Remembering Pat Martino

The late great jazz guitar hero would've turned 81 this week

The narrative arc of the Pat Martino story is epic and compelling, the stuff of legend and Hollywood movies. It’s the story of a small, skinny son of a Sicilian laborer in South Philadelphia (family name Azzara) who

becomes a guitar prodigy and makes it to the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour TV show with his rockin’ combo at age 12.

He then heads out on the road at age 15 as the only white musician in the 18-piece Lloyd Price Orchestra whose ranks included such elder jazzmen as Jimmy Heath, Slide Hampton, Curtis Fuller, brothers Stanley and Tommy Turrentine, Red Holloway and Charli Persip. There follows important apprenticeships with bandleaders like Willis “Gator Tail” Jackson and Jack McDuff in Harlem.

By 1967, he joins the forward-thinking alto saxophonist John Handy during the Summer of Love and that same year cut his own first record as a leader, El Hombre,

at age of 22.

And while his early 1968 release East! implies a bit of mystique in the title and its depiction of Buddha on the cover, the program is steeped in hard bop with the occasional foray into more modernist modal territory, particularly his swinging takes on the standard "Close Your Eyes" and John Coltrane's "Lazybird."

Martino’s next recording represented a distinct stylist break from his previous outings as a leader. From the long-winded and cryptic title alone — Baiyana (The Clear Evidence): A Psychedelic Excursion Through the Magical Mysteries of the Koran — it was obvious that Pat was courting a very different muse on this late 1968 release; one more informed by Ravi Shankar and Owsley Stanley than Jack McDuff and Willis “Gator Tail” Jackson. From the mind-blowing cover art to the provocative music within (two guitarists executing intricate lines over tablas and tamboura drone, nearly four years before Miles Davis ventured into this Indo-jazz territory on 1972’s On the Corner), Baiyana is a daring stretch by a serious artist in transition.

It was the 1974 Muse album, Consciousness, that first pulled me into Pat’s orbit. I was 19 that summer and back then spent a lot of my free time perusing the bins at Radio Doctor’s record shop in downtown Milwaukee, always on the lookout for new jazz guitar albums. I was coming out of a rock phase of worshippping guitar heroes like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Johnny Winter and Frank Zappa and was gradually beginning to embrace jazz through Charlie Christian and his direct line of disciples incuding Herb Ellis, Barney Kessel and Tiny Grimes. Hearing Joe Pass on Oscar Peterson’s 1973 album The Trio (with bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen) was a major revelation, as was his solo guitar album that came out later that year, Virtuoso. I was primed for someone like Pat Martino to come along. So when I spotted Consciousness in the bins, with its striking black-and-white photograph of Pat sitting cross-legged on what appeared to be a lily pad, staring directly back at me with an intense Rasputin-like gaze, I was absolutely transfixed. I took that album home, dropped the needle on the first track — his blazing rendition of John Coltrane’s modal launching pad, “Impressions” — and was instantly blown away. And I’ve been a Pat Martino devotee ever since.

My path finally crossed with Pat’s during the Fall of 1977. Earlier that year, he come out with Joyous Lake, which fed right into my fusion inclinations (I had been heavily into the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report and Return to Forever by then). And the depiction of the 58th hexagram of the I Ching hovering over his head on the album cover further fueled my curiosity about this mystical six-string guru.

Determined to see him perform, I drove to Madison, Wisconsin’s capital city about 90 minutes away from Milwaukee, with hopes of catching him with his powerhouse Joyous Lake group. Instead, Pat was appearing at an intimate restaurant/club in a duo setting with fellow Philadelphian Bobby Rose (his guitar partner on Baiyana). They were playing a burning rendition of Wes Montgomery’s “Four on Six” as I entered the place, and things continued to swing in that intensely driving manner throughout the night, with Pat’s unparalleled facility, impeccable articulation and inventive lines sending chills down my spine.

I approached Pat after that jaw-dropping set and found him to be approachable and affable, unlike the imposing mystic I had imagined him to be. We chatted and he invited me back to his hotel room to continue the conversation. What followed there was a rather freewheeling, esoteric and borderline spacey rap that lasted into the wee hours, with Pat touching on aspects of guitar as it related to sacred geometry, waves on the ocean, 12-pointed stars and the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching. He espoused such proclamations as “Music is food; the guitar is merely a fork” that went way over my head at the time. But I left that encounter inspired and determined to elevate my own game as a novice guitar player.

I had numerous other encounters with Pat since moving to New York in 1980, the year that he suffered a potentially career-ending brain aneurysm. And I watched him make his heroic comeback, first in a low-profile, feeling-it-out gig he played in Cape May during the summer of 1984 under his real name, Pat Azzara, then at a performance in October of that year at the Bottom Line, opening for fellow Philadelphian Stanley Clarke (a night made all the more memorable by the fact that Jaco Pastorius sat in on Stanley’s set).

I caught Pat at a weekend engagement with bassist Steve LaSpina and drummer Joey Baron in February 1987 at Fat Tuesdays, which was recorded that night and later released in 1989 by Muse Records as The Return. I later did liner notes for his 1994 Muse release Interchange. And then in 1996, I was given the opportunity by Blue Note president Bruce Lundvall to produce Pat’s first album for the label, All Sides Now, an all-star outing that included guest appearances by guitarists Mike Stern, Kevin Eubanks, Michael Hedges, Charlie Hunter, Joe Satriani, Tuck Andress and Pat’s own personal hero, Les Paul. Vocalist Cassandra Wilson also appeared on an intimate duet version of “Both Sides Now,” the Joni Mitchell tune that Pat had recorded as a solo instrumental piece on 1974’s Consciousness.

I documented that whole year-long endeavor in a cover story for the August 1997 issue of JazzTimes.

In 2010, Pat and his manager Joe Donofrio reached out to me to help him tell his amazing story, resulting in Here and Now! The Autobiography of Pat Martino, which was published in 2011 by Backbeat Books. I subsequently did liner notes for a series of Pat’s albums on the HighNote label — 2011’s Undeniable: Live at Blues Alley, 2012’s Alone Together (with Bobby Rose), 2014’s Young Guns (with Gene Ludwig and Randy Gelispe) and 2015’s Nexus (with Jim Ridl). I continued to see Pat perform in

various settings at clubs like Birdland, Iridium and the Jazz Standard as well as at the Umbria Jazz Festival, Cape May Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival and JVC Jazz Festival in New York. The last time I saw Pat perform was on November 18, 2017 at The Side Door in Old Lyme, CT, accompanied by his longstanding sidemen Pat Bianchi on organ and Carmen Intorre on drums. They were promoting Martino’s album Formidable, a quintet outing which turned out to be his swan song. Pat passed away on November 21, 2021.

We all celebrated Pat at a gala weekend on the Jersey Shore in November 3-6, 2022 in a series of concerts sponsored by the South Jersey Jazz Society. That event, held in Somers Point, New Jersey, included appearances by such Martino acolytes as Dave Stryker, Rodney Jones, Russell Malone, Mark Whitfield, Paul Bollenback, Jonathan Kreisberg, Fareed Haque, Chico Pinheiro, Joel Harrison, Wolf Marshall, Charlie Apicella, John Mulhern and Geno White. Pat’s Philly contemporary Jimmy Bruno and Howard Paul of Benedetto Guitars (Pat’s preferred brand) were also in attendance. Many of those players, along with such superb six-stringers as Sheryl Bailey, Rez Abbasi, Ed Cherry, Nir Felder, Joel Harrison, Jeff Miles, Oz Noy, Adam Rogers and Kurt Rosenwinkel later appeared on Honoring Pat Martino, Volume 1 (HighNote), produced by Joel Harrison through his Alternative Guitar Summit (AGS). Look for Volume 2 coming soon.