Pat Martino at Yoshi's SF

The legendary Pat Martino played Yoshi's SF last Saturday as an organ trio with Pat Bianchi on organ and Carmen Intorre on drums.  Bianchi and Intorre play with a musicality and fire that belies
their youth.  I've had the privilege of seeing Pat Martino for many, many years, and I don't think I've ever heard him in better form.  He started out playing in organ trios with Brother Jack McDuff,  (with whom I've also had the prvilege of playing) and has returned to this format occasionally in the last few years.  He started the set with the Charlie Christian tune Seven Come Eleven.  It's hard to imagine the influence Charlie had on bebop; he was the Jimi Hendrix of his day.  From stating the melody onward Pat dove deep into postbop upper extensions and polyrythmic lines.  In fact the entire set was an exercise in making jazz standards that are forty to seventy years old vibrant, modern and even edgey.  The set included Full House, by Wes Montgomery, All Blues by Miles, and Footprints by Wayne Shorter.  All are tunes I still love to play.

Number 45 June 4, 2010

Tuesday I saw the great Pat Martino at Yohi's SF. Pat is a living master of the music; one of the musicians like McCoy Tyner , Jeff Beck, Ravi Shankar, Ornette Coleman, and a few others that I see whenever I can.  This gig featured Tony Monaco on Hammond B3, and Jason Brown on drums.  Pat's website is a wonderful resource for guitarists.  Like all great musicians, I believe Pat can touch people who don't normally listen to this kind of music.  From the stage he told an anecdote about introducing Les Paul (at whose house he was boarding) to Wes Montgomery between his sets when Pat was 17 or so.  Wes told Les that he was one of his two biggest heroes, along with Charlie Christian.  After his gig, he went back to Wes's club, and Pat, Wes, Les, and George Benson and Grant Green all went out to breakfast at 4 AM!