SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Barney Kessel, a jazz guitarist who played in number of celebrated bands in the 1940s and enjoyed a long career as a studio musician, has died, friends said.
Kessel died of brain cancer at his home in San Diego on Thursday. He was 80 and had been in poor health since suffering a stroke 12 years ago.
The Oklahoma-born Kessel began his career as a teenager when he toured with a number of black dance bands in the state.
In 1942 he moved to Los Angeles and continued touring with the bands of Artie Shaw, Charlie Barnet and Benny Goodman. Over the next decade, he earned a reputation as being an extremely versatile musician, and was frequently voted the most popular jazz guitarist in music magazine polls.
"Barney was a wonderfully lyrical and melodic player and could also swing very hard," jazz critic Nat Hentoff told the Los Angeles Times. "He was a guy who could sit in and play with everybody."
Picked by The Wishman.