Joe Pass Guitar Tab Books, Instruction DVDs, Chord Melody Solos, Arrangements, Video Lessons

The Huey Long Solo Guitar Collection

The Johnny Smith Solo Guitar Collection

Joe Pass - A True Jazz Guitar Genius!
Compiled & Edited By Steven Herron

   If Joe Pass had not been sidelined with illegal drug dependency, he definitely would have taken part in the exciting jazz guitar surge of the fifties. As it was, fate had other ideas for Joe Pass. After knocking about in and out of jail for over ten years with heroin addiction, Joe got admitted to Synanon which was basically a drug rehab facility in 1960.

   Joe Pass first acquired public recognition with his guitar playing as part of the house band on 1961's "Sounds Of Synanon". His debut record album "Catch Me", and its' historic follow up "For Django", developed Joe Pass's credentials in no uncertain terms. By 1965, he was in demand as one of the most requested jazz sidemen of the time, backing up musicians such as George Shearing, Groove Holmes, Gerald Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Les McCann.

    At decade's end, Joe Pass had actually released a bunch of records on the Pacific Jazz label (these are finally offered on CD in a must have Mosaic Records' collection) and was a regional legend in the Los Angeles jazz guitar scene. Lee Ritenour once referred to him as "The President Of Bebop" on the West Coast, a thought shared by many up and coming jazz guitar players of the day.

   In 1972, Joe Pass broke new ground with his "Virtuoso" record album. The promise made by his Pacific Jazz recordings was fulfilled on "Virtuoso". This record featured Joe Pass playing unaccompanied, improvised jazz guitar for an entire program of twelve tracks! A collection that seems as fresh and outstanding today, "Virtuoso" elevated the bar in the jazz music industry overnight.

    From this point on, the word "virtuoso" came to be Joe's handle. He was the undisputed king in the solo jazz guitar category and held this position until his untimely demise in 1994. In retrospect, Joe Pass is among the most vital jazz artists of the twentieth century and continues to be the essential "complete" jazz guitar player.

   Stories from the Joe Pass mythos have it that Gene Autry, "The Singing Cowboy", motivated a 9 year old Joseph Anthony Passalaqua to take up the guitar and become one of the world's best artists - an idealized and enchanting image but barely precise. Joe Pass debunked that story years back.

    Reality be revealed, Joe himself didn't remember specifically what propelled him to begin playing guitar - he just did. When he did, he participated in the neighborhood popular music scenario in Johnstown, New Jersey - merely hanging out with various other guitarists, learning Italian sing-along songs of the day, and listening. Huge amounts of listening!

   For almost a year and a half, Joe Pass took official guitar lessons with a regional multi-instrumental musician. He discovered how to read formal music, worked through some Nick Lucas guitar method publications, and examined some basic finger style guitar techniques from the Carcassi Classical Guitar Method.

    At this age, he practiced around six hours a day under the careful eye and rigorous analysis of his dad. By age twelve, Joe Pass was an excellent improviser and was playing professionally at local dances with older artists. In this time period, he came to be aware of jazz players like saxophonist Ben Webster and trumpeter Roy Eldridge.

   In the forties, jazz guitarist Joe Pass was drawn to the modern jazz guitar sounds originating from New York City. There he came to be conversant in the new musical language of bebop and jammed with numerous of its leading entertainers. Joe mentioned Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Coleman Hawkins as influential in this phase of his development. In later years, he was also influenced by the piano playing of Oscar Peterson. Joe Pass has cited only 3 guitarists as having an influence on his guitar style: Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, and Wes Montgomery.

   Joe Pass has actually been likened, and justly so, to the wonderful wind (sax and trumpet) and keyboard performers of jazz. In a pure music sense, his single note improvisation style has a lot in common with instrumentalists of the classic bebop and hard bop schools. Hardly one for labels, Joe Pass has constantly referred to himself as an improvisation musician that just so happens to play and express himself via the guitar.

    Nonetheless, his agile single note lines have many of the melodies and phrases one associates with jazz giants like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, and Sonny Rollins. It is mostly from this framework that he played. His implementation and methodology were hornlike and on par with his wide range of ideas and enormous vocabulary, permitting single note improvisations to flow like a saxophonist's stream of consciousness.

   Joe Pass likewise had a tougher, funkier element to his playing that merged bluesy string bends, double stops and partial chords, mutated swing licks, and rhythmically charged R & B influenced riffs. This side of his musical personality emerged early on in solos with hard bop players like Groove Holmes and Les McCann along with on blues and rock flavored numbers like "Ode to Billie Joe" on the 1970's "Intercontinental" album.

   Over the years, Joe Pass established an extremely unique harmonic methodology that equals most pianists' playing. He was especially skilled at thinking up unaccompanied chord melody solos. These mini-masterpieces are brilliantly showcased on the "Virtuoso" record albums and a lot of other solo albums. In this setting, Joe was really in a league of his own.

    Utilizing a wide array of finger-picked, hybrid-picked, and flat-picked articulations along with a trademarked mix of ad lib chord passages, spontaneous counterpoint, and fleet bebop lines, he has actually reinterpreted - that is, basically re-written at will - numerous of the greatest standard tunes of history.

   Many guitarists have been surprised to learn that Joe Pass played Fender solid body guitars on his early jazz guitar recordings. Normally associated with surf and rock and roll performers, the Fender Jazz Master and Fender Jaguar models seem 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 first album as a leader. He also employed a Fender Bass VI six string bass guitar for a couple of tracks on the latter date. Pass used a thin line Gibson ES-355 briefly during 1963. This was heard on his sessions as a sideman with Les McCann.

   Pass played these atypical jazz guitars until 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 175 produced the definitive Joe Pass sound and became his workhorse instrument for most of his career. It is heard prominently on such classic 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 few other jazz archtop guitars, including a custom made James D-Aquisto archtop acoustic with a thinner body and a floating pick up, and an Ibanez JP-20 signature model. He later lent his name to a line of Epiphone Joe Pass Signature guitars in the 1990s. In 1992 Joe took delivery of a custom made Gibson ES-175.

    According to jazz guitarist John Pisano, Pass's longtime friend and frequent musical collaborator, this instrument has a thinner body, a single humbucking pickup, a sunburst finish, gold-plated hardware, and an ebony fingerboard. Pisano also mentioned that this is the guitar heard on Joe's final recordings, including his last: "A Meeting of the Masters: Roy Clark & Joe Pass Play Hank Williams".

   Like most jazz guitarists, Pass used the neck pickup on his ES-175 almost exclusively and adjusted the tone control to produce a warm bassy sound. Joe was supplied with a full custom medium to heavy gauged set of strings from GHS. Joe had an unusual habit of breaking or biting his picks in half to a smaller size that he felt was more comfortable. These were originally smaller teardrop shaped picks and after breaking them he played with the pointed end.

   In the 1960s, Joe usually performed and recorded with various Fender tube amplifiers. He used several combo and piggyback models including a Twin Reverb and a white Tolex Bandmaster. The latter was seen and heard mated to a Fender Jaguar in a telling 1962 TV performance included on the "Genius of Joe Pass" DVD. Session photos reveal that an Ampeg combo amp was used during the landmark "For Django" recording.

    By the early 1970s, Pass switched to Polytone solid-state amps and became one of the company's leading endorsers. Fortunately for aspiring guitarists, Joe Pass released numerous jazz guitar tab books and instructional DVD courses that teach his single note improvised solos and chord melody solos as well as the pickstyle and fingerstyle guitar techniques he used to play them.

Jazz Guitar Chords & Arpeggio Patterns - Stacy McKee - This unique book includes 300 jazz guitar chord formations and matching single note arpeggio patterns in a quick reference format that no one has ever done before! Cross indexing makes this manual extremely easy to use and regardless of what style of music you play, we know you will find this to be a valuable, "must have" addition to your library.  Stacy McKee was the featured guitarist with "Les Brown and The Band Of Renown" and for a limited time only, we will include an exclusive copy of his book FREE with your first order!
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