If you search the web for information about a 1967 album on the World Pacific label by jazz guitar great, Joe Pass – The Stones Jazz – you will generally see uniform agreement that this album was recorded on July 20, 1966. I love that: one day to record an entire album. Around this same time period, The Beatles had just finished recording an album – Revolver – that had taken 77 times longer than The Stones Jazz to record.
On the back cover there are ten Stones songs listed – all but one of them from their fertile 1965-1966 period:
- “Lady Jane“
- “I Am Waiting“
- “19th Nervous Breakdown“
- “Not Fade Away“
- “As Tears Go By“
- “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction“
- “Play With Fire“
- “Paint It, Black“
- “What a Shame“
- “Mother’s Little Helper“
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Mysteriously, the eleventh song is not even mentioned, even though it’s the best song on the album — and the only Joe Pass original, “Stones Jazz“:
“Stones Jazz“
Joe Pass (1966)
It’s nice to see four trombone players listed on the album credits with tenor sax being the only other member of the horn section.
LP Musician & Production Credits
Joe Pass: Guitar
Dennis Budimir: Guitar
John Pisano: Guitar
Ray Brown: Bass
John Guerin: Drums
Victor Feldman: Percussion
Bob Florence: Piano
Bill Perkins: Tenor Sax
Milt Bernhardt: Trombone
Dick Hamilton: Trombone
Herbie Harper: Trombone
Gale Martin: Trombone
Arranger & conductor: Bob Florence
Engineer: Bruce Botnick
Producer: Richard Bock
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Back cover liner notes
“England swings like a pendulum do,” sang Roger Miller.
Indeed it do.
And so do many of the songs written by that country’s longhaired practitioners of popular music.
One would have to be a communications-less hermit not to recognize the impact the Messrs. Lennon and McCartney, for example, have had on the entire American popular music structure. Everyone from Lawrence Welk to Arthur Fiedler to Ella Fitzgerald have recorded at least one Beatle tune.
And now, guitarist Joe Pass, with the expert assistance of arranger Bob Florence, moves into some newer territory as he ingeniously digs into tunes made popular by The Rolling Stones. The material is surprisingly apt and makes one realize how much listening the Stones have done to American blues singers.
Along with the Pass-Florence combination, which scored so successfully on Joe’s last World Pacific album, A Sign Of The Times, Florence used voices back of Joe. Here he provides a four-trombone choir that makes for a gutsier, more-jazz feel. Bob’s abilities as an arranger who can weld all facets of today’s varied music into real form continues to amaze. He is the bridge between pop music and jazz.
And unlike the bridge that people play with cards, if you pick up this album and say Pass, you have a winning hand.
– Jack Tracy
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World Pacific would issue one 45 from Stones Jazz.
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LINK to Jazz
LINK to Horn Instrumentals
LINK to Piano Instrumentals
LINK to Guitar Instrumentals
