Guitar | b. 1931

Burrell's guitar style is built on a blues feeling that never quite leaves, even when the harmony is fully bebop and the setting is an orchestral Gil Evans arrangement. He grew up in Detroit, started guitar at twelve, and came of age in a city scene that produced Tommy Flanagan, Paul Chambers, Pepper Adams, and Elvin Jones, all of whom he worked with early in his career. After graduating from Wayne State University with a degree in music composition in 1955 and a touring stint with Oscar Peterson, he moved to New York and began recording for Blue Note, producing a run of albums across the late 1950s and early 1960s that showed a guitarist equally comfortable in organ trio settings, hard bop small groups, and larger orchestral contexts. "Midnight Blue" (Blue Note, 1963), with Stanley Turrentine and Ray Barretto, is his most celebrated leader record. "Guitar Forms" (Verve, 1964), arranged by Gil Evans and drawing on bossa nova, flamenco, and swing voicings alongside jazz, is the one that consistently surprises collectors who come to it expecting more of the same. He has taught jazz studies at UCLA since the 1970s and remains active as an educator.