Oscar Alemán and Teddy Bunn

Dear Alemániacs,

Yesterday I got an interesting suggestion from Ton Van Bergeyk regarding Alemán's guitar style. Ton suggests Teddy Bunn to have influenced Oscar's playing while in Paris. Ton points out the trio recordings from May 1939 with Wilson Meyers on double bass and John Mitchell on rhythm guitar to have some similarity with The Spirits of Rhythm recordings from 1933-34. I think Ton is right about the OA Trio recording of 'Jeepers Creepers' from 12. May 1939, that has the same intro by Oscar's lead guitar as Teddy Bunn's on the October 24, 1933 Spirits of Rhythm recording of 'I got Rhythm'. Furthermore Oscar certainly copied the same intro by Bunn in his own recording of 'I Got Rhytm' with his Quintet from 4.November 1942, and if you lend your ears to the remaining recordings by OA of this tune, you'll certainly detect loans from Teddy Bunn's 1933 solo playing on 'I Got Rhytm'. As Ton states in his message to me, it's always fun to speculate about loans and exchanging of licks between different players. To round this posting up, Ton Bergeyk recorded a solo guitar version of 'I Got Rhythm' in 1976, that pays it dues to Aleman's rendition of the tune - and Teddy Bunn, as it seems by now!
Jo

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