Chuck Wayne (February 27, 1923 – July 29, 1997) was a jazz guitarist. He came to prominence in the 1940s, and was among the earliest jazz guitarists to play in the bebop style. Wayne was a member of Woody Herman‘s First Herd, the first guitarist in the George Shearing quintet, and Tony Bennett‘s music director and accompanist. He developed a systematic method for playing jazz guitar.

Wayne was known for a bebop style influenced by saxophone players of his time, especially Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins. In an era when many guitarists used four-square, mandolin-style picking, with rigid up-down stroke articulation, Wayne developed a technique not widely adopted by others until decades later. He also developed a comprehensive approach to guitar chords and arpeggios – based on generic tetrad forms spanning all possible inversions, in varying degrees of open voicing. This highly analytic approach to the fretboard was later documented in a series of theory books, some released posthumously.

Chuck Wayne was born Charles Jagelka in New York City to a Czechoslovakian family. As a boy he learned banjo, mandolin, and balalaika. In the early 1940s he began playing in jazz bands on 52nd Street. After two years in the Army, he returned to New York City, joined Joe Marsala‘s band, and settled in Staten Island (until a 1991 move to New Jersey). He changed his musical style after hearing Charlie Parker, recording with Dizzy Gillespie in 1945.