Doug Wamble is a singer, composer and guitarist who plays jazz under the infuence of country, rooted in the blues. Catch him on his swing trhough the Midwest at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis on July 18th and 19th, Moravian Church in Green Bay on July 20th, The Jazz Factory in Louisville July 21st, Music Box in Detroit on July 22nd. (more tour dates follow).

In the past few years while working on Bluestate, the new Marsalis Music album by Doug Wamble, Wamble and his rhythm section of pianist Roy Dunlap, bassist Jeff Hanley and drummer Peter Miles have been touring extensively, writing new material, and honing what has been recognized as one of the most unique and compelling new sounds in the jazz world.

Born in Clarksville, Tennessee and raised in Memphis, Wamble began his musical studies in high school, where he played clarinet and considered a future in symphonic settings. His ambition was altered one Sunday afternoon. "I'd go to the library every Sunday, between the morning and evening church services, to check out records," he explains, "and as a clarinet player I checked out Benny Goodman. Fortunately, it was a record with Charlie Christian on it. That's when music really grabbed me."

Wamble felt that pursuing a degree as a recording engineer would be a wise move ("so my family wouldn't flip out about me becoming a professional musician"), and he began his journey under a full academic scholarship at Memphis State University. "But three months into my freshman year, my mom took me to see Harry Connick, Jr.'s band with Russell Malone on guitar. Hearing Russell, I decided I had to ditch this 'rec tech' thing, and I changed my major." Under the tutelage of bassist Scott Reed, Wamble began exploring the options facing contemporary guitarists. "I was determined to be a jazz musician from the purist perspective at first," Wamble says. "But my teachers wanted me to hear more modern stuff like Pat Metheny and John Scofield, and Sco became my man. He was the guest artist at Memphis State in '92, and meeting him was like meeting Elvis. Sco was very important to me. His love of Ornette Coleman's music really got me into Ornette."

Wamble transfered to the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, where he met pianist Kevin Bales. Listening to countless records with Bales put the young guitarist on the road to his present, expansive conception. "I had that `Wynton [Marsalis] is jive, he plays old stuff' attitude when I got to Florida," Wamble says by way of example. "Kevin showed me how Wynton was using formal ideas like Ellington did, but in a modern rhythmic context. It was a revelation, and it came when I was having an identity crisis about my own music in terms of getting my own sound and playing my own truth. Listening to Wynton and people like Jelly Roll Morton, hearing things in common without putting my finger on them, I started hearing connections everywhere. Suddenly Trane and Miles were connected to Louis Armstrong and Johnny Hodges. That's when I realized that using effects pedals and other guitar effects was not really me, and began the quest to get my own pure sound. My original goal was to work with Wynton, even though everyone said 'Wynton hates guitar.' When Cassandra Wilson came to North Florida in '93, I introduced myself, we played some duets, and then playing with Wynton and Cassandra became my goals. I just decided to see where working toward my goals would take me."

The first order of business was finding a way to place acoustic guitar in contemporary settings. "I'd go on gigs without an amp, and everybody would give me looks; but I just threw myself into playing jazz." What ultimately resulted is the all-acoustic sound of Country Libations. "My main guitar is a Gretsch 1955 Constellation, an acoustic F-hole guitar, and the sound on the record is basically just a microphone on the guitar," Wamble explains. "My other instrument is a 1929 National Triolian, a metal guitar that I play upright. It belongs to my uncle Stewart, who found it under the bed when his father passed away. He made me the 'personal custodian' a couple of years ago. I use it in on 'Libation #7: Along the Way.'"

Wamble's years at North Florida also provided insights into songwriting and singing, which he had enjoyed from his earliest playing days but never really pursued. "You spend a lot of time in your car in Florida, going to gigs, and one of my teachers, Jack Petersen, was encouraging me to explore all of the songwriters and learn their tunes. So I got all of the Sinatra, Ella and Billie Holiday albums I could find, and learned tunes in the car driving to gigs. I also learned their inflections, note for note. When I had to sing a solo in class, I scatted a Bird solo and everyone said, 'Man, he can sing.'" Wamble's vocal skills also helped him pay the bills during his time as a graduate student at Northwestern University. "In Chicago, at a wedding, I was asked to sing some Sinatra tunes, and that got me a lot of gigs."

Yet Wamble's focus remained exclusively on the guitar after he received his Masters from Northwestern in 1997 and moved to New York. "I came to New York to hook up with Wynton, be on the scene, and shed on guitar. It wasn't about being a singer." He quickly called the trumpet-playing Marsalis, who invited Wamble to a rehearsal of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, where old friend and North Florida grad Marcus Printup mentioned that singer Madeleine Peyroux needed a guitarist for a tour. Cassandra Wilson also called, recruiting Wamble to record on her Miles Davis tribute disc Traveling Miles, and trumpeter Steven Bernstein brought Wamble into his Millennial Territory Orchestra. Doug Wamble, guitarist, had quickly become part of the New York jazz scene.

It was only a matter of time before Doug Wamble, vocalist, also emerged. "Madeleine had me sing on the encore one night, and I got a huge response," he says. "People like Sarah McLachlan, who we were opening for, told me that I sounded great. Then I was at Wynton's house one day, talking about Robert Johnson, and I started singing 'Come On in My Kitchen.' When I said I'm not really a singer, Wynton said that maybe I ought to be. Still, I resisted at first, because I knew that players who sing often don't get taken seriously as players.