What would Wes Montgomery have thought of Joe Pass?

[joe2758]

Oh guys who are better at the time line stuff, Jonah reminded me, my original question was what would Wes have thought of the solo stuff; did Wes die before the whole solo gig really started?

[wintermoon]

I think Joe's first Virtuoso lp on Pablo was around '73, so yes, Wes was already gone for 5 yrs @ the time...

[Greentone]

Joe Pass hit the NY scene in the 50s. He was a fully formed player, at that point. His habit was so bad that he dropped out of the biz. He recorded albums in the early 60s, sporadically--again, his habit was pretty awful. (Apparently, some of the rock guys in the 60s/70s were rich enough to afford heroin and be sorta functional, e.g., Clapton. The jazz scene, however, was so marginal that only a guy like Miles would have been able to afford a habit and live comfortably. Everybody else would be/was scuffling.) After Pass cleaned up, mid-60s, his career took off. He became a Norman Granz artist. Granz took care of his people.

My bet is that Wes Montgomery heard of Pass in the late-50s/early-60s. By the mid-to-late-60s they would have been jazz guitarists both ensconced on the music pyramid--Wes at the top, Joe Pass somewhere in the middle. Wes would have known who Pass was...even if the Virtuoso series came out much later, after Montgomery's death.