Wes Montgomery helped define jazz guitar as we still know it today. But when he made the recordings collected on Back on Indiana Avenue, he was little heard outside his hometown of Indianapolis. Some tracks were recorded in local clubs, others were studio sessions and none were even known of until they surfaced recently in the private collection of a jazz fan.
Montgomery’s silver-toned mastery of electric guitar is prevalent as he interprets a set of mostly contemporary compositions (Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver) and a few oldies (Benny Goodman, George Gershwin). Information about the sessions is sketchy. Several current jazzmen, including Milwaukee native David Hazeltine, listened carefully and provided educated guesses on the identity of the accompanists. One of them, organist-pianist Melvin Rhyne, lived in Milwaukee for many years
