Emily Remler

Early in the decade, Emily Remler established herself as one of the most deft and dynamic jazz guitarists alive. Favouring the big, eccentrically designed hollowbody guitars of Borys, Remler riffed to her heart’s content with a passion that few could authentically muster.

From the moment it landed on shelves in ’81, her debut album Firefly was revered as a luminous bastion of classic fretwork. The next year, in an interview with People, Remler delivered the best description one may ever read of herself: “I may look like a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey, but inside I’m a 50-year-old, heavy-set black man with a big thumb, like Wes Montgomery.”

Come 1990, Remler died at the young age of 32 while on tour in Australia; it’s unclear where she may have progressed as a guitarist had she been allowed to, but if the skills she displayed in her later years give us any indication, it’s without a doubt she’d have continued to soar towards stardom.

When she was asked how she wanted to be remembered, Remler cited “good compositions, memorable guitar playing and my contributions as a woman in music… But the music is everything, and it has nothing to do with politics or the women’s liberation movement.”