Robert Yelin was born on September 25, 1944, in Yonkers, New York. His family moved to New Rochelle, New York when he was 9 years old. He became interested in the guitar at age 15 after listening to some records by rock and roll guitarists Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Robert began taking guitar lessons with Gus DeGazio, a local instructor who performed Johnny Smith’s famous recording of “Moonlight in Vermont.” From that moment on, he knew that this was the kind of music he wanted to play!
Yelin continued her guitar studies with DeGazio but has now devoted herself entirely to jazz. It was at this time that Robert began his extensive collection of recordings of all the famous jazz guitarists. He studied guitar technique and harmony for three years with Augie Lamont and advanced his understanding of jazz guitar by watching the leading jazz guitarists of the day, including Kenny Burrell, Jim Hall, and Chuck Wayne perform in jazz clubs around the city. from New York.
When Robert Yelin was 18 years old, he played jazz guitar solo in restaurants and when he was 20 he had decided to make a career with music. For the next 15 years, Yelin performed at many of New York’s top jazz venues such as The Village Gate and Sweet Basil’s. He combined this career with a day job at the Yelin family’s clothing manufacturing company. He is also a prolific guitar arranger and writer. From 1968 to 1982, he wrote more than 30 articles for Guitar Player Magazine alone, as well as articles for Downbeat and Cadence magazines. Beginning in 1982, Robert became a professor at the University of Colorado, where he taught jazz history and worked with the jazz guitar ensemble there.
It was also during that same year that Robert Yelin was diagnosed with diabetes and muscular dystrophy. The physical problems of these diseases ended his career as a jazz guitarist. With a combination of excellent medical treatments and personal self-discipline, Yelin was able to start playing once again in 1996. Robert Yelin is a unique figure in the world of jazz guitar. In addition to being a talented player, he has one of the world’s largest collections of jazz guitar audio and video recordings. His collection of videos has been an excellent source of reference for jazz guitar scholars and enthusiasts alike.
I had the pleasure of quietly spending an afternoon with Robert Yelin at his home in Littleton, Colorado, when I was about 35 years old. He played me some of his lovely jazz guitar chord melody solos on a beautiful Gibson Kalamazoo Award model archtop guitar he had. I knew immediately why Robert was described in jazz guitar circles as a “guitar accordionologist”! He had a huge arsenal of jazz guitar chords between his fingers, to say the least. For my part, I played him some Bach compositions on my Manuel Contreras classical guitar and he really had fun listening to them!