Solo jazz guitar like Joe Pass

**ameetnsharma** · 01-12-2016, 11:05 PM

I really like the way Joe Pass plays solo jazz guitar. He gets everything in there together, walking bass, single line, chords...

What other players have done solo jazz arrangements like this?

Thanks for any recommendations.

**Cunamara** · 01-12-2016, 11:40 PM

Oh, there's a few but for Joe it was a specialty. He played far more gigs solo than with others in the last 20 years of his career. If you like solo guitar I would suggest checking out some of my favorites:

Gene Bertoncini (the CDs "Quiet Now," "Body and Soul" and "Someone to Light Up My Life")

Ralph Towner

Martin Taylor

Johnny Smith (esp. "The Man With The Blue Guitar" and the first half of "Legends" which is paired with the next guy)

George Van Eps (7 string guitar)

Pasqual Grasso has a stunning solo CD out and you can find him on YouTube

Andy Brown likewise has soem great solo guitar stuff on YouTube

Peter Bernstein has a solo CD out and some solo playing on YouTube.

**AndyV** · 01-13-2016, 12:26 AM

Mimi Fox doesn't get mentioned very much but she has a very nice solo style that somewhat reminds me of Pass in it's musicality.

**docbop** · 01-13-2016, 12:32 AM

In Joe Pass' style I would say Gene Bertoncini and Peter Bernstein, both are great at improvising and reharmonizing and rearraging songs on the spot. Many guitarist workup arrangement and great at performing them and working within them, but Pass and Bernstein are great at doing it on the spot. Jim Hall didn't do it as much as the others he like duo more but he could take a song and get free with it.

**Stuart Elliott** · 01-13-2016, 12:48 AM

Some good suggestions above. I also like

Ron Eschete, A Closer Look

Cal Collins By Myself (don't think Concord has re-issued this).

Philip DeGruy, Innuendo, Out the Other

**targuit** · 01-13-2016, 07:38 AM

Howard Alden deserves a mention as well.

**rpguitar** · 01-13-2016, 10:37 AM

I haven't listened yet, but Jonathan Kreisberg's solo album "One" is highly rated and also on an ES-175.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Jonathan-K.../dp/B00A92MGEM

**mr. beaumont** · 01-13-2016, 10:55 AM

Jimmy Bruno's solo album is worth checking out, as is Jack Grassell's "guitar smoke."

**Stanford J17** · 01-13-2016, 12:39 PM

Although they have a different style than Joe, here are some of my favorites:

My personal hero:
TED GREENE

Sid Jacobs
Steve Herbermann
Charlie Byrd
Fred Fried
Jeff Linsky
Earl Klugh
Barney Kessel
Kenny Burrell

Some of the aforementioned have whole albums of solo guitar, some of them just some tunes. But I guess you would find all of them on youtube.

By the way, there are some guys on this forum that play some pretty cool solo guitar stuff. Jim Soloway, Jake Reichbart, Jeffrey Matz (look above;-), Harvey Valdes, Goran Lindelöw and many more...

**lawson-stone** · 01-13-2016, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by ameetnsharma

I really like the way Joe Pass plays solo jazz guitar. He gets everything in there together, walking bass, single line, chords...

What other players have done solo jazz arrangements like this?

Thanks for any recommendations.

First and most important, it's a big mistake to call Joe Pass' performances "arrangements." They are emphatically not arrangements. I have heard him play some of these tunes numerous times, and he never plays them the same way. He was a true improvisor, and approached his songs with great preparation, but not with pre-meditation. He would change keys on the fly, re-harmonize on the fly, shift from swing to bossa, bossa to ballad, ballad to shuffle-time blues, all in the space of a thunderclap. Chord melody gave way to long bop lines, switching to a few octave phrases, then walking-bass lines and chord fragments.

So on one level, sure, some players play "arrangements" sort of like this. But I have never found another jazz guitar player who can improvise on solo guitar with such variety, power, and over such a fantastic range of tunes, as Joe Pass.

**Eagle2x** · 01-14-2016, 01:57 AM

Originally Posted by targuit

Howard Alden deserves a mention as well.

Absolutely, a true virtuoso!

**Stringswinger** · 01-14-2016, 02:58 AM

I second the mention of Martin Taylor. Martin may be the greatest solo jazz guitarist since Joe Pass, but even Martin stands in the shadow of Joe Pass.

I am glad that my friend Mimi Fox was mentioned. Mimi is a superb solo jazz guitarist and was a protégé of Joe Pass'.

**55bar** · 01-14-2016, 07:36 AM

Peter Bernstein live at smalls.

**grahambop** · 01-14-2016, 08:11 AM

Originally Posted by lawson-stone

First and most important, it's a big mistake to call Joe Pass' performances "arrangements." They are emphatically not arrangements. I have heard him play some of these tunes numerous times, and he never plays them the same way. He was a true improvisor, and approached his songs with great preparation, but not with pre-meditation. He would change keys on the fly, re-harmonize on the fly, shift from swing to bossa, bossa to ballad, ballad to shuffle-time blues, all in the space of a thunderclap. Chord melody gave way to long bop lines, switching to a few octave phrases, then walking-bass lines and chord fragments.

So on one level, sure, some players play "arrangements" sort of like this. But I have never found another jazz guitar player who can improvise on solo guitar with such variety, power, and over such a fantastic range of tunes, as Joe Pass.

I'll second that. I saw Joe Pass many times over a period of several years at Ronnie Scotts, and there were not many repeated tunes in his set as I recall. He gave the impression he really had no idea what tune he was going to play next, it was whatever popped into his head. In fact I had a chat with him in the downstairs bar once, and he basically confirmed that's how he picked the next tune.

Whereas Martin Taylor (who I also saw there many times), tended to play the same core tunes every time. He always played I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, The Dolphin, for example (I would not be able to remember them otherwise!)

**targuit** · 01-14-2016, 08:25 AM

Just for the sake of discussion, a word about preparation and arrangements. I never had the opportunity to see Joe Pass, probably because I was out of the country for a decade in the late Seventies. But where does the boundary fall between knowing standards well and 'arranging' them?

I make reference to my Sibelius arrangements all the time. It happens to be one of my favorite activities to create them as rehearsal tracks for my practice and for the practical benefits of manipulating music. I also use them to keep track of song structures, lyrics, and for inspiration when recording. But when doing home recording the arrangement is just like the outline of a novel. Just a starting point.

I have no idea if Joe prepped specific tunes on paper or just in his head, but I suspect he knew his tunes pretty cold. I would agree that it is unlikely he played them the same way twice exactly, but he knew the changes. I always find it fascinating that in his later years he toned down his approach with CDs like Unforgettable and Songs For Ellen.

**grahambop** · 01-14-2016, 10:25 AM

I don't think Joe even thought about things like 'what are the chord changes' when he was playing. Sometimes when I saw him, he got so wrapped up in improvising and where it was leading him, that he occasionally took what sounded like a 'wrong turn' in a tune, and ended up in a remote key, or going through some kind of cycle, until he got back on track.

I suspect that for him, it was almost a 'stream of consciousness' kind of thing. If he knew the melody, the chord changes would just follow.

There's a DVD of a Brecon Jazz concert where he plays an obscure old 1940s Gil Fuller/Dizzy Gillespie tune called 'That's Earl Brother' and afterwards he says something like 'I don't know what made me play that!' It didn't sound like he'd even thought about it beforehand. Just remembering the melody in his head at that moment seemed to be enough for him to launch into it, at least that's how it comes across.

**David B** · 01-14-2016, 12:18 PM

**AndyV** · 01-14-2016, 12:33 PM

Nice to remember Jeff Linsky. He plays the Requito guitar - kind of a 3/4 size version but excels at spontaneous chord melody playing. I read an interview where he said he honed that skill on cruise ship gigs where he took requests.

And yes, Pass was truly on a level of his own. The classical guitarist Elliott Fisk did a tour with where Joe would improvise on classical themes as they playing together in duo format. Fisk remarked on his amazing ability to improvise music with which he'd never heard before or only had only minimal familiarity.

My late mom played piano in a very un-hip, show tune kind of style by ear. Yet she could instantly play any tune whose melody she knew with full harmony and bass lines in most any key. I definitely did NOT get those genes. Sigh. I think that kind of innate genetic ability found full flower in Joe Pass (and many others throughout music history, like Mozart).

**lawson-stone** · 01-14-2016, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by targuit

Just for the sake of discussion, a word about preparation and arrangements. I never had the opportunity to see Joe Pass, probably because I was out of the country for a decade in the late Seventies. But where does the boundary fall between knowing standards well and 'arranging' them?

I make reference to my Sibelius arrangements all the time. It happens to be one of my favorite activities to create them as rehearsal tracks for my practice and for the practical benefits of manipulating music. I also use them to keep track of song structures, lyrics, and for inspiration when recording. But when doing home recording the arrangement is just like the outline of a novel. Just a starting point.

I have no idea if Joe prepped specific tunes on paper or just in his head, but I suspect he knew his tunes pretty cold. I would agree that it is unlikely he played them the same way twice exactly, but he knew the changes. I always find it fascinating that in his later years he toned down his approach with CDs like Unforgettable and Songs For Ellen.

Just a note: Joe "toned down" his approach on those albums because he was dying of cancer. He was also undergoing some nontraditional treatments and spent much of has last 2-3 years or more in significant pain, or at least discomfort. I have one VCR tape of him playing in some upstairs room of a club and they start "Body and Soul" and Joe just quits, looks up and says "I can't do this anymore." And your heart just breaks.

It's also possible he was in a much more reflective frame of mind and that this came out in more meditative types of playing, but I also know the discomfort, ill feeling, and pain of the cancer and treatments had a deep effect on his playing. At the end, he looked a good bit older than his 65 (?) years.

**lawson-stone** · 01-14-2016, 12:58 PM

Originally Posted by grahambop

...

There's a DVD of a Brecon Jazz concert where he plays an obscure old 1940s Gil Fuller/Dizzy Gillespie tune called 'That's Earl Brother' and afterwards he says something like 'I don't know what made me play that!' It didn't sound like he'd even thought about it beforehand. Just remembering the melody in his head at that moment seemed to be enough for him to launch into it, at least that's how it comes across.

Joe loved that tune. He has a rocking performance of it on all-acoustic guitar with the old "For Django" band on the album Appassionato. He also performed on the video he made called An Evening with Joe Pass. It's part of the warm-up with the bassist and drummer, starting at about 6:45 in the video.

What's astonishing about it is that the BAND didn't even know the tune. The bassist (a really substantial player in his own right!) is looking at it, listening, and saying "yeah, blues with a bridge… wait… no…" and then just starts playing in the moment. they edit out bits of this, but it recurs in spots all over that video. I wish they'd kept it intact. It's actually much the same changes as "Confirmation" except for the very quirky Dizzy-esque introduction.

It's hard to find the chart for that one. I first found it in a book called Music Sales Fake Booand then later saw it was in an old fake book called the Jazz LTD Facebook.

The video of them doing this more or less in pick-up fashion is a peek into some real jazz players at work!

**targuit** · 01-15-2016, 07:56 AM

Lawson - Do you know for sure that those CDs like Unforgettable and the straightforward but beautiful 'arrangements' of the tunes Joe played (for lack of a better word) were lesser recordings than his earlier works?

I'm sure Joe suffered physically, and I have heard that story about his last performance. As a physician, I know well the debility of cancer and its treatments. But those latter recordings were pretty strong in my opinion.

Is there an extant biography of Joe Pass? If not, I 'd sure as hell like to write one. So many of his contemporaries are gone.

**lawson-stone** · 01-15-2016, 03:35 PM

Originally Posted by targuit

Lawson - Do you know for sure that those CDs like Unforgettable and the straightforward but beautiful 'arrangements' of the tunes Joe played (for lack of a better word) were lesser recordings than his earlier works?

I'm sure Joe suffered physically, and I have heard that story about his last performance. As a physician, I know well the debility of cancer and its treatments. But those latter recordings were pretty strong in my opinion.

Is there an extant biography of Joe Pass? If not, I 'd sure as hell like to write one. So many of his contemporaries are gone.

No way would I call them "lesser" works. I was simply responding to the idea that somehow he played differently on those because he had evolved or changed his mind about how to play. He was playing the very best he could, and he was no longer physically up to the intensity and complexity of his earlier playing, so (I think) he excelled in playing with a kind of immaculately selective touch.

I think they are wonderful, but was only saying they shouldn't be seen as reflecting a particular musical choice Joe made. The cancer imposed a harsh limit, and Joe met that limit with amazing taste and produced beautiful albums. But only a short time earlier, he made the "An Evening with Joe Pass" video, the Christmas CD and the Hank Williams CD (with Roy Clark) and on those he is a fiery as ever, even though he says (in the video) he's not interested in speed anymore.

I'd never disparage any of Joe Pass' playing! He is a hero to me. He called me on the phone the week of his death and I will always cherish those moments of conversation with him, so I imagine my objectivity on Joe Pass is pretty much gone!

**lawson-stone** · 01-15-2016, 03:36 PM

Jude Hibler was allegedly writing a biography of Joe Pass, and edited couple books of his playing, but I have not heard anything else since. I imagine she either hit insuperable obstacles or the inspiration passed.

We really could enjoy a solid biography of Joe Pass.