Joe Pass – The Most Legendary Jazz Music Guitar Personality Ever – Part 2
Many guitarists have been astonished to learn that jazz guitar player Joe Pass performed on Fender solid body guitars on his early jazz guitar music record albums. Generally associated with surf and rock performers, the Fender Jazz Master and Fender Jaguar models appear unlikely foils for his advanced bebop style, but Pass made the most of his circumstances. His Fender guitar sound is heard on recordings like 1961’s “Sounds of Synanon”, 1962’s “Something Special” (Groove Holmes) and “Moment of Truth” (Gerald Wilson), and 1963’s “Catch Me”, his initial record album as a leader. He additionally employed a Fender Bass VI six string bass guitar for a number of tracks on the latter date. Pass used a thinline Gibson ES-355 briefly during 1963. This was heard on his recording sessions as a sideman with Les McCann.
Joe Pass played these atypical jazz guitars till a kind and generous soul, Mike Peak, gave him a Gibson ES-175D in 1963. This guitar is an archtop electric acoustic with two humbucking pickups, a sunburst finish and a 16 inch laminated body. The ES-175D created the definitive Joe Pass sound and grew to become his workhorse instrument for most of his career. It is heard prominently on such famous recordings as 1964’s “For Django” and “Joy Spring”, 1967’s “Simplicity” and 1963’s “Jazz Concord” (with Herb Ellis).
In the 1970s and 1980s, Joe Pass dabbled with a couple of other jazz archtop guitars, including a specially made James D’Aquisto archtop acoustic with a thinner body and a floating pick up, and an Ibanez JP-20 signature model. He later on lent his name to a series of Epiphone Joe Pass Signature guitars in the 1990s. In 1992 Joe took delivery of a custom produced Gibson ES-175. According to jazz guitarist John Pisano, Pass’s longtime close friend and frequent musical collaborator, that instrument has a thinner body type, a single humbucking pickup, a sunburst finish, gold-plated hardware, and an ebony fingerboard. Pisano also talked about that this is the guitar heard on Joe’s last record albums, including his last: “A Meeting of the Masters: Roy Clark & Joe Pass Play Hank Williams”.
Like most jazz guitarists, Joe Pass utilized the neck pickup on his ES-175 almost exclusively and adjusted the tone control to generate a warm bassy sound. Joe was supplied with a full custom medium to heavy gauge set of strings from GHS string company. Joe had an strange habit of breaking or biting his guitar picks in half to a more compact size that he believed was much more comfortable. These were originally more compact teardrop shaped picks and after breaking them he would play with the pointed end.
In the 1960s, Joe usually performed and recorded with various Fender tube amplifiers. He used several combo and piggyback versions including a Twin Reverb and a white tolex Bandmaster. The latter was observed and heard mated to a Fender Jaguar guitar in a telling 1962 TV performance included on the “Genius of Joe Pass” DVD. Recording session pictures show that an Ampeg combo amp was utilized during the landmark “For Django” album. By the beginning of the seventies, Pass switched to Polytone solid-state amps and grew to become one of the company’s foremost endorsers. Thankfully for aspiring guitarists, Joe Pass published quite a few jazz guitar tab books and instructional DVD courses which teach his single note improvised solos and chord melody solos as well as the pickstyle and fingerstyle guitar techniques he used to perform 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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