Jim Ohlschmidt Liner NotesThe Genius of Joe Pass, Vestapol 13073
Video, 2001, 1950s
"It would seem that at age 20, [1949] with nearly six years
under his belt, Pass was the classic young turk poised to
take the bebop jazz scene by storm. He no doubt found his
way into some very interesting jam sessions, but he was
all too eager to adopt the hard-drug lifestyle of that
infamous nocturnal fraternity. Within a year Pass was a
junkie with a serious habit.
"Staying high was first priority," he told Rolling Stone
writer Robert Palmer in 1979. "Playing was second, girls
were third. But the first thing really took all my energy."
The next 15 years were the darkest period of his life.
"From about 1949 to the end of 1960, . . . I lived in the cracks," he
told Downbeat. As Palmer wrote in Rolling Stone, Pass'
drug-addled existence during these years "could have been
lifted from the pages of a Jack Kerouac novel." Pass spent
a year in New Orleans, where he lived in a "crash pad"
with several other musicians and author William Burroughs.
"In New Orleans I had a kind of nervous breakdown because
I had access to every kind of drug there and was up for
days," he told Palmer. "I would always hock my guitar."
After New Orleans, Pass hit the road and kept moving,
working an endless string of nightclubs in Las Vegas, Peoria,
Chicago and Fort Worth, Texas, where he was busted for
dope and jailed for five years. Lee Underwood wrote in
Downbeat that when Pass was released, he resumed his
habit and soon was, in Pass' own words, "out on the street
and not playing a note."