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.

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.

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).

[4] Wayne was a member of Woody Herman's First Herd and worked with Coleman Hawkins, Red Norvo, Bud Powell, Jack Teagarden, George Shearing, Lester Young, and Barbara Carroll.

During the 1950s, he worked with Tony Bennett, Gil Evans, Brew Moore, Zoot Sims, and George Wallington.

For the next two decades, he played on Broadway, accompanied vocalists, and performed in guitar duos with Joe Puma and Tal Farlow.

He recorded in a trio for Tapestry (1963) and Morning Mist (Original Jazz Classics, 1964) and in a duo with Joe Puma on Interactions (Choice, 1973).

Chuck Wayne invented a system of playing jazz guitar that emulated the style of Charlie Parker.

[7][8] In Wayne's technique, movement of the pick comes mostly from the joints of the first finger and thumb, not the wrist, hand, or arm.

In rapid passages, the right hand is typically anchored, lightly, by touching the pinky fingernail to the pick guard, which itself should be placed near and slightly below the first string.

A narrow pick guard for this use, usually of ebony, became known among luthiers as a "Chuck Wayne style pick-guard" or more accurately as a "finger rest.

Wayne often surprised audiences by using this method to play difficult Bach fugues and other pieces from classical music.

Under each heading are the fingerings that show the chord in alternative inversions and voicings, generally having little in common other than a shared set of notes.

Wayne tried to describe the "complete" scope of harmonic possibilities available on the fretboard, in all voicings, given conventional guitar tuning and a human left hand.

Wayne's focus on four-note generic chords reflects the realities of left hand fingering on a six-string guitar.

Wayne realized that the close voicing normally used on pianos – i.e. where an entire chord is played within the same octave – is not usually practical on the guitar.

Surprisingly, Wayne's approach reveals many chord forms that are comfortable to play but rarely seen, except in classical guitar fingerings.

Wayne's novel strategy gave him an exceptionally wide harmonic palette, helping him avoid the sameness often found in the playing of guitarists – even some great ones.

The genius of the rule 2-1-2-1-2 manifests the harp-like lines and also allows the player to discover and play any arpeggio without the burden of questioning the awkward fret board fingering possibilities.

Since Chuck Wayne was an advanced classic guitarist as well as a plectrum player, he combined the two forms to play octaves.

The figure below depicts the major 7th tetrads (and the minor 9th equivalent) for the spread voicings as well as the arpeggios and the basic scales that correspond to one another in Chuck Wayne's "complete system" of jazz guitar.