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There are lots of us who listened to Joe Pass throughout his career. Pass' playing was a revelation. He had impeccable time and swing. His lines were sent from heaven. His chord-and-bass playing was right at the top of his craft.
For much of Pass' early recording efforts he employed the Gibson ES175D that was given to him as a gift right after he got out of drug rehab, when a wealthy real estate jazz fan discovered that Pass didn't own his own guitar, but was using a Synanon-owned solid body Fender. Many people associate Pass with the sound of this guitar, either recorded direct into the board, or mic'ed through an amp.
In the 1970s Pass had James D'Aquisto build him a guitar with a single pickup installed. This guitar, too, made it onto recordings--especially with the duo of Herb Ellis/Joe Pass. Listen to the album "Two For the Road," one of jazz's best interplay albums, for examples of the D'Aquisto at work in top form.
On the road and in live recordings during the 80s, Pass employed the Ibanez Joe Pass JP-20 model guitar. Much has been written about whether Pass did or didn't like this guitar, but he was faithful in using it over the life of the endorsement deal.
When Gibson put out the Epiphone Joe Pass Emperor model guitar, a budget archtop model, Pass even used that guitar in his second Hot Licks Video, "The Blue Side of Jazz Guitar"--or, at least, a prototype. Pass seemed to experience difficulty with the pickup selector placement, as can be seen in the video.
Late in his career, Pass seems to have gone back to the ES-175. However, this single-pickup Gibson differs from the 165/175 in a critical detail. The pickup placement of the humbucker is decidedly not in the position of the neck pickup on any other single or double pickup ES-175 (or on the Herb Ellis ES-165). Instead, the pickup is immediately adjacent to the end of the fingerboard, a la the Gibson L-4CES. Yet, this is a maple-topped guitar. Was this a custom guitar, or perhaps a prototype? It sounds different, I might add, than Pass' 175, or than other 175s. I have not seen much written about this guitar.
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06-23-2014 01:15 PM
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and that funky es175 at the end looks a little thinner to my eye.. a few other people have noted that.. and a few others disagree
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Two images from the June 1996 Joe Pass Special Edition of Just Jazz Guitar:
And this:
Last edited by daveg; 06-24-2014 at 09:26 AM.
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Thanks! I suspected as much but never knew this.
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Very interesting thread. By the way, do you know what guitar Joe played in his acoustic album Appassionato? Is it a flattop acoustic or an archtop? In the album cover the photo shows Joe playing the Ibanez with a microphone. In a John Pisano's interview I red Joe played an Epiphone acoustic archtop that belonged to John's father in some of his later acoustic recordings. I don't know if he referred to Appassionato.
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My fav guitarist. hands down. To me it all comes back to Joe. A lot of others are great, but Joe was really a no-nonsense player, and thinker. I've often listened to others do a tune, then I'd listen to several renditions of the same tune from Joe. He would never play just to shred, but he could shred. He never played chords to play difficult voicings, but he could play some fairly tough, and unique chord passages, if need be. I just got his version of "stella" down. In one arrangement he covered bass lines, single solo lines, arrpagios, chord melodies, the whole thing. And some of those lines took a while to get down to the speed at which he did them. Refering to the instructional book version.
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I had the privilege of seeing Joe once in New Orleans. I was working in the Fairmont Hotel & he was playing downstairs in a private club. I went down there during a break. I was able to get in because I was wearing my tux so, I guess I looked like I worked there.
I was standing behind a curtain watching him and it was mind blowing! I have never seen anyone else that can play at that level. No one seemed to be listening but he was still amazing! I will never forget it.
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Wow! That's classic. The Fairmont (the old Roosevelt Hotel) in New Orleans and Joe Pass. The city of jazz, THE great, traditional hotel in the Big Easy, and THE great jazz guitarist, Joe Passalaqua. You were most fortunate.
Times change...Joe is gone; the Fairmont Roosevelt is now a Waldorf Astoria/Hilton hotel; the Big Easy is a shell of itself, since Katrina. We still have Joe Pass' recordings, however.
When I was a LSU student, I bought my second electric guitar from Werlein's Music down on Canal Street. That building is a restaurant now.
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I saw Joe playing a solo gig in Ronnie Scotts, London - 1991/2 - still one of the best gigs I've ever been to - his playing was great - and he radiated charm and a wry sense of humour - he mis-started a blues and morphed into a kind of doo-wop pattern (vanilla chords 1-6-4-5) & apologised for playing doo wop in a club more used to be-bop - someone shouted out go on play some doo-wop & he obliged by playing a doo wop style tune with walking bass, chords, & lead lines - the whole 9 yards...
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Jim Hall called Joe Pass the most complete jazz guitarist ever. Right on the money- there was no aspect of straight ahead jazz that Joe didn't have down. Amazing ears, amazing facility, he didn't play music so much as he radiated it. Plug in "Appassionato Joe Pass" as your search terms on YouTube and listen to Nica's Dream (and all the rest). Awesome in the fullest sense of the word.
Joe basically played five guitars in the majority of his career- the Fender solidbody at Synanon, the ES-175 that Mike Peak bought for him, the D'Aquisto, the Ibanez JP20 that was based on the D'Aquisto and the custom Gibson at last couple of years of his career.
Of all of them it is the Ibanez that sparks the most speculation and discussion. It's such a stunningly crappy sounding guitar so often- thin, biting, trebly. There is a story on the Internet that Joe gave D'Aquisto plans to Ibanez without Jimmy's permission and that this caused quite a rift between them; I have no idea if this is true. It's said that Joe was unhappy with the JP20's sound but Ibanez paid him decent money for years to be seen playing it in public (I think this went on even after that model was no longer in production- he played it for ten years at least). You'd think that for JOE FREAKING PASS that Ibanez would have fixed the problems with the pickup placement and tone and made it a very successful jazz guitar, but once it was in production they did nothing to fix the obvious problem. That is just baffling to me.
For my taste, I think Joe never ever sounded better than with the custom Gibson he was playing at the end. Search for "Joe Pass 1992" on YouTube for some wonderfully recorded clips of Joe with that guitar solo and with NHOP. There's an incredibly lovely "But Not For Me" paired with an unnamed original composition he wrote for his wife (if anyone knows that name of that song and if it appears in any other recordings, I've love to know). Not only is his tone incredibly gorgeous in the early 90s, his playing was so musical with all his technique seeming to be harnessed, no showing off or mindless blowing.
If I could play with a fraction of Joe's ability I would consider myself very blessed indeed.
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The composition he wrote for his wife is called Song for Ellen. You can hear it in the the following recordings: My Song and Songs for Ellen (in this one Joe played an acoustic nylon strings guitar).
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Thanks! I must rectify the lack of those recordings in my collection.
Originally Posted by malanzas
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Joe was the top for me...
Have many of his LPs and play them often...
Have three of his books and many pages of technique and transcriptions...
Sadly missed...
Time on the instrument...
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Cross post but more info on the JP Gibson Custom 175 guitar..
https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/playe...s-youtube.html
EDIT: noticed the maple neck and (rosewood?) bridge.Last edited by SamBooka; 08-21-2014 at 03:23 PM.
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He also used an acoustic guitar made by Roger Borys on one of his LPs with Ella Fitzgerald
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Just want to thank all of you for this about Joe Pass. I admire both Joe and his work greatly.
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You know...all of the controversy about the Ibanez JP20 is mistakenly ascribed to pickup position. The pickup is actually where it should be, vis a vis the pickup placement on the ES-175 and on Pass' D'Aquisto. The problem is actually that Ibanez _added two frets_ gratuitously to the fretboard. Pass didn't even realize this, nor did he use those frets. You can tell this when he wanders up there in his first Hot Licks instructional disk (in 1986 it was actually a videotape). He was surprised to discover that the JP20 went to "D." The extra two frets pushed the relative position of the pickup beyond the node of the 24th fret. D'oh.
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Joe's pictured with the Ibanez on Andre Previn's "After Hours." Is that what he played? He sounds great there.
I think the bad tones Joe recorded with have little to do with his guitar.Last edited by MarkRhodes; 08-28-2014 at 09:16 PM.
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Well, that's possible. Generally he sounds better when playing through an amp than going direct and since he didn't want to travel with an amp in the latter part of his career he was at the mercy of the FOH person. IME most FOH people have no clue what jazz is supposed to sound like- they are used to rock, rap, pop, etc. I remain puzzled by the Virtuoso session in which allegedly the amp broke so they just put a mic in front his ES-175- seriously, the studio didn't have another amp? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I was a recording engineer for awhile on the West Coast and te studio I worked at and others I knew of didn't have amps, the musicians would bring or have their cartage service bring their gear. New York and other place where driving and parking are a nightmare studios and clubs tend to have backline gear. Originally Posted by Cunamara
I heard Joe at the Lighthouse during the time of his Virtuoso albums and his sound even using his Polytone was real bright. I saw him a couple years before he transitioned play a gig with Ron Escheté opening the show, Joe used Ron's amp and it sounded great nice and full. I like Joe early sound like on the Intercontinental album.
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From 1986 to 1990 I was a staff mixer at Group IV 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".Last edited by SierraTango; 08-28-2014 at 07:27 PM.
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I love that record. Such a laid-back, cozy feel. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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ibz could have still put the pickup under the notional 24th fret Originally Posted by Greentone
there would still have been room
with the jp20's 22 frets
I heard joe wanted the extra room there
(he does mostly pick in that general area)
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Bet you are right about that--Joe wanting the space. If you look at his picking style, the 175 is just perfect for him. He would have wanted that space duplicated on the JP20. However, I maintain that Joe Pass was _surprised_ to find the extra frets on the fingerboard. You can see that when he goes up to no man's land (fingerboard extension) in his '86 instructional video and is shocked to find that the last fret is a "D" natural. Pass was accustomed to a 20-fret guitar; the JP20 is a 22-fret guitar. That, plus the spacing of the ES175 between the board and the 'bucker, gives you a weaker, non-nodal bass response.
Does the JP20 sound crappy. Not at all. I was offered one for $900 a few years back--immaculate condition. I had the money. I played the guitar extensively and was very, very pleased. I just had my head up ... The JP20 is a hell of a guitar, IMO. To me, though, the pickup placement sounds a little bit like a middle pickup, not a neck pickup.
The guitar should have been a 20-fret guitar. Word.
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