![]() ![]() He was not the first or only solo guitarist by any stretch, but his achievements in the idiom stand apart. ![]() In guitar parlance it’s the chord-melody approach: You play the melody but also chords at the same time-basslines, too, if you can-and pretty soon, in the hands of a master, the guitar sounds like a 15-piece big band, or perhaps the most whisperingly intimate thing ever. With a rich, woody acoustic tone, Pass takes ownership of some of the greatest standards in the jazz canon, remaking them into beautifully free but deeply coherent mini-symphonies, one after another, with the casual vibe of someone reading a book at the beach. Recorded in one sitting in late August 1973, the wholly unaccompanied Virtuoso was the first of four solo guitar outings in a series for Norman Granz’s Pablo label-Pass’ home base for the bulk of his recording career. “I’m not trying to be the best guitar player in the world,” Joe Pass once told an interviewer, which leads one to wonder just what we’re hearing on Virtuoso if not the best guitar player in the world. ![]()
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