Success Isn’t Everything to Jazz Guitar Legend Joe Pass

Joe Pass is a fun guy to talk to because the legendary jazz guitarist doesn’t take himself too seriously. So once the obligatory questions about his latest guitar (a Gibson), new album (Christmas songs), recent touring experiences (in Europe), and theories on practicing (he doesn’t) have run their course, conversation turns to what he does in his spare time.

“I eat, I read--the Bible, current novels, Gay Talese’s new book about how he grew up in New Jersey in an Italian family, sometimes Elmore Leonard or Larry McMurtry,” said Pass, who opened a three-night solo run at the Horton Grand Hotel downtown Thursday.

“I never used to read mysteries until someone gave me Elmore Leonard. I said, ‘This is kind of fun,’ because I never read Mickey Spillane. For a long time, I didn’t even read fiction. I tried to read all the philosophers, but I got stuck a third of the way through on the second page of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Then I went through a period of reading all those books, ‘The True Story of . . . Elvis, the Beatles, Frank Sinatra,’ all that baloney, then I got tired of that.”

Pass, who lives in Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley with his wife, is revered among musicians, critics and fans for subtle elaborations of chord changes, clearly articulated single-note strings of improvised melody and an intuitive emotional feel for the nuances of a song.

He thrives on his music, but it’s not the all-consuming passion it is with some players.

He hates recording, but accepts it as a necessary evil of having a career.

“It helps you get some exposure, helps you get some work, but I’m not trying to make history, not trying to be the best guitar player in the world,” said Pass, who estimates he has played on 50 to 70 recordings including roughly 20 of his own.

“I like live recordings, where you’re not in the studio so there’s no red light, but even that I don’t like too much, because you’re always aware you’re recording, and it’s always a tense time, at least for me.”

And Pass is no workaholic. He doesn’t bring his work home with him.

“I didn’t build a studio in my garage,” he said. “I have minimal equipment, I don’t have state-of-the-art speakers, that stuff, I never did get into it.

“I practice very little; it’s not that I don’t have to, just that I’m lazy, basically, and I do a lot of playing when I’m playing solo.

“I know a lot of fellows that practice. If you get into that, it’s great, it’s like jogging or drinking juice. I practiced when I was a kid, four, five, six hours a day, then drifted away when I started playing (professionally). I always intend to practice, and I start for day or two, then I stop and read the newspaper or Time magazine, lay on the couch.”

Yet amazing sounds flow from this self-described couch potato, whose 1974 release, “Virtuoso,” a collection of solo guitar pieces, marked his arrival as a complete jazz guitarist.

Pass, who says he only likes a small percentage of the music he has recorded, rates “Virtuoso” as one of his best albums, along with the 1989 “Summer Nights.” He believes these recordings best capture the spontaneity of live playing, though both were studio sessions.

On “Virtuoso,” Pass wrung fresh emotional and musical nuances out of such time-tested songs as “Stella By Starlight” and “Cherokee.”

Using a combination of flat- and finger-picking, Pass broke down the songs and rebuilt them, with signature melodies subtly embedded in one-man symphonic treatments that included complex improvised chordal transitions, thumb-plucked bass lines, and speedy flat-picked strings of single notes he embroidered around the melodies.

Since then, Pass has pushed steadily toward what he believes is even a more pure style, if that is possible from a man already regarded by many as the heavyweight champ of straight-ahead jazz guitar.

Pass, 63, has almost entirely given up picks. Using only his fingers, he gets a fuller, rounder sound.

“Playing with your fingers is much better for solo guitar,” he explained. “You can get counterpoint, add bass lines. I decided to sacrifice playing fast with a pick to play music with my fingers.”

Pass was born in New Brunswick, N.J., and raised in Johnstown, Pa., where he started lessons at age 9 on a $17 guitar. By the late 1940s, he was working jazz clubs in New York City, but his career sputtered when he got involved with drugs. He moved through several cities during the 1950s and ‘60s, including Chicago, New Orleans, Las Vegas and Casper, Wyo., where, Pass reports, there was actually a thriving music scene supported by gambling casinos.

In 1961, Pass entered Synanon Foundation in Santa Monica and got himself straightened out, and the 1962 “Sounds of Synanon” was his first release. Pass says Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt was an early influence, but horn players, including Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker, were equally important to the development of Pass’ singing, fluid approach.

The guitarist, who originally came to Los Angeles in 1960 because of opportunities for studio work, has also mostly given up working on recording projects other than his own.

In his peak studio years between about 1966 and 1969, he backed singers including Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Joe Williams and appeared with house bands on television programs hosted by Pearl Bailey, Leslie Uggams and Donald O’Connor, among others.

Pass concentrates now on his own music. Due next year are a solo release and a group effort with his regular band: guitarist John Pisano, bassist Jim Hughart and drummer Colin Bailey.

The new collection of Christmas songs, “Six String Santa” (on the Laserlight label) was not Pass’ idea. The label asked him to do it, and while he didn’t take the project too seriously, he did get in the spirit of the season.

“They suggested some songs, I chose some, ‘Winter Wonderland,’ ‘Let It Snow.’ I made a medley out of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,’ ‘Angels We Have Heard on High’ and ‘Joy to the World.’ ”

Pass is a refreshing musician who doesn’t wear his musical prowess like a chrome badge to be regularly polished with a flourish of knuckles.

“I’ve been told I should do this or that, get a publicist, make a hit record, get my name on the charts or in the papers, but I never did any of that, I’m not business conscious or ambitious in that way.”

But Pass is thankful for natural talents.

“I think it’s a gift from God that I play the guitar. I don’t know how I got started, no one played anything in my family, there were no musicians. I’ve just been playing over 50 years off and on, and I never thought about making a career of it.”

* Pass plays tonight and Saturday at the Horton Grand Hotel, starting at 8:30. There’s a $10 cover charge.