“When I heard Wes, it killed me. The guy played with his thumb, and it’s all downstrokes, which means it’s twice the effort, but he was still so fast it just smoked me!”: The jazz classic that Nile Rodgers named as his favourite guitar track of all time

American jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery (1923-1968) performs with a Gibson L-5 semi acoustic guitar in a television studio during a recording for the television series 'Tempo' in 1965.

Chic legend Nile Rodgers is one of the world’s most famous and influential guitar players. And when he talked about the guitarists who had the greatest influence on him, the two names at the top of his list were Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery.

Rodgers revealed in Q magazine: “My whole style is Wes meets Hendrix. All R&B guitar playing – funk, soul, everything – is based on Hendrix. Not the soloing, but the rhythm parts. But I learned most from Wes.”