JAZZ REVIEW : Joe Pass: Guitar-Playing as High Art

You don’t have to be a jazz fan--just a fan of great music (and great fun, for that matter)--to fully appreciate the wizardry of Joe Pass.

The guitarist, who lives part time in Woodland Hills and part time in Hamburg, Germany, is the genuine article, a musician with such enormous gifts that he turns everything he plays--including his mistakes--into high art.

Opening a three-night run Thursday at the Vine St. Bar & Grill, the slight, exuberant Pass, 64, worked unaccompanied, his Gibson open-holed guitar perched on his right thigh, his eyes mostly closed, his head and body swaying as he played.

A Pass treatment of such classic pop songs as “My Shining Hour,” “Darn That Dream” or “You Must Remember Spring” would usually embrace the number’s original melody throughout. Those sometimes brief fragments of melody were deftly interwoven into an elegant fabric that was rich with colorful, intimate details, the kind of delightful phrases that distinguish ‘50s and ‘60s modern jazz from the art’s earlier varieties.

In the course of a selection, the guitarist with the wondrous tone would shift suddenly from dusky, silvery chords to dashing, gleaming single-note lines--as if the sun had just come out on a cloudy day--would send bass lines rocketing in from nowhere, would tap his foot a la a drummer.

The performance overflowed with highlights. “Darn” and “You Must” resulted in exquisitely tender moments; John Lewis’ “Django” was done almost like a concerto, rangy from soft, touching tones to bluesy essences; and “Cherokee” was played so fast, the notes seemed to dart off the strings the way cars blur when a film of a freeway is shown at high speed.

Pass instilled his show with lots of humor, delivering wry comments between numbers. At one point, he wondered aloud what to play next, and the audience shouted requests. “This isn’t a wedding!” he cracked.