Emily Remler: The Queen of the Strings

Jazz has had such a vibrant and colourful history it sometimes seems as if the past is in competition with the present. Re-releases of classic albums, ‘complete’ versions of essential albums and the discovery of valuable, previously unissued sessions vie for attention with album releases from the impressive talent pool that is jazz today. Zev Feldman, the self-styled Jazz Detective, has diligently been advancing the case for the past over recent years with the discovery of important, previously unissued tapes that have helped broaden our understanding of the music and refocussed attention on worthy talent that has receded from view. One such musician deserving an overdue ovation is the case of guitarist Emily Remler.

Feldman discovered two sets of previously unissued live tapes – Remler never released a live album during her lifetime – which cast light on a career that ended all to briefly. Recorded at the Four Queens, a Las Vegas club, in 1984 and 1988, Remler is front and centre of a quartet session and a trio session. Spread over three LPs or two CDs, Emily Remler: Cookin’ at the Queens (a title inspired by Wes Montgomery’s Smokin’ at the Half Note) on the Resonance label reveals a post-mainstream musician well on top of her brief at age 27 and 31, and good enough for guitarist Herb Ellis to tell People magazine, “I’ve been asked many times who I think is coming up on the guitar to carry on the tradition, and my unqualified choice is Emily.”

Born in September 1957, Remler began playing guitar at nine years old, and although folk was her interest, it soon changed after The Beatles arrived in America in 1964 and she became a fan. Her musical curiosity subsequently took her through the Rolling Stones, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix and Ravi Shankar and gave her an enduring interest in Indian music. Jazz did not figure on her radar. Academically she excelled in art, but graduating from High School early at 16 she had to make a choice: Berklee College of Music (as it was known then) or Rhode Island School of Design.

In the end, she opted for Berklee on the basis she would have the companionship of other musicians. She had that alright.

“I partied a lot at Berkeley,” she confessed to DownBeat magazine in the 1980s. “There were 50 men to every woman. It was fun, so I didn’t concentrate that hard. I was a child. I was 16.”

But as she readily confessed later, when she entered Berklee, “I was awful. I didn’t play in front of my teacher for six months.”

When she discovered Wes Montgomery and Pat Martino though, she “really got excited about jazz” and methodically set about learning as many standards as she could. Two years later she completed her degree at Berklee and moved with her boyfriend to New Orleans, where she took whatever work came her way.

Acknowledging she learned best under pressure, she played “every type of music,” including hotel bands, stage shows, rhythm and blues bands, weddings and bar mitzvahs and late-night jazz gigs. On top of this intense period of on-the-job training she started giving guitar lessons in the daytime. This sudden shock therapy in upping her game kick started her latent talent: “I was kind of forced to come up with a certain level of playing,” she said.

When guitarist Herb Ellis played New Orleans, Remler introduced herself and he asked her to play something on her guitar. Ellis was genuinely taken aback by Remler’s ability – her late development had come on in leaps and bounds. When Ellis returned to the West Coast he enthused about her talent to Carl Jefferson, president of Concord Records. It resulted in an invitation to appear at the 1978 Concord Festival in California as part of 'Great Guitars'. At the age of 21 she was treated as an equal alongside Herb Ellis, Barney Kessel and Tal Farlow.

“When I went to Berklee, mainstream was stressed at the time," she later recalled. "After I got invited to play the Concord Festival it seemed my future would be secure in that realm, so I went back to New Orleans and learned real quick how to play that style of music. I didn’t play it that well before, so I figured if I’m going to play this music from the 1950s, who do I want to follow? The answer was Wes Montgomery and Coltrane.”

In 1979, Remler moved to New York City, the ultimate test for a young jazz musician. She had the ability, but she also took with her a love of partying, and if on offer, indulging in substances best kept clear of, even on a “recreational” basis. After a lean period, she landed a job backing singer Astrid Gilberto, while Carl Jefferson of Concord had not forgotten her and invited her to appear on the Clayton Brothers album It’s All In The Family in 1981. Impressed, he offered her a four album deal. Her debut was Firefly, from 1981. She described the album as pretty straight ahead, and with pianist Hank Jones, bassist Bob Maize, and drummer Jake Hanna she gave an articulate account of her style working out on a standards repertoire, where the influence of Wes Montgomery was apparent. On the strength of that album alone, Jefferson extended her recording contract to include three further albums.

Remler had great personal charm; she was a genuinely nice person: shrewd, witty, very droll and a good conversationalist. But the 1980s was not noted as an age of female emancipation – even in the world of jazz.

“Being a woman has worked both for and against me,” she said in 1982. “Some people like me because of the mere fact that I play. There are are those who come in and sit right in front of me, cross their arms and say, ‘This I’ve got to see.’ Then there are people who are just prejudiced and wait for mistakes. It works to your advantage if you’re pretty good, but if you’re not good, it works to your disadvantage.”

She was just 24 years of age at the time, and was pretty good even then. That year she was voted top guitarist in DownBeat’s 'Talent Deserving Wider Recognition' in the magazine’s Critics Poll. The same year came Take Two, this time with pianist James Williams, bassist Don Thompson, and drummer Terry Clarke. It is an assured performance by a confident young artist. The repertoire was jazz standards by the likes of Dave Brubeck and Horace Silver, but also a composition by pianist Monty Alexander, whom she had married that year, plus two of her own originals. With features in People magazine and Christian Science Monitor, she was beginning to be recognised as an up and coming talent who was clearly going places.

Continuing a well-received run of recordings for Concord, Transitions followed in 1984 with a band she had formed that was working the New York scene, including Bill Evans’ loyal bassist Eddie Gomez, drummer Bob Moses (Gary Burton, Pat Metheny) and trumpeter John D’earth. In 1985 she was voted top guitarist for the fourth successive year in the DownBeat poll and recorded Catwalk with the same New York lineup.

Looking back on the story so far, Remler, tongue firmly in cheek, said, “‘This is how much I love Wes' was the first one, the second one was ‘This is how much I love Don Thompson and Terry Clarke.’ The third one was, ‘Half me and half this is how much I love Wes,’ and Catwalk we should call, ‘This is me, Emily.’”

By now she had split up with Monty Alexander, and following Together, a duet album with Larry Coryell, a brief affair blossomed. However, substance abuse had now spilled over into full blooded addiction, not just to heroin but the painkiller Dilaudid as well. She pulled back from the gig circuit in an attempt to control the problem by accepting the position of ‘Artist In Residence’ at Duquesne University School for Music in 1987–8. She also studied composition with Bob Brookmeyer at the University of Pittsburgh and concluded her deal with Concord with East to Wes in 1988.

In 1989 came This Is Me, a fusion album in an attempt to shrug off the ‘mainstream’ tag she had acquired. By now, she was in trouble with addiction problems and word began spreading in the jazz community: a missed gig here, nodding off during performance there and so on. She was touring Australia when she received bad news from home. She died of heart failure, many thought to be associated with Dilaudid, on 4 May 1990. She was just 32 years of age.

Listening today to her live recordings at the Four Queens in Las Vegas, it’s clear she had a lot going for her as an artist. When you consider guitarists like Herb Ellis and Joe Pass were producing their best work in their 40s and 50s, jazz was indeed robbed of major star in the making.

Emily Remler: Cookin’ at the Queens is out now on Resonance