Lee Ritenour
American male guitarist, musician, and composer
Lee Mack Ritenour ( RIT-now-ər; born January 11, 1952) is an American jazz and jazz fusion guitarist who has been active since the late 1960s.
Biography
Ritenour was born on January 11, 1952, in Los Angeles, California. At the age of eight he started playing guitar and four years later decided on a career in music. When he was 16 he played on his first recording session with the Mamas & the Papas. He developed a love for jazz and was influenced by guitarist Wes Montgomery. At the age of 17 he worked with Lena Horne and Tony Bennett. He studied classical guitar at the University of Southern California. In the mid-to-late 1970s, Ritenour purchased a 1958 Fender Stratocaster that became one of his primary recording guitars. Between the early 1980s and 1987, it was modified with a 3-ply pickguard, Alembic Strat-o-blaster preamp, an added string tree, a Floyd Rose tremolo with locking nut, and EMG S pickups.
1976–1988
Ritenour's solo career began with the album First Course (1976), followed by Captain Fingers (1977), The Captain's Journey (1978).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lee Ritenour” as american male guitarist, musician, and composer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american male guitarist, musician, and composer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q363320. VIAF identifies the subject as 34644392. The Library of Congress control number is n84022116. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 1958, 1987 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lee Ritenour” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.