PAT MARTINO / MONOGRAFICO.

Vaya tiempos para el Jazz, otro grande que se nos va, descanse en paz Maestro.....

 Pat Martino (August 25, 1944 – November 1, 2021).

Martino was born Patrick Carmen Azzara in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, to father Carmen "Mickey" Azzara (d. 1990) and mother Jean (née Orlando, d. 1989).He was first exposed to jazz by his father, who sang in local clubs and briefly studied guitar,and began playing professionally at the age of 15 after moving to New York City. He lived for a period with Les Paul and began playing at jazz clubs such as Smalls Paradise. He later moved into a suite in the President Hotel on 48th Street. He would play at Smalls for six months of the year, and then in the summer play at the Club Harlem in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Martino played and recorded early in his career with Lloyd Price, Willis Jackson, and Eric Kloss. He also worked with jazz organists Charles Earland, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Jack McDuff, Don Patterson, Trudy Pitts, Jimmy Smith, Gene Ludwig, and Joey DeFrancesco.

Martino had been performing until a hemorrhaged arteriovenous malformation caused a "near-fatal seizure" in 1980.This left him with amnesia and no recollection or knowledge of his career or how to play the very instrument that made him successful. Martino says he came out of surgery with complete forgetfulness, learning to focus on the present instead of the past or what may lie ahead. He was forced to learn how to play the guitar from zero. This circumstance is crucial to understand his career and his particular way of thinking.

When the anesthesia wore off, Pat Martino looked up hazily at his parents and his doctors. and tried to piece together any memory of his life. 

One of the greatest guitarists in jazz. Martino had suffered a severe brain aneurysm and underwent surgery after being told that his condition could be terminal. After his operations he could remember almost nothing. He barely recognized his parents. and had no memory of his guitar or his career. He remembers feeling as if he had been "dropped cold, empty, neutral, cleansed...naked." 

In the following months. Martino made a remarkable recovery. Through intensive study of his own historic recordings, and with the help of computer technology, Pat managed to reverse his memory loss and return to form on his instrument. His past recordings eventually became "an old friend, a spiritual experience which remained beautiful and honest." This recovery fits in perfectly with Pat's illustrious personal history. Since playing his first notes while still in his pre-teenage years, Martino has been recognized as one of the most exciting and virtuosic guitarists in jazz. With a distinctive, fat sound and gut-wrenching performances, he represents the best not just in jazz, but in music. He embodies thoughtful energy and soul. 

Born Pat Azzara in Philadelphia in 1944, he was first exposed to jazz through his father, Carmen "Mickey" Azzara, who sang in local clubs and briefly studied guitar with Eddie Lang. He took Pat to all the city's hot-spots to hear and meet Wes Montgomery and other musical giants. "I have always admired my father and have wanted to impress him. As a result, it forced me to get serious with my creative powers." 

He began playing guitar when he was twelve years old. and left school in tenth grade to devote himself to music. During Visits to his music teacher Dennis Sandole, Pat often ran into another gifted student, John Coltrane, who would treat the youngster to hot chocolate as they talked about music. 

Besides first-hand encounters with `Trane and Montgomery, whose album Grooveyard had "an enormous influence" on Martino, he also cites Johnny Smith, a Stan Getz associate, as an early inspiration.  "He seemed to me, as a child. to understand everything about music," Pat recalls. 

Martino became actively involved with the , early rock scene in Philadelphia, alongside stars like Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker and Bobby Darin. His first road gig was with jazz organist Charles Earland, a high school friend. His reputation soon spread among other jazz players, and he was recruited by bandleader Lloyd Price to play hits such as Stagger Lee on-stage with musicians like Slide Hampton and Red Holloway. 

Martino moved to Harlem to immerse himself in the "soul jazz" played by Earland and others. Previously, he had "heard all of the white man's jazz. I never heard that other part of the culture," he remembers. The organ trio concept had a profound influence on Martino's rhythmic and harmonic approach. and he remained in the idiom as a sideman, gigging with Jack McDuff and Don Patterson. An icon before his eighteenth birthday, Pat was signed as a leader for Prestige Records when he was twenty. His seminal albums from this period include classics like Strings!, Desperado, El Hombre and Baiyina (The Clear Evidence), one of jazz's first successful ventures into psychedelia. 

In 1976, Martino began experiencing the excruciating headaches which were eventually diagnosed as symptoms of his aneurysms. After his surgery and recovery, he resumed his career when he appeared in1987 in New York, a gig that was released on a CD with an appropriate name, The Return.  He then took another hiatus when both of his parents became ill, and he didn't record again until 1994, when he recorded Interchange and then The Maker. 

" His experiments with guitar synthesizers, begun during his rehabilitation, are taking him in the direction of orchestral arrangements and they promise groundbreaking possibilities. Musicians flock to his door for lessons, and he offers not only the benefits of his musical knowledge, but also the philosophical insights of a man who has faced and overcome enormous obstacles.  "The guitar is of no great importance to me," he muses. "The people it brings to me are what matter. They are what I'm extremely grateful for, because they are alive. The guitar is just an apparatus." 

He was chosen as Guitar Player of the Year in the Down Beat magazine Readers' Poll of 2004. In 2006, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab reissued his album East! on Ultradisc UHR SACD.

In 2017, he shot a series of educational videos titled A Study of the Opposites and How They Manifest on the Guitar.

Martino stated, "There are elements within an instrument’s architecture that initiate a continuous source of valuable information. For the guitar, there are two. The first is the major third interval, and the second is the minor third interval. Once we view their repetitive information, they begin to appear as a series of automatic functions."

Martino's lines contain chromatic links outside any particular IIm7 chord that might be conceptualized over a chord progression, even in the examples he provides in his books and instructional videos. On his bulletin board he has stated that he formulated the system more as a way to explain his playing rather than as something to use to create music. In his own words, "although the analysis of some of my recorded solos have been referred to as modal, personally I've never operated in that way. I've always depended upon my own melodic instinct, instead of scale like formulas.

01 / PAT MARTINO / EL HOMBRE . 1967.

Calidad FLAC.

TRACKS :

01. "Waltz for Geri" 6:21

02. "Once I Loved" (Ray Gilbert/Antônio Carlos Jobim/Vinicius de Moraes) 5:42

03. "El Hombre" 5:57

04. "Cisco" 4:29

05. "One for Rose" 4:54

06. "A Blues for Mickey-O" 8:02

07. "Just Friends" (John Klenner/Sam M. Lewis) 5:47

MUSICOS :

Pat Martino – guitar

Danny Turner – flute

Trudy Pitts – Hammond organ

Mitch Fine – drums

Vance Anderson – bongos

Abdu Johnson – congas.

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PART 1.

PART 2.