His was a fascinating career. Busy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he then disappeared for ten or fifteen years, coming back strong and working more than ever. He was hard to categorize, I think that's safe to say.
I just saw a video on YouTube about jazz guitar. The premise was, "is string-bending allowed in jazz?" My first reaction was: can you imagine saying to any of the great sax players that some technique that was easily available to them, on their own preferred instrument, in creating their own damn music, was forbidden? No, you cannot imagine it. So fuck yeah, I thought, bending is allowed. Then I thought of Sonny Sharrock. I'm sure that Sonny routinely does a lot of things that jazz critics would say was "not jazz." (Jazz musicians were obviously cool with it all, because they hired Sonny to play on their LPs.)
Google, and Wikipedia for that matter, are pleased to put Sonny in the "Jazz Guitarist" category.
My own criteria is "fun." If the musician had fun making the music, I have fun listening to it.
Aw, Sonny. Dead a long time. This kind of pathfinding, and rule defying, is important in music. Thanks, Sonny, for doing some heavy lifting to help the kids along.
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