Emily Remler Has Been Dead For 35 Years But Her New Album Is Terrific
Cookin’ at the Queens (Resonance Records), by guitarist Emily Remler, now heard for the first time, is a double-disc doozy of guitarist Emily Remler performing live in Las Vegas in 1984 and 1985 in both quartet and trio settings. Heavily influenced by Wes Montgomery, she rambles through bebop, modal classics like “So What” by Miles Davis and “Impressions” by John Coltrane, Sinatra’s first hit (“Polka Dots and Moonbeams”), blues and balladry. Zev “The Jazz Detective” Feldman uncovered this cache of exquisite guitar soloing and produced it with journalist Bill Milkowski who wrote the liner notes.
Remler was born in 1957 Englewood Cliffs, moving to Louisiana in the ‘70s. Her recording output of seven studio albums started in ’81. In ’82, she told People magazine, I may look like a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey, but inside I’m a 50-year old heavy-set Black man with a big thumb like Wes Montgomery.”
In ’85, she won downbeat magazine’s “Guitarist of the Year” poll. She went on the road for a few years with Brazilian samba singer Astrud Gilberto. A lifelong opioid user, she died from heart failure while on tour in Australia in 1990 at the age of 32.
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