Pass, Joe (originally, Passalaqua, Joseph Anthony Jacobi)

Pass, Joe (originally, Passalaqua, Joseph Anthony Jacobi), famed jazz guitarist; b. New Brunswick, N.J., Jan. 13, 1929; d. Los Angeles, Calif., May 23, 1994. He took up the guitar as a schoolboy, cutting short his education to pursue a career in music; he played guitar in Tony Pastor’s band while still in his teens. Unfortunately, he succumbed to drug addiction, was caught, and sentenced to prison; after spending years in halfway houses and hospitals, he was placed at the famous Synanon Foundation clinic in Santa Monica, Calif., where he was finally cured. As a souvenir of this confinement, he recorded a jazz album with his fellow inmates, Sounds of Synanon (1962). He recorded and toured in the 1960s with George Shearing, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, and others, but became better known with his first solo album, Virtuoso (1973). He went on to several successful collaborations with Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Herb Ellis, and released several more solo recordings in addition to extensive live performing as a solo artist. Pass remained active on tour and record from the 1970s through the early 1990s. He worked in a duo with classical guitarist Elliot Fisk, and they were about to record when Pass died.

Discography

Sound of Synanon (1962); Complete Catch Me! Sessions (1963); Joy Spring (1964); For Django (1964); Virtuoso, Vol. 4 (1973); Virtuoso, Vol. 1 (1973); Two for the Road (1974); At Akron Univ. (1974); Montreux 75 (1975); Virtuoso, Vol.2 (1976); Virtuoso, Vol.3 (1977); Montreux 77: Live! (1977); Chops (1978); Northsea Nights (1979); Checkmate (1981); We’ll Be Together Again (1984); Live at Long Bay Beach Coll (1984); Univ. of Akron Concert (1985); Virtuoso: Live! (1991); Live at Yoshi’s (1992); My Song (1993); Finally: Live in Stockholm (1993); Roy Clark & J.P. Play (1994).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Lewis Porter