“I tried to play rock stuff. I didn’t particularly like jazz – I couldn’t hear what was happening in it”: The pioneering jazz guitarist who bridged Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery – and was gone too soon

“When I first started to play, it was a real bitch. You have to prove yourself every time. You have to play twice as good as any man. But you just can’t let it intimidate you,” virtuoso jazz player Emily Remler once told Guitar World. And prove herself she did.

By that year, the early 20-something guitarist had already cut her teeth training at the prestigious Berklee College of Music and playing in blues and jazz clubs around New Orleans.

She took things a step further when she released two studio albums under the respected label Concord – 1981’s Firefly and 1982’s Take Two.

“Berklee didn’t prepare me for Little Queenie and the Percolators, say – it gave me a good knowledge of harmony, though, and I learned to read there,” she told GW in a January 1983 interview.

“I could solo over something without hearing it first, just by knowing the idea – but I didn’t learn to play with soul or feeling. You learn that yourself.”

As Guitar World observed her performing at New York's legendary Blue Note in the lead-up to her second release, Remler spoke about her wide-ranging influences.

While jazz icons Wes Montgomery and Barney Kessel were central to her style, she also drew inspiration from rock ’n’ roll and Jimi Hendrix.

“I’ve been listening to The Essential Jimi Hendrix, which I had on cassette while I was spending time on the beach in Jamaica this summer. Hendrix was amazing; he was singing and playing scat lines long before [George] Benson…”

“Somebody just told me I sounded like Hendrix,” she added with a shrug.

And while she sounded nothing like Hendrix, Remler's unapologetic approach to her instrument and her knack for blending genres were reminiscent of Jimi.

“I’ve been playing for 10 years,” she explained, “started out with folk songs, like everybody does. But I knew something was up – I could sing all sorts of rock solos, sax breaks, and my friends couldn’t do that.

“So then I tried to play rock stuff – Johnny Winter, Hendrix, the Stones.” Remler noted that, at that point, she “didn’t particularly like jazz; I couldn’t hear what was happening in it.”

“But at Berklee School of Music, I couldn’t avoid jazz,” she continues, “and when I heard Pat Martino and Wes Montgomery, I got really excited right away. I changed to jazz in my first year.”

Remler's fire continued to burn brightly until 1990. After leaving Concord and signing with Justice Records, the guitarist recorded This Is Me, which would prove to be her final album.

It marked a radical departure from her previous works, reflecting a more experimental and singular voice that forayed into electric jazz-pop.

Emily Remler & Monty Alexander - Joy Spring - YouTube

Watch On

Remler never saw the album's release. She died of heart failure at 32 while on tour in Australia, after grappling with a heroin and Dilaudid addiction.

34 years later, in 2024, producer Zev Feldman, alongside Bill Milkowski and George Klabin, paid homage to the virtuoso by releasing the posthumous live album, Cookin' at the Queens: Live in Las Vegas 1984 & 1988.

It offers a glimpse into the live performances of a pioneering guitarist who was gone too soon.