Pat Martino (1944-)

Pat Martino's picture should appear besides post-bop guitar in the dictionnary! He has everthing : the tunes, the sound, the feel and groove and... the chops!

Mainly influenced by giants such as Wes and Coltrane, he came up on the New York jazz scene in the early 60's. That's where he got hooked up on the sound of organ trios.

Now for the "sad" part :

Martino had a brain surgery (because of an aneurysm) and forgot everything. He could barely recall his own name or his parents familiar face.

He had to re-learn from his own recordings! (and it worked)

He made a major comeback in the 80's with an album called The Return. Since then, he never stopped to develop as an artist.

Playing Style and Gear

He used various solid and hollow-bodied guitars throughout his carreer. For amplification, he's known to prefer the Roland Jazz Chorus amplifier. He sets it to get a punchy and clear, clean (did I say clean?) sound.

Technically, he's the line man on the guitar! Study his solos. He plays consecutive 8th notes (or 16ths) that define clearly the chord progressions (and he does some occasional scale substitutions.)

The transcriptions below is from the album "Footprints".

Video, Licks and Transcriptions

Get transcription excerpt from this video HERE