Robert Yelin was born on September 25, 1944 in Yonkers, NY. His family moved to New Rochelle, New York when he was 9 years old. He became interested in the guitar at the age of 15 after listening to some records by rock and roll guitarists Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Robert began taking guitar lessons from Gus DeGazio, a local area instructor who played the famous Johnny Smith recording of “Moonlight in Vermont” for him. From that moment on, he realized 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, play in jazz clubs around the world. New York City.
When Robert Yelin was 18, he was playing jazz guitar solo in restaurants, and by the time he was 20, he had decided to make a career in music. Over the next 15 years, Yelin performed at many of New York’s top jazz venues, including 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 composer. Between 1968 and 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 the history of jazz 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 illnesses put an end to his career as a jazz guitarist. Through a combination of excellent medical treatment and personal self-discipline, Yelin was able to begin 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 video collection has actually been an excellent reference source for jazz guitar scholars and enthusiasts alike.
I had the pleasure of spending a quiet afternoon with Robert Yelin at his home in Littleton, Colorado, when he was about 35 years old. He played some of his lovely solo jazz guitar chord melodies for me on a gorgeous Gibson Kalamazoo Award model archtop guitar that he owned. I immediately knew why Robert was described in jazz guitar circles as a “guitar chordologist”! He had quite an arsenal of jazz guitar chords under his fingers, to say the least. For my part, I played him some Bach compositions on my Manuel Contreras classical guitar and he really enjoyed listening to them!