Joe Pass Solo Album Remastered

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Concord Music)

Recently I learned about the remastering of Virtuoso, a solo guitar album of twelve performances by jazz guitarist Joe Pass. Usually, I give a pass (pun intended) to old albums that have been retooled for new technology; but Pass was an extraordinarily talented guitarist whose performances definitely lived up to the title of that album. Since this new release now has a Web page on Amazon.com, I found it difficult to refrain from offering up my impressions.

Only one of the tracks is a Pass original, “Blues for Alican.” Taken on its own, this track lives up to the album’s name. Anyone skeptical of my enthusiasm would do well to consult the YouTube Web page, which not only provides a transcription of the music but also “parses” it into nine sections. It would not surprise me to learn that an enthusiastic musicologist may have written a doctoral dissertation about this composition! The remaining tracks cover a wide breadth of music of the first half of the twentieth century, with “Sweet Lorraine” (1928) at one end and Thelonious Monk’s “'Round Midnight” (1944) at the other.

This is one of those albums for which the attentive listener is likely to discover something new every times (s)he listens to it.