Mariano Passalaqua was a coal miner and steel mill worker who decided his son would have a better way of earning a living than his own. He gave young Joseph Anthony (later known as Joe Pass) a flat-top Harmony steel-string on his 9th birthday and imposed hours of daily practice which involved playing along whatever songs were frequently heard on the radio. Three years later, Joe got a Martin fitted with a DeArmond pickup and began to look forward to playing professionally. He got to be so good as to enter Tony Pastor’s band at 14, improvising on standards such as Honeysuckle Rose and I Got Rhythm, while applying ideas he took from jazz-guitar influencers Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery, or from saxophone genius Charlie Parker and pianist virtuoso Art Tatum.
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