Barney Kessel discusses working in the studio.

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Barney Kessel on being a guitar player.

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Barney Kessel discusses his influence on others as a guitarist.

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Q: “You mention some people who have been very strong influences in jazz guitar; have you ever thought of yourself as an influence? Do you ever go around and hear other guitar players and hear yourself?”

A: “Very much so, but very much so. I feel very much as though like Lester Young in a sense. I don't feel sorry about this. It's just a sad commentary. It's a sad commentary that people copy an original force whoever he might be and when I say that I may be an original force, it's certainly subject to and paying homage to those from which I've been influenced because no one is walking around in a vacuum. I learned things from many, many sources, from playing the piano, from studying arranging, from analyzing score, from watching other guitar players, listening to them, learning from musicians, many different sources. Plus the many sources that I'm not even conscious of that I might think to myself that they are original and they simply are subliminal. There are sources that I drew from and don't really know where to pay the credit. Very much like writing a song and finding out two years later, it's already been written, that it just happened to be in the deep recesses of your mind. Yeah, when I hear somebody play and there is a lot of me in it, and they neither acknowledge it nor even know that they're doing it, they think that they just came up with it. You know, I talked to somebody. I talked to a guitar player and he said, "I've got a little trio down here." He says, "I think it's going to work out real good. It's just bass, drums and guitar. We're kind of doing our own thing." And I think to myself, "Well, it should work because it always has for me."