Six Strings, Infinite Stories: Jazz and the Guitar
When you walk into a jazz show, you expect to see keyboards, drums, and a blaring horn section. But across the genre’s history, the guitar has emerged as a crucial force shepherding decades of musical innovation.
Once a rhythm section workhorse grounding jazz music with near-inaudible chords, the guitar has evolved into a powerful melodic voice capable of alternating between comping, backing other instruments, and even soloing on stage.
We sat down with Bay Area guitarist Paul Mehling, leader of the Hot Club of San Francisco, to explore how the guitar shapeshifted throughout jazz history—and how early pioneers paved the way for artists to keep pushing boundaries decades later.
The Original Hot Club
Across 33 years of performing, the Hot Club of San Francisco has built an international reputation for its distinctive acoustic sound and devotion to Django Reinhardt, the legendary musician celebrated as the father of jazz guitar.
Mehling’s ensemble was named after the Quintette du Hot Club de France (Hot Club of France, for short), founded in the 1930s by Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli. Growing up listening to his father’s extensive record collection, Mehling was captivated by Reinhardt’s playing.
Born in 1910 to a Manouche (Romani) family, Reinhardt started out as an outsider. In the 1920s and ’30s, jazz exploded across Europe and the Americas, but arrangements were dominated by brass, drums, and pianos. Early jazz bands lacked amplifiers and electric instrumentation, meaning string players simply lacked the volume to cut through. By centering the acoustic guitar and violin in their band composition, Reinhardt and Grappelli introduced "jazz tsigane" (or gypsy jazz)—a string-forward subgenre that turned the acoustic guitar into a primary storyteller.
This legacy inspired Mehling to found the Hot Club of San Francisco, which pays homage to the father of jazz tsigane, both in its composition and programming.
What Django’s great contribution to music was just the fact that there were no boundaries. Gypsies are nomads, always on the move. By bringing that influence to everything—where you pick up new music, repackage it, and carry it to the next town—world music was born with Django Reinhardt, and he changed what people thought about what the guitar could do.
The New Electric Era
Over the years, the guitar continued to transform jazz, and vice versa. After the 1930s, the invention of the electric guitar—when put in the hands of luminaries like Charlie Christian, George Van Eps, and Les Paul—further transformed the guitar’s potential as a solo instrument, core improviser, and leading melody.
Electrification grew out of sheer practical necessity: string players needed volume to compete with rising big bands and orchestras. Soon, even acoustic innovators like Reinhardt plugged in. Amplification opened a whole new vernacular, granting guitarists the dynamic freedom traditionally reserved for horn players.
Django seized on the electric guitar because he heard it was an opportunity to have his guitar be heard in any setting—and with the electric guitar, he had the same freedom as a trumpet or a sax. In his later years, after WWII, he plugged in and started putting himself in larger situations like orchestras. The electric guitar really gave Django and other musicians so much freedom.
Reinhardt’s willingness to adapt reflects what many consider the core spirit of jazz: "the sound of surprise," as Mehling puts it. Shifting jazz standards and instrumentation challenge artists to find fresh and new ways to communicate—something that shines in the innovative musicianship of jazz guitarist Julian Lage, who will bring his quartet to Bing Concert Hall on October 21. First identified as a child guitar prodigy, Lage has built a reputation for improvisation and experimenting with both acoustic and electric sounds.
The Julian Lage Quartet demonstrates what happens when electric instruments enter the fold: beyond letting guitarists hold their own in large ensembles, electrification pushed musicians to experiment with entirely new sounds and group compositions.
As Lage and his quartet began creating their latest studio album, Scenes from Above, he recalls thinking about “texture and timbre, about how he could use his instrument to avoid the familiar terrain and potential pitfalls of the guitar trio-plus-organ configuration.” By playing around with electric and acoustic instrumentation alike, Lage wondered if he could lure novel musical articulations from his collaborators.
This level of boundary-breaking is how every major figure in jazz guitar’s history became notable—so it is no coincidence that is also what jazz music itself has always done.
Pushing the Boundaries with Jazz Fusion
Today, jazz continues to transform and refuse categorization, as compounding generations of musicians and instruments craft novel ways to swing, comp, improvise, and groove. This could not be more true for four-time Grammy Award winner and bass pioneer Stanley Clarke, who will bring his groundbreaking musicality to Bing Concert Hall on March 13, 2027.
By refusing to accept the limitations of his instrument and genre, Clarke originated the 1970s bass revolution and transformed how listeners see—and hear—his instrument: He popularized slap technique, bridged acoustic and electric styles, and even invented new instruments that expanded the bass’s melodic range.
Much like Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian did with the guitar, Clarke created a new role for the bass by transforming it from a timekeeper to a high-lead, virtuosic voice. He’s applied his category-defying musicianship across mediums, including in jazz-fusion bands—including Return To Forever, a partnership with Chick Corea—film and television scoring, and stadium shows alike.
For artists like Reinhardt, Christian, and Clarke, their instruments are tools to test acoustic boundaries. But for the Hot Club of San Francisco, honoring that tradition is an act of innovation in itself.
“Jazz musicians tend to be upstarts, people who want to break the rules and change things,” says Mehling. “As for playing the guitar, it’s a very intimate instrument. One of the things with the electric guitar is that it can get so loud it can blow your hair back. But what a lot of us like about the acoustic guitar is that it’s soft and it’s intimate, and it makes you lean forward. My band tends to hue more towards really moving the listener.”
Whether you’re a guitar enthusiast or eager to hear the bass as a soloist, Stanford Live showcases the full versatility of jazz this season—and the instruments that keep pushing the genre forward. Read on to explore our featured jazz artists and see where the music is heading next.
