Customer Reviews

Live at Yoshi's

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Joe Pass was a legendary virtuoso on the guitar. He was among the top jazz players. Even the legends, such as Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall, and even Django.

This, fairly modern, release of Pass and his usual sideman of the time (John Pisano-guitar, Monty Budwig-bass, Colin Bailey-drums) captures Pass and his cohorts swinging at a small club called Yoshi's. This is the first of two appearences, on different nights at the jazz club.

There was a lot of magic that night recorded at the club. Drummer Colin Bailey is on fire! And so is Pass. The CD starts off with Newk's, aka Sonny Rollins's Doxy; a jazz standard. Some nice solos delivered by Pass.

Throughout the album, Pass and his men go through the tunes with ease and grace. They treat many of these jazz classics well. Pass's guitar souonds great!

John Pisano is on rhythm guitar. It's not often you have two guitars; one playing lead and one playing rhythm, in a jazz setting, but the two do it hear like it has been a part of jazz for years!

If you like jazz guitar, or just good jazz, you cant go wrong here. The sound is good, it's modern, and it's jazz! What more could you ask for!!!

There's some really tasty tracks on this but the quality is not consistent throughout. On a number of tracks Joe's playing is a bit sloppy and indistinct. The tracks that live up to his deserved stellar reputation are the ones that spread the creative task across the ensemble. On these, his solo work has more energy and spark and more clarity. This is less the case on tunes where his solo work dominates. A worthwhile addition to any jazz collection, but especially to Joe Pass fans.

"John Pisano is on rhythm guitar. It's not often you have two guitars; one playing lead and one playing rhythm, in a jazz setting, but the two do it hear like it has been a part of jazz for years!"

This what one of the reviewers says about the two guitars, bass & drums. Man you are dead wrong. This is one of the favorite formats for guitar recording these days. What about the Concord festival with Joe Pass, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown (B) & Jake Hanna (D). I also have one with Cal Collins & Herb Ellis & Herb Ellis in the same format. If I wanted to go throughy my collection, I could find at least a few more. Like Miles Davis once said about improvisation, "If you got nuttin' to say, don't say nuttin'"

OK, let's talk about the music. You have Joe Pass (G) John Pisano (acoustic & electric G.) Monty Budwig (B) & Colin Bailey (D). I'm not going to talk about the tunes themselves except that I like Joe much better in a combo setting than on his "Vituoso" recordings which I find very boring after a few tunes. He had wonderful technique, etc. but the music gets a bit tedious. You'll recognize almost every tune because they are standards. I'll mention a few: "Doxy" by Sonny Rollins, "I Thought About You," "Alone Together," "Oleo" also written by Rollins, "The Song is you" etc. Joe is undoubtably the star of this show, but give a lot of credit to John Pisano, also on guitar & some great solo work by Monty Budwig on bass.