STRANGE ENCOUNTERS

WITH MY GUITAR HEROES - Pt 3

Howard Roberts, Joe Pass, Ralph Towner, The ‘A’ team

JOE PASS

In my youth, I was part of a cadre of guitar teachers attached to a small music store. We were ambitious, reasonably talented and quite full of ourselves - an untenable position which got corrected almost immediately.

In any event, three of us decided to strike out on our own and start our own teaching studio. Shortly after its formation, my two partners thought it would be a fine idea to turn it into a full fledged music store - not a good choice for yours truly - a guy who thought ‘wholesale‘ meant a good deal when you bought the whole chicken. The result was a joint called ‘Iron Music‘ - a successful place that lasted for some time and eventually went into making instruments - Odyssey guitars.

My old partners, Ken Lindemere and Bob Gribling, had the bright idea of bringing in a well known jazz guitarist to do a clinic at the store, along with a concert at a local jazz club. They were lucky enough to get Joe Pass.

The event was a huge success. Shortly afterwards, Ken and I decided to take a trip down to Los Angeles to hear some music and, at the same time, visit Joe at his home in the valley. I was excited, partially because I knew we had an ace in the hole that would make us welcome visitors.

You see, Joe smoked cigars, and there was a ban on goods coming into the U.S. from Cuba at the time. There was no such ban in Canada, so Ken cleverly smuggled a box of Cubans into the country, and we were in like Flint.

The next thing we knew, there we were - two Canadian guitar playing chumps hanging at Joe Pass’ house. Joe was in the middle of recording his solo ‘Virtuoso’ series, and he was dragging out the D'Aquisto archtop he had used for the sessions - sessions that used a microphone on many of the tracks to capture the acoustic sound of the guitar. He handed it to me.

It was slimmer than I anticipated, but the sound fairly sprang off that carved archtop. I could see why he wanted to record it acoustically.

“Are you mostly playing this these days?” I asked.

“Not so much,” he replied, “I still like my old Gibson.”

He grabbed that famous old Gibson ES 175 off the guitar stand, turned to me and said,

“You wanna play a tune?”

“Sure,” I replied. I was scared to death.

“Some Day My Prince Will Come?”

“You bet.”

It was a great afternoon. We walked out of there with our heads in the clouds.

Joe was a kind, patient and humble man. He was also one of the best Jazz guitarists on earth.

THE ‘A’ TEAM

During the late 70’s I found myself spending a fair bit of time in L.A. I often stayed at a little motel on Ventura Blvd., in North Hollywood - right in the middle of the activity that was currently taking place in the studios, the clubs and in Laurel Canyon. It was an exciting time.

After one of my visits with Bob Grebb at Playback. he suggested I head over to the union hall to see a rehearsal of Tony Rizzi’s guitar group - a group that had, as its core, five electric guitars. A band called ’Supersax’ was currently taking the jazz world by storm. It took the solos of famous alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, and harmonized them for five parts. It was blistering.

Anyway, Rizzi thought the same could be done for guitar, featuring the solos of early guitar legend Charlie Christian. And sure enough …

I showed up at the rehearsal hall muttering, ‘Bob sent me,’ and they ushered me in. And there they were - five of the top studio/jazz guitar players in the city - to the best of my memory, Mitch Holder, Barry Zweig, Lee Ritenour, Jimmy Wyble and Tony Rizzi. And there were, from all accounts, fifteen more of the same caliber available to sub at a moment’s notice. Welcome to L.A.

The sound of five guitars playing the harmonized parts of Charlie Christian’s solos was stunning.

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