999,881: Joe Pass — 'Round Midnight

Joe Pass called the 1974 album from which this track is taken Virtuoso. Man, that's bold. After all, Frank Lloyd's masterpiece is called "Falling Water," not "Awesomest House." Beethoven called his Ninth Symphony "Choral," not "All Out Balls To The Wall". Calling your album Virtuoso is writing a check that your ass will have a great deal of difficulty cashing.

But what makes a virtuoso? If my late 90s Guitar Player Magazine back issues are to be believed, you can't throw a rock in Scandinavia without hitting a Satan worshipper who can lay a lightning fast cascades of notes over a metal track. These are the dudes you think of when someone says "guitar virtuoso", but that's missing the point. Sure those guys can play fast, but few if any of them can produce something non-meatalheaded guitarists will enjoy listening too, especially if the Scandinavian is playing without the support of backing musicians, and most especially after I have just hit him with a rock. In my mind, this disqualifies these guys from true virtuosity. Why play all those notes if no one wants to hear them?

Pass is different. He shapes this achingly beautiful standard like he's sculpting with water, playing melody, harmony, and suggesting a rhythm all by himself, with each note gone the second he plays it. Having a limited number of hands, he can only do one or two of these things at a time, but he does what he does in a way that suggests a unified, three dimensional whole, rather than just a stream of notes played at an ever increasing velocity.

This album is appropriately titled not because of the number of notes it contains (although there are a lot of those buggers), but because he plays almost all of those notes in the perfect order and in the perfect way.

'Round Midnight - Joe Pass