JOE PASS WAS born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalacqua to Sicilian immigrants in New Jersey on January 13, 1929. He acquired his first guitar at the age of nine after being captivated by country legend Gene Autry’s appearance in the 1940 movie Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride. It wasn’t long before young Joe’s interest became an obsession, and he would practice for two hours before school and two hours after, then devote another four more hours to the instrument after dinner, before going to bed.
His father drove him relentlessly and would ask his young son to work out — on the spot — any tune that happened to be on the radio. He also encouraged him to embellish melodies as he heard them. At the time, Joe didn’t know what improvising was. To him it was “filling up the spaces.”
By the age of 14, Joe was gigging at parties and dances. His father, a steel worker, was astonished that his son was earning more than he could: $5 per night. It was around this time that Joe developed an interestdiscovered the electric guitar pioneer Charlie Christian through his recordings with the King of Swing, Benny Goodman. From there, Joe took influence from a number of burgeoning young jazz guitarists of the 1940s such as Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow and Jimmy Raney. As Joe said, “These guys added another dimension to the instrument.”
