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Emily Remler died while touring Australia in 1990. The cause of her
death, newspapers said, was heart failure. She had been daring and full of
life, well liked and respected. She was so modest about her inordinate gift
that she remained vulnerable and childlike when she talked about her role
in the music world. She could trust her ears so completely that she constantly guessed right in a "Before and After" test given to her by Leonard
Feather for an article in Jazz Times published in June 1989. But she felt
apologetic about criticizing anybody's work. "I gotta say that the time is
funny. I don't know what's so truthful about me lately," she said while
analyzing a recording. "Who's playing bass? He must be the problem."
She worried whether the musicians on the recording would speak to her
again.
In the recording studios, however, she knew exactly what she wanted,
she said, and learned to stand up for her ideas.
With all the globe-trotting she began to do in her early twenties, she
never had a chance to establish any personal stability. She wanted to play.
Life in the fast lane at the top took its toll on the girlish wunderkind. Part
of this chapter was written about her before she died; she was at a point
where she was very concerned about developing healthful habits and
struggling to leave her dalliance with drugs behind her. But she failed.
Ever since 1981 when Emily Remler assumed her place among the best
jazz guitarists, she began saying that John Coltrane's music inspired her.
In the liner notes for her 1988 album, featuring "Dahoud," written by
Clifford Brown, she said that she also identified with the trumpet's lyricism. At that time, she hadn't yet mentioned how much the pianistsor
Wes Montgomeryinfluenced her.
"Pianists have had the biggest influence on me. Bill Evans, McCoy
Tyner," said the vivacious, auburn-haired young woman in 1988, with her
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EMILY REMLER AND THE GUITARISTS

93

green eyes wide open, as she prepared for a week-long engagement in

Greenwich Village's Blue Note.
Anyone who listened to the 1988 record, "East to Wes," on the
Concord label, with pianist Hank Jones, noticed instantly how her playing
had become as articulate as Jones's. She sounded as if his style had been
part of the aesthetic goal she had been working toward all along. Actually,
guitarist Wes Montgomery had the most easily discernible influence on
her style and development.
"Hank is my absolute favorite pianist," she said. As a great accompanist, he could put aside his ego and aim to complement her, she added.
"Even when he does his solos, he's doing something I just did. It's as if he
gave you a little present, then another, and another. He answers you
perfectly. Smitty and Buster" [drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith and bassist Buster Williams, also on the recording] do that too. They complement
you."
Anyone curious about how articulate Remler became in the 1980s,
when she emerged as the woman guitarist, as well as one of the best jazz
guitarists, should refer to her first album, "Firefly," also made with Jones
on Concord in 1981. However fine her work sounded when she first
became nationally known, her mellow, flowing work was more muted and
dreamier, without her later astounding clarity. She attributed her development to years of working constantly with wonderful musicians, including
pianist Monty Alexander's group and a duo with Larry Coryell.
"I've wanted to sound like a pianist. I'm taking composition lessons
from a pianist, Aydin Esen, a stone genius. I'm a good listener and imitator. That's how I learn," she said. "And I've copied pianists forever."
In the early 1980s, soon after her career was launched by her popular
records and personal appearances that attracted young audiences, Monty
Alexander hired her to play guitar. "His articulateness attracted me to his
music," she recalls. "Perhaps I'm a true Virgo. I like things very clear."
She and Alexander married, and for two-and-a-half years, they traveled,
sometimes together, sometimes separately for long stretches. "I'll meet you
in Paris" was a usual gambit between them, she said. "It was hard to be
married and on the road. We had haphazard meetings. We had to get used
to each other again." Her personal problems and their effect on the marriage overwhelmed the couple's efforts. Divorced in 1984, they remained
friends, she said. His musical strengths left their mark on her, she thought.
(Though he married again and rebuilt his life, he would be shaken and
saddened by her death.)
Her twenties were a decade of turmoil. "I was introverted, because I
was young, eager to please, and scared. I've been through a lot of experiences now. And each year I've become more sure that I belong on the

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stage. And I play with more conviction and no apologies. I love audiences
and musicians, so I can relax. I'm very assertive in the studio now. A
record is a product that will show where you're at. And I have to stand up
for what I think will sound good."
Her late 1980s albums with Larry Coryell and Hank Jones were
probably her best. Excellent jazz critics cherish other favorites by her. The
next to last, "Together," with Coryell, was so different from "East to Wes"
that they almost defy comparison. But on "East to Wes" she was the
leader, not the partner, and the only guitar voice. So you can easily hear
how clearly and subtly she asserted her mastery. She and Jones emanated
from each other's lines, a collaboration that few musicians in groups ever
achieve, unless they play together for years.
As she began her thirties, the decade when, as she figured it, you find
out what you want to do, she put aside an earlier dream to compose film
scores. She was studying composition, but she didn't have time to stop
performing and look for a film project that would keep her sitting still at
home. And she didn't want to do that, because she loved to perform. "I'm
at the point in my career where all I need is an airport," she quipped.
To counteract the rigors of frequent traveling, she decided in 1988 to
live in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, a fishing villagea rarity in New York
City. "I have a big safe place on the water. The air smells like the sea," she
said. The ambience helped her maintain her equilibrium, a personal priority. She was trying to keep herself away from the fast lane. During her
early years of stardom on the road, she ate too much and became addicted
to foodand to drugs. She then shed twenty pounds by developing sensible eating habits, swimming every day, and eschewing all drugs. Some of
her cues came from Larry Coryell. As they traveled around the globe,
including ten European tours a year, she noticed that he swallowed a
fistful of vitamins and jogged every day. "The jazz musician in the dark
barthat image is gone," she said. She became very proud of her healthiness, which surfaced at that time in her fresh, good looks.
She had been born on September 19, 1957, and began playing her
guitar when she was sixteen. She was the first in her family to become a
professional musician. Before she began playing, she had not been interested in anything; she had no plans for a career, and had thought that she
might drift through life. Her father was a businessman, her mother a
housewife; her brother would become a diplomat in Washington, D.C.,
and her sister a lawyer and language teacher in New York.
Emily's brother played guitar as an amateur. Emily taught herself to
play on his Gibson ES 330. She used it throughout her career, though not
exclusively. From her hometown, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, a quiet
suburb, or as quiet as a suburb so close to New York can be, Emily had to

EMILY REMLER AND THE GUITARISTS

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find her way in unchartered territorythe music worldbuild her playing career and shore up her own confidence. She loved music so much, and
was so good at it, that she sloughed off all her youthful bewilderment
when she was playing.
Emily took two years to complete a four-year course at the Berklee
College of Music. At eighteen, she went home and played about eight bars
of a very difficult song for her mother. Naive about Emily's fledgling
mastery, her mother said, "When are you going to sing? Where are the
words?"
With tapes and a metronome, Emily repaired to a room in Long
Beach Island, New Jersey, for the summer and spent all her time teaching
herself to play better and better. Then she headed to New Orleans, where
her guitarist boyfriend lived. She kept working and improving, playing
with a rhythm and blues group, and launching her career despite the selfcriticism she was prone to. She had enough confidence to call Herb Ellis
one day when he was performing in town. She asked for a lesson. It turned
out to be a jam session. "I'm going to make you a star," he told her. Within
a month, she was playing at the Concord Jazz Festival with Ellis, Charlie
Byrd, Tal Farlow, and Barney Kessel for colleagues. Afterward she kept
gigging. Soon Ellis helped her get a recording contract with Concord,
which encouraged and recorded her ever afterward.
The word about her smooth, fluid, soothing playing spread quickly.
The haunting feeling of "A Taste of Honey," the happy assuredness of
"Inception," and the mellowness of "In a Sentimental Mood" were riveting on her first record. With each succeeding record, her abilities ripened.
And the fleetness and rich, round tones of her early work seem almost a
blurry understatement compared with her later lean articulateness and
improvisational ease. Her own compositions often bore the hallmarks of
her generations' intensity. But she pursued a course in the mainstream.
Her tribute to Wes Montgomery on her "East to Wes" album showed her
devotion to the soulful, improvisational genius at the heart of contemporary jazz guitar playing. And she deepened her playing instead of diversifying or experimenting with styles and technology. She loved it when
reviewers called her "smooth." "Remler was subtle but strong": that review of her late 1980s appearance at the Monterey Jazz Festival was her
favorite for a while.
She felt that she was living the good life. She had left Pittsburgh,
surprisingly her residence for a year and a half after her Manhattan apartment became a cooperative. She had friends in Pittsburgh, "a pretty city,"
she said of that mysterious choice. Friends in the music world thought it
was a place she had gone to get her system cleansed of drugs and learn to
live in a healthy style. She had missed New York City's Museum of Mod-

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ern Art, she said. That was a serious lack in the life of a woman who wore a
Calder T-shirt and had enough talent to consider a painter's career at one
time. Furthermore, in Pittsburgh, she couldn't easily put together a group
of wonderful musicians. So she had moved to Sheepshead Bay. For a date
at the Blue Note in the late 1980s, she was able to arrange to lead pianist
Fred Hersch, the engaging bassist Lyn Seaton, who can sing in unison,
and drummer Terry Clarke, with whom she recorded. She was able to
organize a group with Lincoln Goines on electric bass and Jeff Hirschfield
on drums in New York"the only place where so many good musicians
live a few blocks from each other."
She had the company of a best friend, trombonist Jay Ashby, for a few
years. A little while before she died, she had gone on to another boyfriend.
And she bought a new Volkswagen Fox. Practical enough to feel proud of
that and distressed about the theft of a $300 stereo system from her car,
she was not particularly dazzled by the financial rewards of her career.
They varied from year to year anyway, she said. She had to keep working
as much as she could; she was not a superstar. She was committed to the
bebop tradition. You had to love soothing, soft, sophisticated music to love
Emily's playing.
"If someone like drummer Elvin Jones asked me to play with him, I'd
be very happy even if he didn't pay me very much," she said. "I'm totally
happy when I'm learning from a good musician. I want to get better
myself. I don't think you ever reach the point where you say 'I'm here' and
stop trying to ge,t better. I suppose I could call Elvin Jones and say, 'Hey, I
know your brother'."
Her last records were "This Is Me" on Justice Records as leader and as
an accompanist for singer Susannah McCorkle on the Concord album,
"Sabia."