Jim Ohlschmidt Liner Notes The Genius of Joe Pass, Vestapol 13073 Video, 2001, 1970s
". . . By 1970, Pass was living comfortably in Southern California, he was married, and had started a family . . . The Pacific Jazz label was defunct, and although sessions that year with a group of progressive L.A. jazz musicians including electric bassist Carol Kaye, saxophonist Tom Scott and pianist Joe Sample (reissued on a Hot Wire CD ironically titled Better Days) showed that Pass tried to adapt his well-informed and carefully built technique to the new scene, his heart just wasn't in it.
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". . . Norman Granz, founder of Verve records and jazz impresario behind the highly acclaimed "Jazz at the Philharmonic" records and concert tours, had formed a new label called Pablo, with world-wide distribution through RCA. Although Pass was still unknown to most of the jazz world beyond Los Angeles, Granz . . . recorded him in a live set with pianist Oscar Peterson and bassist Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen at Chicago's London House in May of 1973. "The Trio" album was a huge success for Pablo and won a Grammy award the next year . . .
"As a result, Pass' reputation skyrocketed throughout the country and across the Atlantic, and his name began appearing near the top of reader polls in Downbeat, Guitar Player, and Melody Maker. In November and December of 1973, Pass spent several days at MGM recording tracks for the most important Pablo album of his career, Virtuoso. As Lee Underwood wrote in Downbeat: "Virtuoso startled everybody: one man, one guitar, complex tunes, and a display of technique that raised the short hairs on the back of the neck." Released in 1974, the aptly titled Virtuoso album . . .
". . . Richard Cook and Brian Morton wrote in The Penguin Guide to Jazz, "Pass smoothes away the nervousness of bop yet counters the plain talk of swing with a complexity that remains completely accessible."
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"In 1994, Pass told Acoustic Guitar magazine editor Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers that playing guitar with your fingers instead of a pick was "the best and only way to play your guitar, because you're actually in touch with the instrument; you actually feel it, like a horn player feels a horn in his mouth." In addition to developing an impeccable technique, Pass adopted an a Zen-like attitude toward mentally articulating the music while he played. As he told Downbeat: "You have to eliminate your own consciousness, because once you begin thinking about what you're doing, you're not allowing the music to take on its own shape and form and momentum. You're trying to direct the music. The idea is to get away from directing the music, and just allow it to flow out by itself. Sometimes I'm on the stand and I feel pretty good, and the music just starts coming out. When it's like that, I'm not making the music go places; it just goes. I don't play the same tune the same way twice . . . I never know where I'm gonna start, or where I'm gonna end."