Joe Pass

This set of duets with guitarist Joe Pass finds Ella Fitzgerald near the end of her career. Her voice mostly hinted at her former greatness and the setting was perhaps too intimate for what she had left. Fitzgerald's phrasing remained a joy despite the limited range, but there are many more significant records by the singer than this CD despite touching versions of "Comes Love," "There's No You" and "Gone with the Wind."

This follow-up to Joe’s best-selling Solo Jazz Guitar explores the blues elements of jazz guitar. Joe covers bebop blues, new chord substitutions, pedal tones, jazz/blues improvisation…and much more. As usual, Joe brings wit and style to his invaluable guitar lessons, taking you straight to the heart of the 'blue' side of jazz guitar.

Gumina on these two albums (Sentimental Moods (1987) and Autumn Leaves (1991)) played an instrument called the polycorus, which he designed and built. It's similar to an accordion but allowed him to provide a bass line and notes and chords that sound as if they're emanating from an organ. The polycorus also gave Pass a thick reedy background to swing on. All of the musicians are superb, with solos flying like a flurry of perfectly tossed darts. The harmonies are wonderful in the trio setting and only become more colorful and exciting when Buddy De Franco joins in on the second album. The beauty of Pass, Gumina, Smith and Buddy is that they fully appreciated how to maximize harmony and swing. Just doin' what sounds great. What a combination.

The word "chops" is a major understatement when describing the talents of guitarist Joe Pass and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. Their duo Pablo date is as exciting and full of inventive interplay as one would hope. Pass and Pedersen play an ad-lib blues, nine jazz standards including a three-quarters version of "Lover Man," plus "Oleo," "Quiet Nights," "Tricrotism," and "Yardbird Suite." Pass in particular sounds stimulated during this session and comes up with some of his hottest playing.

Here is a second brace of solo Pass tracks from the sessions that have already yielded Songs for Ellen. The ambience is ruminative and extremely intimate; the menu consists entirely of much-explored standards at mostly unrelieved slow tempos. Several notes are not cleanly struck, but the musical imagination that previously yielded several solo recordings is still very much in gear, albeit a very subtle gear. A general bit of advice: it is better to listen to this album in small doses (a few tracks at a time), try to mentally filter out the very closely recorded mechanical noises the fingers make on the guitar, and not expect anything startling to leap out at you. Better yet, try some of Pass' earlier solo albums (such as the Virtuoso series, also on Pablo) before embarking upon this.

For this live date, Pass explores seven standards and a couple of original blues, but manages to find fresh variations to play.