He's played with George Benson and Chick Corea and made a name for himself not only for his clear tone and nimble fretwork, but also as a master improviser.
But don't call Earl Klugh a jazz musician.
"I think of myself as a 'contemporary musician,''' said the 52-year-old Detroit native and 13-time Grammy Award winner. "I guess because - especially now - I've arrived at a point where I've listened to and enjoyed so many kinds of music that there's more to it than just jazz.
"I try to embrace all the music I can and keep an open mind, and the music I make comes out of that.''
Consider this: Klugh, who makes a solo appearance at Washtenaw Community College's Towsley Auditorium on Wednesday as part of the school's "Living Legends'' series, started playing guitar at the height of the folk music craze of the early 1960s and still considers his greatest guitar hero to be country-fusionist Chet Atkins.
Consider, also, that his latest recording, "Naked Guitar,'' features, among a handful of jazz standards, such diverse fare as Beatles' covers and an unforgettable version of "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead'' from "The Wizard of Oz.''
"Growing up, my mom was from Mississippi, so a lot of the music we heard was from that golden age of country music - things like Patsy Cline,'' he said. "Jazz wasn't even in my mind.''
Yet, by age 15 and through sheer force of raw talent, Klugh was gigging and recording with Detroit jazz fixture Yusef Lateef and, by the early 1970s, held down the guitar chair in Corea's innovative fusion project, Return to Forever.
By the time he started making his own records in the mid-1970s, Klugh's style had veered away from the powerful fusion of Return to Forever, turning into a smoother, more-fluid style that emphasized nuance and technique .
The change led to a string of successful albums, particularly, "One on One,'' his 1979 duet album with pianist Bob James. These days, after 30 albums as either a leader or as a solo artist, Klugh's records practically come pre-nominated for Grammy Awards and have a permanent place on smooth-jazz radio playlists.
"I put (albums) out and I don't really worry about them,'' he said. "Over time, it seems like if you have something of value, you release it and, eventually, it sells.
"I've been very fortunate to be able to make a life through music.''
It's more than luck. Impeccably smooth and fluid, Klugh has never strayed from the nylon-stringed classical guitar, which, he said, is more than just an aesthetic choice.
"That's my instrument,'' he said. "Electric guitar is a totally different instrument and so is a steel-stringed acoustic.
"My instrument is classical guitar, and that's the technique I've developed.'' That he's been able to utilize the soft-toned classical instrument in bands ranging from fusion to bop to his so-called "contemporary music'' says as much about his versatility as it does about any limitations of the nylon-stringed guitar.
Klugh said a key to his success - aside from having written hundreds of achingly beautiful ballads - has been an ability to improvise in a range of contexts, a skill that has allowed him to transcend genre limitations as if they didn't exist.
He learned that from playing jazz.
"The jazz language allows dexterity and, so, once you get past the melodies, everything is improvisation,'' he said. "It teaches you that music is more about the feeling than it is about the melody.''
Klugh still performs more straight-ahead jazz at times and said he's getting ready to bring his band - which consists mostly of Detroit-based players - down to his home studio in Atlanta "just to blow'' and see what happens.
It doesn't matter what kind of music he's playing, he said. Just as he has since he was a kid trying to master Chet Atkins' licks in front of the record player, Klugh just wants to make music.
Any kind of music. All kinds of music.
"I just want to play my guitar,'' he said.
The Ann Arbor News
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