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I have all of Joe Pass' recorded output. Next to Wes, he is my favorite guitarist. My five favorite Joe Pass albums are:
Intercontinental
For Django
Virtuoso
Summer Nights
Two for the road (with Herb Ellis)
Pass could swing like nobody's business. He was not as discerning about tone as some to be sure, though I would bet that the recordings with less than stellar tone are more the fault of soundmen/recording engineers.
I do like his tone best on his 175's, but he sounded great on many recordings with his D'Aquistos (he owned two), Pisano's vintage Epiphone, his Ibanez and even the classical he used on the Songs for Ellen album. Tone is in the fingers, and God has made few fingers as talented as those of Joe Pass.
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09-14-2018 02:05 PM
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GT, Yeah, me too. I try but it always comes out sounding like some cheap-ass Joe Pass imitation.
Originally Posted by Greentone
I read one time that his father had a lot to do with his methodology. His dad told him to fill the spaces. Hearing that over and over Joe probably realized at a young age that he had to be a one man band of sorts and that's the foundation of his greatness.
Like Vinny would say, he was "in the pocket". And he was, even when there was no pocket to be in..
Shear brilliance.
Well put SS, as always. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
Its been a privilege to learn from him. He was a genius.
JD
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Another thing about Joe was that he was a very approachable, friendly guy. I’ll never forget how he bought me a beer and we had a nice chat in the bar at Ronnie Scott’s once.
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I'm a big Joe Pass fan as well. The links below are to a great fan webpage run by a guy who met Joe in Japan and spent a fair amount of time with him. The first link is to his board page titled "Salon". Great remembrances from former students and friends. The other is the main link.
Salon
Joe Pass Memorial Hall
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Check out Chops with NHOP. Sweet guitar/bass dueling.
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FWIW, for the folks who think that JP was never short of money, the economics of jazz is such that there was Miles--who was a millionaire due to the sales of some of his Columbia catalog--and there was pretty much everyone else.
Lots of household names were scuffling, truth be told. They owned/own homes and get mailbox money and such, but it isn't easy street. It isn't country music money or pop money.
Just sayin'.
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Yes, that observation of JP supposedly never ' being short of money' reminded me of that short Bill Evans bio on PBS........
......the person describing BE said he remembered a couple times seeing or hearing that BE's furniture had been stacked out on the street, and he'd been evicted.......
........at one time or another, for differing durations, both BE and JP had the same habit, and it wasn't a good one and it sure as s**t wasn't cheap, no matter how much they may or may not have been making.........
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From 1986 to 1990 I was a staff mixer at GroupIV Recording studios on Wilcox in Hollywood. Joe did a lot of recording in that room, Studio A. The owner was Angel Ballister, and he and Joe were pals. Studio A was state of the art at the time-Trident desk and Studer 24 track 2" machine. All mastering machines were also Studer. The mic locker was totally mind blowing with Neumann, Telefunken and RCA ribbon mics-just about anything a sound engineer could want. So as far as the speculation that Joe's tone may have been caused by inferior equipment-well I would have to respectfully disagree. Studio A was a very large room, large enough to hold about sixty players as the bread and butter sessions were with Mike Post, scoring "LA Law", and other popular shows at that time. Alan Silvestri scored "The Abyss" in that room, and about half of the LA Phil was on that session.
We had a Post-Production room, and I was working on the Tracey Ullman show for Fox when Joe and Ella were working on a duet recording. I was a huge fan of Joe's then (and now) and wandered over to Studio A during a break to see what was up. They were on a break as well, and Angel and Joe were smoking cigars in the studio. I started a conversation with Joe and told him how much I admired his playing and he asked if I played. I replied yes and he said let me hear a song. His 175 was hooked up to a Polytone and he and Angel pointed at the rig. I don't remember much about the 175 to tell the truth. I made a stab at Autumn Leaves and he graciously said"...sounds good, keep after it" and went back to his cigar with Angel. Never forget that moment, and 25 years later I'm still "after it".
Yes, Joe was one in a trillion. posted this a while back. Thought it might be of interest in this discussion. Cheers!
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Sierra Tango~ Thank you for your great insights...from being there with the master.
Is this one of the session albums you refer to?
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One of the coolest stories I've ever heard on the forum! Originally Posted by SierraTango
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Yes, I totally agree. Some of the experience on this forum is mind blowing.
Sierra Tango, thanks for sharing that. It was awesome.
Joe D.
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The man himself...worst video quality in the world
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What I heard regarding recording problems for Joe was only about the original Virtuoso album. What I've read is that there was the electric signal and a mic on the guitar for some acoustic tone, and that for most of the tracks the electric signal was somehow lost, but the acoustic was actually good and the playing was incredible, so they ran with it.
I'd love to know if that story is wrong.
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So according to that Video, Joe Pass said, he designed the neck on it. He wanted it flat. Originally Posted by dot75
He also said, "I told them to put the pickup here". And he wanted no "iron" on it.
Well that tells me all I needed to know.
Thanks for posting this video. I dont know the whole story, but at least I know some of it now.
I don't have a single problem with Joe using the design of this guitar. He changed it enough to make it his own signature. And, because Ibanez made it, it was readily available, extremely well built AND the cost of it was within reach of the working musician. I have no issue with it at all. I'm sorry if this pisses off the Jimmy D'Aquisto faithful. The D'Aquisto/Fender partnership happened too late, in my opinion. It should have happened in the early 80's. Things would have been different.
I really wish I could have gotten along with that neck. If I didnt have my love affair with Gibsons and their neck profiles, I'd still have a JP20 (and I'd still have the Heritage D'A New Yorker II, which had a similar neck). But I have a problem conforming to different neck profiles. Its not the guitar, its me. Now I appreciate it even more knowing that Joe did tell Ibanez where he wanted things.
Joe D
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Dennis Sands was the engineer on Virtuoso. I worked with Dennis at Group IV during my employment at that studio. Specifically, the Tracy Ullman show I mentioned in my earlier post. He was the dialogue mixer and I was the music and sound effects mixer. I want to be concise here-this was post-production of the show. Back in those days we had several elements of material to deal with. The dialogue was cut on 35mm stripe, the music cues came in on 1/2" 4 track tape, and we built sound effects on a 24 track Otari 2" machine. All this was slaved to a 3/4" videotape with SMPTE time code, which was fed to a Q-Lock reader for sync. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
I did ask Dennis about the Virtuoso session during our time together and he didn't seem to have any report of tech difficulties, however it is unlikely he would have mentioned anything as no one was complaining about Joe's sound on the record. He only spoke of what a mind blowing player Joe was and had nothing but respect for the man.
Dennis was/is a super talented mixer who went on to much success in the film business. Like myself and many mixers at the time, we started in records (In my case, the Sound Factory on Selma and Ivar-my first session as a 2nd there was on Jackson Browne's "Hold Out" with Greg Ladanyi-RIP). However records were a real grind and the goal was to get into film mixing-another grind but a better environment and more prestige in some ways.
I was fortunate to share a cup of coffee with Ella and chat a bit at Group IV during a break. My life is complete.
P.S. For you trivia fans, the Tracy Ullman Show spun off the Simpsons, one of the most successful shows in the history of TV. Yes, I worked on the early episodes with Matt the creator. Another story..
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When you do this as a living it's a profession. Which means you have to pay the bills, including recording studio costs, managers, agents, and oh yeah ... the kid's college costs.
He endorses the guitar, so they pay him something however small to do so, including providing instruments probably. It's something to help on those bills.
It's a job.
Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
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That's interesting Joe , i dont own one but
The one I tried out (and didn't buy unfortunately)
had the nicest most comfortable neck
I've ever played ....
Smooth man
I guess all of our hands are very different
anyway Vive is differance ....
Carry on
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I have heard the same story. When that album came out, I assumed that the acoustic sounding tracks were done on the D'Aquisto and the few electric sounding tracks were done on the 175. I too would like to know the truth about that album. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
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Interesting that Virtuoso 4 is all acoustic too, and was recorded shortly after Virtuoso, in the same studio (if Wikipedia is correct). So maybe it was decided (for whatever reason) to record that way on both sessions.
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When this question came up once before, as an experiment I tried recording my 175 (acoustic sound only) in a sort of ‘poor man’s Joe Pass’ attempt, just to see what it sounded like. It certainly seemed to get a similar sound to the Virtuoso record: Originally Posted by Stringswinger
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By the way, searching for Virtuoso 4 tracks just now I found this! I’ve never heard it before.
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Makes me curious to try a JP 20. I like brightish jazz tones.
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I can well believe Virtuoso was recorded on an acoustic 175.
I don’t normally bother plugging in mine - which is a louder box than the modern ones - for videos if anyone wants to compare (on a phone mic lol.)
Thing is imo laminates with a small voice often close mike pretty well. It’s like vocals. Big voices close mike less well than small voices.
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"Big voices close mike less well than small voices."
This can be very true. Some people with big voices, however, know how to tamp it down and sing to the mic--e.g., Tony Bennett...or, especially, Ella.
Buy, yeah, 16" Gibsons and small-body Martins mic beautifully.
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While I prefer a darker guitar, my JP-20 was a great guitar for gigs in dark rooms. My CME ES-175 figured is a bright guitar (for a 175) and has replaced the JP-20 for that purpose (and is way better for me with the shorter scale) Originally Posted by christianm77
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