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Martin Taylor

Jesse Paliotto

• 2 min read

Martin Taylor, MBE (born 20 October 1956) is a British jazz guitarist who has performed in groups, guitar ensembles and as an accompanist. He is best known for his solo fingerstyle performances, in which he provides bass and chordal accompaniment in addition to a melody.

Taylor was born in Harlow, Essex, into a family with a musical heritage and a gypsy/traveller tradition, although he did not strictly lead the traditional gypsy lifestyle. At the age of four he received his first guitar from his father, jazz bassist William 'Buck' Taylor. His father, though only taking up music at 30, later frequently played the music of the Quintette du Hot Club de France and Taylor became inspired by their legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt. At age eight he was playing regularly in his father's band and at 15 he quit school to become a professional musician.

At the age of 15 Martin joined the band of Lennie Hastings a highly respected jazz drummer who spent many years with the Alex Welsh band. Lennie, although famous for his cod-German routines as Herr Lennie Hastings. complete with irish (wig) and penny monocle was an extremely talented drummer. He had left the Welsh band and tried to make a go of it with his own band in 1973. The band attracted many fine musicians like Nick Stevenson (trumpet), Peter Skivington (bass guitar), Ron Brown (trombone) and Jamie Evans (piano). Lennie was able to attract high calibre guests like George Chisholm, Beryl Bryden and others. Although the band only lasted for less than a year, Martin (driven to gigs by his father Buck) has said that he learned a lot during that period and has many happy memories of playing with the Oo-Yah band (as it was often known).

Over the next few years Taylor played in numerous bands, holiday camps, radio dates, and cruise ships (one cruise led to playing with the Count Basie orchestra). Performing dates in and around London soon brought him into contact with jazz guitarist Ike Isaacs who took the younger man under his wing. In addition to performing with Taylor as a duet, Isaacs helped develop his sense of jazz harmony and started him on the road to developing his fingerstyle technique.

One of my personal favorites is his "Bernie's Tune".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCBgBXZeORc

If you’re a fan of Spotify, here’s a couple tunes to get you started:

Website:https://martintaylor.com/

Albums: View List

Gears:

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