Joe Pass – The Most Legendary Jazz Music Guitar Personality Ever – Part 1
Joe Pass is one of the most incredible jazz guitarists in the history of jazz music! A real master of all the idioms of jazz guitar compositions, he was equally at home with an incredible fast bebop line, a soulful blues groove, a delicate “rubato” ballad, or a pretty chord melody solo. Pass was also very sought after as a sideman in many various ensembles – such as a surprisingly successful set with Roy Clark performing Hank Williams tunes! He also worked as an accompanist to singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and instrumentalists like pianist Oscar Peterson and J.J. Johnson and found the time to start publishing collection books of jazz guitar tabs and jazz guitar tablature.
Since the early 1960s, the name Joe Pass has been synonymous with jazz guitar and Joe’s effect on his fellow musicians and future generations of guitar players is undeniable. He was a preferred performer of Wes Montgomery during the hight of Wes’s popularity and along with Howard Roberts, Barney Kessel, and Herb Ellis he helped shape the West Coast jazz guitar school. Pass was additionally an essential, crucial and influential paternal figure to emerging guitar players like Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Jack Wilkins, Emily Remler, and Mark Whitfield.
A great deal of extra attention is devoted to his Pacific Jazz Record Company years – often acknowledged as his “classic” jazz years – when he was hot, hungry and prepared to show the music world what he could do! For many years these recordings – seminal masterworks and vital listening for previous generations of guitarists – had been unavailable on CD. As a result they languished in obscurity and their importance and inclusion in a Joe Pass jazz guitar tunes compilation was problematic – in spite of the excellence, profundity and importance of the music. Today these classic Pass albums have been justly given a new lease on life as a result of the laudable re-issue projects of record manufacturers such as Blue Note, Eupohoria, and most of all Mosaic Records.
Joe wrote various instructional jazz guitar music books with the plan of sharing his experience with neophytes and seasoned guitar players alike, but often mentioned that studying as many tunes as possible was the most useful lesson for a player. He hoped that aspiring guitar performers, irrespective of style, would locate that spark of individuality and inventiveness which he discovered in his youth and cultivated in his first playing experiences. Joe’s improvisation approach, superior harmonic ideas, and solo jazz guitar chord melody style are subjects he was keen to go over and share – yet his method of expression was hardly disciplined, pedantic, or scholarly. Nevertheless Joe was a stellar commmunicator – if you listened. He spoke as in performance through his instrument – spontaneously, casually, with humor and a lot of feeling – punctuating his music discourse with a favorite comment: “Stop me once you hear something you like”. Needless to say, he got stopped quite a lot! Fortunately for aspiring guitarists, Joe Pass released numerous instructional jazz guitar tab books and DVD programs that teach his single note improvised solos and chord melody solos as well as the pickstyle and fingerstyle guitar techniques he utilized to play them.
Peabody Conservatory trained guitarist Steven Herron helps guitar players become better guitarists. His company ChordMelody.com features an enormous selection of jazz guitar tabs
as well as instructional DVDs by Joe Pass himself. Find out more and claim Steven’s popular free monthly guitar lesson e-course available at: =>
http://www.chordmelody.com/Joe-Pass.htm
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