One of the best-selling jazz guitar albums up to 1974 was Joe Pass's Virtuoso. The jet black LP with Pass on the cover in shadow came out ahead of the December holidays and gave Norman Granz's Pablo label massive visibility. It also motivated a generation of young listeners to take up the jazz guitar. Now Craft Recordings has remastered and released the album as a digital download and a 180-gram LP. So gratifying to hear this music again in sterling shape in both formats.
The album features Pass alone, a daunting task for a guitarist, who must be a peerless improviser and swinger, keep flawless rhythm and fill the empty spaces with a range of enticing arpeggios, figures and chords.
Born in 1929 in New Brunswick, N.J., Pass began playing guitar at age 9 following his Italian family's move to Johnstown, Pa. He practiced prodigiously, listened closely to family friends who played guitar and took weekly lessons. He began gigging professionally in Johnstown at 14 and played in several touring big bands, including ones led by Charlie Barnet and Tony Pastor.
As soon as he was old enough, Pass moved to New York, recorded with Pastor in 1947 and then enlisted in the service in the late 1940s. His rampant drug use began after his discharge and residence in New Orleans, a port city that was a major gateway then for narcotics. Ferociously addicted, Pass served several jail sentences in the 1950s, which is why his discography lacks an entry for the decade and doesn't resume again until 1962.
Early record releases in 1962 were with organist Richard "Groove" Holmes, Johnny Griffin, Les McCann, Gerald Wilson and Bud Shank. He soon became a first-call sideman in Los Angeles and a prolific studio guitarist, recording steadily for World Pacific and Pacific Jazz as a leader.
His remarkable early leadership albums included For Django (1964), A Sign of the Times (1965) and The Stones Jazz (1966), easily my favorite jazz interpretation of Rolling Stones hits. In 1973, Granz started his Pablo label after success with Clef, Norgran and Verve; uniting the American songbook and jazz with artists such as Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald, and producing hundreds of jazz albums.
In 1973, Granz signed Pass to Pablo, whose first album for the label was Duke's Big Four, with Duke Ellington (p), Joe Pass (g), Ray Brown (b) and Louie Bellson (d). Late that year, Pass began recording steadily and exclusively for Pablo.
Virtuoso was Pass's fourth Pablo record and immediately made him a household name in jazz. With the success of the solo model, he would would record an additional five Virtuoso volumes.
The Virtuoso tracks:
- Night and Day
- Stella by Starlight
- Here's That Rainy Day
- My Old Flame
- How High the Moon
- Cherokee
- Sweet Lorraine
- Have You Met Miss Jones
- 'Round Midnight
- All The Things You Are
- Blues for Alican (Joe Pass)
- The Song Is You
For Craft's new entry in its Original Jazz Classics re-issue series, the label hired Kevin Gray at Coherent Audio to cut the Virtuoso LP lacquers from the original tapes and had the recording pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI. Album jackets reproduce the original artwork and back-cover notes. The music has also been released as hi-res audio for downloading and streaming.
Joe Pass died in 1994 at age 65.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Craft Recording's release of Joe Pass's Virtuoso (Pablo) here.
JazzWax clips: Here's The Song Is You (crank it up!)...
And here's Here's That Rainy Day...
