Talk:Eddie Lang

Multiple edits by User:Sal Massaro
How is this

Eddie Lang (October 25, 1902 – March 26, 1933) was an American jazz guitarist, regarded as the Father of Jazz Guitar. He played a Gibson L-4 and L-5 guitar, providing great influence for many guitarists, including Django Reinhardt.(ref)eddielang.com Official site dedicated to the Father of Jazz Guitar, featuring biography, discography, recordings, images, films, and radio sessions.(/ref)

superior to this

Eddie Lang (October 25, 1902 – March 26, 1933) was an American jazz guitarist, regarded as the most important Chicago jazz guitarist(ref name="jb")(/ref) and the Father of the Jazz Guitar. He played a Gibson L-4 and L-5 guitar, providing great influence for many guitarists, including Django Reinhardt.(ref name="jb" /)

(HTML tags stripped for clarity) If there's a more senior editor watching this page, can you advise? I left a note on the user's talk page explaining my prior reversion, but have recieved no response from the user in the course of 20+ subsequent edits. Thanks, Fliponymous (talk) 17:42, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

As I have recieved no response, I am replacing the "official website" reference in the first para with the original text and reference. Fliponymous (talk) 00:46, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

This material is a cut and paste from the official website. I have removed it from the article and posted it here for discussion and left a note on user:Sal Massaro's talk page.Fliponymous (talk) 17:39, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Eddie Lang was the first to give the guitar a distinctive voice as a solo instrument in popular music and jazz. For two decades Eddie Lang was the acknowledged master of the instrument, influencing a generation of guitarists who followed him.
 * With his highly advanced technical, rhythmic, and harmonic skills, Eddie Lang literally wrote the textbook for the modern guitar method.
 * Eddie Lang was the most sought after studio and broadcast session musician of his day, recording hundreds of discs with singers, orchestras, dance bands, jazz groups, blues, and novelty combos.
 * Eddie Lang was the first guitarist in the pop and jazz fields to record unaccompanied solos, and also participated in the first jazz guitar duets.
 * As Bing Crosby's personal accompanist and confidant, Eddie Lang played an integral role in the singer’s breakthrough as a solo artist.
 * Eddie Lang can be heard on some of the most significant records in the history of jazz, including sessions with Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, Joe Venuti, and Louis Armstrong.
 * The prominence Eddie Lang brought to the six string guitar during his lifetime was such that he influenced nearly every banjo player of the period to either learn or switch entirely to the guitar.
 * Along with Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Lang brought genuine rhythmic swing to the Jazz Age, helping to lay the foundation for the Swing Era ten years later.
 * With Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang created a style of presenting jazz in a context similar to chamber music, bringing a sophisticated and intimate sound to the music of the Jazz Age.
 * Eddie Lang showed no tolerance for racism and appeared on more recording sessions with black artists (including Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson) than any other white musician of his time.
 * The name Eddie Lang was synonymous with the guitar for decades, and for fifteen years he remained the single most important jazz guitarist in the world, nearly six years after his death.
 * Eddie Lang was born Salvatoro Massaro in Philadelphia, and he was one of the first great Italian-American musicians; as such, his achievements have stood as a source of pride for the Italian-American community for all of the 20th and 21st centuries thus far.