IN AN INCREDIBLE career that spans nearly 50 years, John Scofield long ago established himself as one of the Big Three of modern jazz guitar, along with his colleagues Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell. But unlike those players and many others, he had never made a solo record. As Scofield tells Guitar Player, “That’s not what I do.”
Instead, over more than 40 albums as a band leader, Scofield has led a number of lineups through a career marked by many unpredictable changes. He played advanced post-bop jazz from the late ’70s to the early ’80s, explored funk during his mid-to-late 1980s Gramavision years (a period that overlapped with his high-exposure tenure with Miles Davis), and trod jazzier terrain during his time with Blue Note, from 1990 to 1995. There followed a stint with Verve that saw him stretch out in a number of new directions, including acoustic guitar with horn section (1996’s Quiet), an ultra-funky organ-fueled encounter with jam-band godfathers Medeski, Martin Wood (1998’s A Go Go), alternative rock-funk (2000’s Bump) and jazz (2001’s Works for Me with bassist Christian McBride, pianist Brad Mehldau, alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett and legendary drummer Billy Higgins).
“I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT GOING INTO A STUDIO AND PUTTING A SOLO ALBUM TOGETHER. THERE WERE ALWAYS TOO MANY GOOD BAND THINGS I WANTED TO DO”
The mercurial guitarist subsequently took his music into edgy rock-funk drum ’n’ bass territory on 2002’s , which found him experimenting with wild backward guitar effects on the title track and the), explore earthy funk again with a crew of real-deal funkateers that includes saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman, drummer Steve Jordan and vocalists Aaron Neville and Dr. John (2005’s ), and make a knees-deep excursion into New Orleans music (2009’s ). He debuted on Decca in 2011 with the gentle ballads album , interpreted country tunes on 2016’s soulful , and explored the music of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix and the Band on 2017’s .
