- Highly ranked jazz guitarist.
- Recipient of a Jazz Masters Award from the USA's National Endowment for the Arts in 2004.
- He is known for his duo and small-group recordings with some of the biggest names in jazz from the 1950s onward, including saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Gerry Mulligan, and Ornette Coleman, and pianist Bill Evans.
- Studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
- Settled on the West Coast in the mid-1950's, becoming a member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet and, subsequently, the Jimmy Giuffre Trio..
- He started playing the guitar at age 10. He became interested in jazz at 13 when he went to the store to buy a Benny Goodman record and heard Charlie Christian playing guitar on the tune "Grand Slam".
- He graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He moved to Los Angeles, where he became a founding member of Chico Hamilton's quintet, among the originators of the laid-back West Coast cool style. He later moved to New York, and made several recordings. He led his own trio starting in the mid-1960s.
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