Stanley Jordan - Magic Touch (1985 Japanese Blue Note Vinyl LP)

Stanley Jordan - Magic Touch | Vinyl LP, 1985 Japanese Blue Note (BNJ 91001, Toshiba EMI)

• The album that relaunched Blue Note Records, with Jordan as the first artist signed by Bruce Lundvall after the label’s revival, spending a record-breaking 51 weeks at number one on the Billboard jazz chart
• Jordan’s two-handed tapping technique produces a piano-like polyphony on the electric guitar, playing melody and harmony simultaneously across solo performances of “Eleanor Rigby”, “‘Round Midnight” and “A Child Is Born”
• Produced by Al DiMeola and digitally recorded, with Peter Erskine, Omar Hakim, Charnett Moffett and Sammy Figueroa joining on selected tracks

Stanley Jordan was 25 when Magic Touch came out, and his technique was genuinely unlike anything else in jazz guitar. He had started on piano at six, switched to guitar at eleven, and spent a decade developing a two-handed tapping approach that allowed him to sound chords and melody lines at the same time, producing the kind of independent voicings that normally require a keyboard. He studied music theory and composition with Milton Babbitt at Princeton and played with Benny Carter and Dizzy Gillespie while still a student. When Bruce Lundvall relaunched Blue Note in 1985, Jordan was the first artist he signed, and this album became the label’s commercial anchor. It topped the Billboard jazz chart for 51 weeks.

The programme is split between solo guitar pieces and small-group performances. The solo tracks are where the technique is most exposed: “Eleanor Rigby” opens the album as a solo reading that reveals the Lennon and McCartney harmony in a way that a conventional guitar arrangement could not, and “‘Round Midnight” and “A Child Is Born” (the Thad Jones ballad) are played with a quiet intimacy that suits the material. “Freddie Freeloader” adds Charnett Moffett on acoustic bass and Peter Erskine on drums for a trio reading of the Miles Davis piece, and “The Lady in My Life” (originally on Michael Jackson’s Thriller) features Omar Hakim on drums and Onaje Allan Gumbs on keyboards. Al DiMeola produced the album and plays a cymbal on the closing “Return Expedition.” The solo material is where the record comes alive. The group tracks are professional, but the solo performances are the reason the album found its audience. This 1985 Japanese pressing is manufactured by Toshiba EMI, licensed from Manhattan Records. Catalogue number BNJ 91001.