Revisiting Old Gems: Joe Pass at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1975 (Pablo Records)

Pablo Records 2310-752

Joe Pass at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1975

Joe Pass, guitar

Recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival July 17 & 18, 1975

Produced by Normal Granz

Liner notes by Benny Green

Many records have come and gone through my collection over the years, but this live solo album from American jazz guitarist Joe Pass (1929-1994) has been with me since nearly the start. It's one of the earliest records I purchased when I began collecting in 2001; I can still remember finding it for about $5 at Joe's Record Paradise in Silver Spring, Maryland. It's survived my audio nervosa over the years, and regardless of my turntable/cartridge/amp/speaker combination, listening to it has always brought me joy. It's one of the albums that reminds me of those exciting early days of collecting vinyl and the fun, freedom, and exploration I associate with that time in my life.

The 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival featured quite an all-star set list:  Jazz at the Philharmonic, Benny Carter and his orchestra, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, Milt Jackson, Joe Pass, The Trumpet Kings (Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, and Clark Terry), Bill Evans, Andrew Hill, Archie Shepp, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Shirley Scott, Toots Thielemans, and Charles Mingus, just to name a few. Pablo Records, the jazz record label founded in 1973 by Norman Granz, released recordings of several of these sets, including the two solo sets from Joe Pass on the evenings of July 17th and 18th, 1975. 

As an amateur jazz musician, I will say that the thought of performing a solo jazz recital in front of a large, attentive audience can be somewhat terrifying. You are totally alone, with no one else to provide you with rhythmic or harmonic support, your musical ideas completely exposed and vulnerable. Yet there are truly gifted musicians such as Joe Pass who can transform this experience into a channel for intimate personal expression and an opportunity for musical excellence.

The moment you drop the needle on side one and hear the audience applause fading into silence and giving way to the opening notes of Stevie Wonder's You Are the Sunshine of My Life, you are instantly transported to a front row, center aisle seat. Pass is right there before you, and it sounds like he is performing just for you in the comfort of your listening room. The sound of the guitar, which is closely miked, is warm, intimate, and well-articulated. It'd be hard to tell that Pass was playing in a large theatre if it were not for the enthusiastic applause between tunes and the one-time occasion on side two, track two when it sounds like someone is walking on some reverberant metal surface. Pass starts many of his tunes by playing the original melody (colloquially known as the "head") out of time, a common musical device for setting up a solo jazz improvisation, and then so masterfully transitions into a steady rhythmic beat for improvising over the chord changes. On the recording, you can hear him tap out time with his heel. No matter the tempo, Pass can play with such an incredible sense of swing. It's mesmerizing.

Here is a clip on Youtube of Pass playing The Very Thought of You from this very set: 

Starting this year, Analogue Productions has begun to release its series of audiophile reissues of the Pablo catalog. It'll be interesting to see if they decide to reissue this Pass album. It's a real keeper for me.