Jack Marshall

Jack Marshall was a top producer for Capitol records beginning in the late '50s and early '60s. His musical expertise led him into the combined realm of production and conducting, resulting in classic recordings for vocal artists such as Peggy Lee and Judy Garland. One of his most famous records was the Lee hit "Fever"; the fingersnaps on the record were done by Marshall's pal, guitarist Howard Roberts, whose name will come up again in the story of Marshall's career like a favorite blues guitar lick. On the side, Marshall began releasing a selection of albums under his own name that highlighted his fine playing on acoustic guitar, much of which swung toward the jazz side of things. Influenced by composer and arranger Billy May, he also concocted his own arrangements, displaying a fondness for loud brass. That Marshall was part of the sonically wild, musically outrageous '50s and '60s hi-fi era can certainly be assumed from some of his album titles. Only the space-age jazz astronaut Sun Ra could have a discography with titles in it such as Sounds!, Soundsville, and Sounds Unheard Of. Marshall was a close associate of fellow studio guitar whiz Roberts, producing all of this artists' mid-'60s albums on Capitol. The two guitarists got together with another one of their studio picking partners, Bob Bain, to form the recording group entitled Guitars Unlimited, a band name that was later borrowed by more than one European performing group in the hot jazz, Django Reinhardt vein. The collaboration of these studio players was more along the lines of the Ventures, and actually seems to have been influenced by an earlier Marshall project, the Guitar Ramblers. The question of influence is permanently settled if the notion of "cheesiness" as an artistic quantity is taken into...