Jordan meets Klauss Weiss" that was recorded live in Austria. He gets way more solo space on this one:
And here's one more track of that album that I found on Youtube on which he gets plenty of space and is really wailing:
It seemed that he later switched to playing drums, bass and piano and is a master at all. His later work is not bop or mainstream anymore, but more avant garde. There is more info on him on his website. I kind of doubt he is still playing mainstream jazz these days. He should though, what a fine player ...
Loved his playing in that cut at 9.15 in. Never heard of him before this. Always something great from you Dutch!! Thanks.
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