Joe Pass

"Staying high was my first priority; playing was second; girls were third. But the first thing really took all my energy."

"There are a lot of ways to do a solo album. One way is to take a tune and work it out, decide on changes, intro, and ending, modulations, tempos – work it out, and go in and do it. What I did, though, was just go in, and somebody would say 'Why don't you play How High The Moon?' I'd say 'Yeah, that might be nice.' I had no tempo in mind, no key, necessarily. I just tried to make it from beginning to end. I found myself getting into traps and having to get out of them."

"Joe Pass did the near-impossible. He was able to play up-tempo versions of bop tunes such as "Cherokee" and "How High the Moon" unaccompanied on the guitar. Unlike Stanley Jordan, Pass used conventional (but superb) technique, and his Virtuoso series on Pablo still sounds remarkable decades later."

"You don't often see a musician that is able to play jazz. And even less often do you stumble upon a guitar player that's as nearly as good as Joe Pass was. And what made him so unique and great was his chord-melody style playing combined with fingerpicking and impeccable improvisational skills. Joe didn't really need a whole band as he often performed solo or in duo and trio formations."