Joe Pass
The man who made one jazz guitar sound like an orchestra
Joe Pass was born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalacqua and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the son of a steelworker who pushed him to practice for hours every day. He got his first guitar around the age of nine and was playing dances and small gigs as a teenager. Before he turned twenty he had moved to New York, where he absorbed bebop firsthand, but he also fell into heroin addiction. For much of the following decade his remarkable talent was overshadowed by drug problems and time spent in prison.
The turning point came in the early 1960s when he entered the Synanon rehabilitation program in California. The facility's residents recorded an album, Sounds of Synanon, which revealed Pass's skill to a wider audience. Clean and newly focused, he signed with Pacific Jazz and released Catch Me! and the celebrated For Django, a tribute to Django Reinhardt. Through the rest of the decade he became one of the most in-demand studio guitarists in Los Angeles, playing on television shows, film soundtracks and countless pop and jazz sessions.
His real breakthrough arrived when producer Norman Granz signed him to the new Pablo label in the early 1970s. Virtuoso, released in 1973, was a set of unaccompanied standards that redefined what a single jazz guitarist could accomplish, combining bass lines, chords and melody at once. That same year he joined pianist Oscar Peterson and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on The Trio, which won a Grammy, and began a long partnership with Ella Fitzgerald, starting with the intimate duet album Take Love Easy.
For the next two decades Pass was Pablo's house guitarist and one of the most recorded musicians in jazz. He made further volumes of the Virtuoso series, played in all-star jam sessions, recorded duets with fellow guitarist Herb Ellis, and toured the world as a solo act. He also published instructional books that became standard study material for jazz guitarists. He continued performing into the early 1990s despite illness, and died of liver cancer in Los Angeles in 1994, leaving a catalog of astonishing size and consistency.
The 10 greatest Joe Pass solos
- 1Joe Pass · solo by Joe Pass · 1973
- 2Joe Pass · solo by Joe Pass · 1973
- 3Joe Pass · solo by Joe Pass · 1973
- 4Joe Pass · solo by Joe Pass · 1973
- 5Oscar Peterson · solo by Joe Pass · 1973
- 6Joe Pass · solo by Joe Pass · 1973
- 7Joe Pass · solo by Joe Pass · 1973
- 8Joe Pass · solo by Joe Pass · 1964
- 9Joe Pass · solo by Joe Pass · 1973
- 10Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass · solo by Joe Pass · 1973
The sound
Pass's great innovation was solo guitar that never needed a band: he walks bass lines on the low strings, drops in chord stabs on off-beats, and weaves single-note bebop melody on top, often switching between the three so smoothly that listeners hear a full trio. He mostly played with his fingers in solo settings and with a pick in groups. His tone was clean, warm and dark, with no effects. He was also a master of chord substitution, constantly reharmonizing standards on the fly rather than playing rehearsed arrangements.
- Fender Jazzmaster (guitar) The solid-body he played on the Sounds of Synanon recordings, an unusual choice for a jazz player.
- Gibson ES-175 (guitar) His main archtop during the classic Pablo years, heard on Virtuoso and many duets.
- Ibanez JP20 (guitar) A signature archtop made for him in the early 1980s.
- D'Aquisto custom archtop (guitar) A hand-built instrument from luthier James D'Aquisto that he used in later years.
- Epiphone Joe Pass Emperor II (guitar) A signature model launched near the end of his career, still produced long after his death.
- Polytone Mini-Brute (amp) The small, dark-sounding combo that many jazz guitarists of his era favored and he relied on.
Covers
- Night and Day, originally by Cole Porter A swinging solo arrangement that set the template for his unaccompanied style.
- 'Round Midnight, originally by Thelonious Monk He captured Monk's dark harmonies on six strings alone.
- Nuages, originally by Django Reinhardt An affectionate tribute that updates Django's melody with modern harmony.
- Django, originally by John Lewis (Modern Jazz Quartet) He gave John Lewis's elegy a restrained, lyrical guitar reading.
- Cherokee, originally by Ray Noble He tackles the bebop standard at full speed with no rhythm section.
- Stella by Starlight, originally by Victor Young Rich chord substitutions turn the film theme into a guitar showpiece.
Timeline
- 1929 Born Joseph Passalacqua in New Brunswick, New Jersey
- 1938 Gets his first guitar and begins intensive practice under his father's eye
- 1961 Enters the Synanon rehabilitation program in California
- 1962 Sounds of Synanon brings him to national attention
- 1964 Releases For Django on Pacific Jazz
- 1973 Releases Virtuoso on Pablo; records the Grammy-winning The Trio with Oscar Peterson
- 1973 Begins recording duets with Ella Fitzgerald on Take Love Easy
- 1994 Dies in Los Angeles
Facts
- His birth surname was Passalacqua; he shortened it professionally to Pass.
- His father was a steelworker who insisted he practice for many hours a day.
- His first comeback record was made by residents of a drug rehabilitation program.
- On Sounds of Synanon he played a Fender Jazzmaster, a guitar more often associated with surf rock.
- Virtuoso contains no other instruments, yet listeners often assume a bassist is present.
- He was a busy Los Angeles studio musician in the 1960s, working on TV and film sessions.
- He recorded several duet albums with Ella Fitzgerald over more than a decade.
- Norman Granz made him effectively the house guitarist of the Pablo label.
- His instructional books remain widely used by jazz guitar students.
- The Virtuoso title grew into a series of several albums.