Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua, January 13, 1929 – May 23, 1994) was an Italian-American jazz guitarist of Sicilian descent. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest jazz guitarists of the 20th century. His extensive use of walking basslines, melodic counterpoint during improvisation, use of a chord-melody style of play and outstanding knowledge of chord inversions and progressions opened up new possibilities for jazz guitar and had a profound influence on future guitarists.
Read more about Joe Pass: Early Life, Discovery and Subsequent Career, Legacy, Selected Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or pass:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“The fox, he felt, had never seen his past disposed of like a fall of water. He had never measured off his day in moments: another—another—another. But now, thrown down so deeply in himself, into the darkness of the well, surprised by pain and hunger, might he not revert to an earlier condition, regain capacities which formerly were useless to him, pass from animal to Henry, become human in his prison, X his days, count, wait, listen for another—another—another—another?”
—William Gass (b. 1924)