Joe Pass: The Quiet Guitar Genius
Joe Pass was born Joseph Anthony Passalaqua in 1929 New Brunswick. Influenced early on by the singing cowboy, Gene Autry, he took guitar lessons at age nine. It’s safe to say it consumed him wholeheartedly, and he practiced oftentimes up to seven hours a day, relegating schoolwork to second-degree status. At 14, he was performing at parties with a group of like-minded kids, listening to as much Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Tal Farlow and Barnie Kessel as he could. Ultimately, it would be Wes Montgomery who became his muse.
He left home for New York City to join a bebop community where he fit right in. In 1960, he moved to Las Vegas and then to Los Angeles where he became an in-demand studio cat on records by Julie London, Frank Sinatra and so many others. His 1962 debut, Sounds Of Synanon, didn’t exactly catapult him to stardom and he spent years in the bands of others, including Gerald Wilson, Bobby Troup, Earl Bostic, Les McCann and, most notably, George Shearing, with whom he toured/recorded for two years.
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Producer Norman Granz heard him in 1970 and produced him in 1973. In 1974, Pass recorded an album called The Trio with pianist Oscar Peterson and bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen. In ’75, it won a Grammy Award. That’s when Ella Fitzgerald picked him to back her. He would go on to perform on stages and in studios with Benny Carter, Count Basie, Zoot Sims, Roy “Little Jazz” Eldridge and Duke Ellington. His solo catalog contains tributes to Charlie Parker and Fred Astaire. His 1985 Whitestone album was a high-water mark. His string of solo-guitar albums has yet to be matched, as he would play his own bass lines simultaneously to his melodic lead lines.
In 1994, backstage, after a concert, Pass admitted to Guitar Player magazine, “I can’t play anymore.” He died 16 days later in Los Angeles from liver cancer.