Creativity Quote by Kevin Eubanks

It sounds like a simple bit of musician-to-musician praise, but Kevin Eubanks is really drawing a line in the sand about what counts as greatness in jazz guitar. By naming Wes Montgomery as "the greatest", he’s not just ranking players; he’s elevating a whole set of values: time, swing, touch, and melodic storytelling over flash, speed, or gear-driven virtuosity. Montgomery’s signature thumb-picked warmth and those harmonized octave lines weren’t party tricks. They were a way of making the guitar speak in full sentences, with the kind of rhythmic authority horn players respect.

Eubanks’s context matters. He’s a guitarist who spent years in America’s living rooms as the bandleader on The Tonight Show, a role that rewards polish, versatility, and instant communication. Calling Montgomery the greatest is a quiet rebuke to the culture of "most impressive" playing. It’s also a statement of lineage: if you want to understand modern jazz guitar, you trace the bloodline back to Wes, the player who made sophistication feel inevitable rather than strenuous.

There’s subtext in the absoluteness, too. "That ever lived" is the musician’s way of admitting the argument is unwinnable - and choosing to argue anyway, because canon-building is part of how jazz protects its standards. Eubanks isn’t closing the conversation; he’s telling you where to start listening.