Eddie Lang
Eddie Lang was the first to give the guitar a distinctive voice as a solo instrument in popular music and jazz. For two decades Eddie Lang was the acknowledged master of the instrument, influencing a generation of guitarists who followed him.
With his highly advanced technical, rhythmic, and harmonic skills, Eddie Lang wrote the textbook for the modern guitar method.
Eddie Lang was the most sought after studio and broadcast session musician of his day, recording hundreds of discs with singers, orchestras, dance bands, jazz groups, blues, and novelty combos.
Eddie Lang was the first guitarist in the pop and jazz fields to record unaccompanied solo’s, and also participated in the first jazz guitar duets.
As Bing Crosby's personal accompanist and confidant, Eddie Lang played an integral role in the singer’s breakthrough as a solo artist.
Eddie Lang can be heard on some of the most significant records in the history of jazz, including sessions with Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, Joe Venuti, and Louis Armstrong.
The prominence Eddie Lang brought to the six string guitar during his lifetime was such that he influenced nearly every banjo player of the period to either learn or switch entirely to the guitar.
Along with Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Lang brought genuine rhythmic swing to the Jazz Age, helping to lay the foundation for the Swing Era ten years later.
With Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang created a style of presenting jazz as chamber music, bringing a sophisticated and intimate sound to the music of the Jazz Age.
Eddie Lang showed no tolerance for racism and appeared on more recording sessions with black artists (including Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson) than any other white musician of his time.
The name Eddie Lang was synonymous with the guitar for decades. Until the advent of Django Reinhardt in 1934, and Charlie Christian in 1939, Eddie Lang was regarded as the single most important jazz guitarist in the world.
Eddie Lang was born Salvatoro Massaro in Philadelphia, and he was one of the first great Italian-American musicians; as such, his achievements have stood as a source of pride for the Italian-American community for all of the 20th and 21st centuries thus far.
