He's from an earlier generation of jazz and studio session men than Tommy Tedesco, whose name sounds similar. In fact, scholars of jazz guitar have carbon dated Tony Gottuso to the third epoch, that number referencing not a chord voicing but those guitarists who became active sometime around the mid-1930s. That puts him in the same company as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, as well as Tony Mottola, whose name also sounds similar. Unlike Mottola, Gottuso's lengthy career in the recording industry did not include developing trendy new settings for the guitar and a big name for himself in the process, although Gottuso was one of the early proponents of the lovely guitar duet setting in classic jazz. His partner was the talented John Cali, also a prominent arranger.

But like Tedesco, Gottuso can be heard strumming his way through such a vast assortment of popular music that the actual existence of other guitarists on the planet becomes questionable. Only a session player such as this can straddle stylistic boundaries as if puddles, backing up Canadian country western luminary Wilf Carter one moment, swinging through Chant with Artie Shaw the next. Late-'30s recordings with bandleader Paul Whiteman, like his doubling on banjo, may typecast this guitarist as relating mostly to the styles heard in the early decades of jazz. Gottuso's longevity in the music business provides details for further embellishment, however. By being an effective small-group player, he nibbled his way into studio house bands that were basically helping to invent new styles.

At one point during the years following the second World War, the guitarist seems to have taken a break from studio calls. In the early '50s he was back, accompanying the Deep River Boys, helping to establish the role of the amplified guitar in the popular new vocal groups. Producers brought on waves of these groups as if an insurgency, and every session required a small backup combo. It represented enough work to keep Gottuso busy, not to mention his competitors. Recordings such as Fine as Wine by the doo wop group called the Crickets give us Gottuso, bassist Milt Hinton, and pianist Gil Stevens as the harmonic chalk. Session legends such as drummer Panama Francis and pianist Frank Signorelli were also part of these rhythm sections, whose status in certain New York studios was close to live-in. When a producer experimented with substituting substantial electric-guitar sound for actual drums on an Otis Blackwell session, Gottuso got the nod. One of the resulting tracks is the superb, 1954 Nobody Met the Train, a good detail to remember the next time one is stuck waiting at the station. The guitarist's grandson is San Francisco avant-garde jazz drummer Scott Amendola. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi