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| The 1st Guitar Player Magazine |
I became a devotee of guitar magazines when they first hit the market. I read Guitar Player for years, and still do. I also still enjoy Vintage Guitar Magazine, which features some great online tutorials done my good friend Ray Cummins. And there are certainly other periodicals that I have read over the years.
Back around 1980 I recall reading about the remarkable comeback of Jazz guitarist Pat Martino. This was printed in an issue of Guitar Player Magazine.
This adverse condition developed over a series of years and caused him to suffer from dizziness, frequent headaches and occasional blackouts. It was during a European tour supporting his first albums for Warner Brothers, “Starbright",and “Joyous Lake” , Mr. Martino began experiencing frequent seizures. He had dealt with occasional problems since childhood. One seizure occurred while he was onstage in France in 1976.
In his autobiography Martino wrote “I stopped playing and stood there for about 30 seconds. During these moments of seizure, it feels like you’re falling through a black hole; it’s like everything just escapes at the moment.” He went through a series of misdiagnoses and ill-advised treatment, including electroshock.
He had to retire from performing and turned to teaching at the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood, but his problems worsened. This was the point where he had to have emergency surgery.
He stated that “It wasn’t a disorienting feeling,” he continued. “If I had known I was a guitarist, if I had known those two people standing by my bedside in the hospital were in fact my parents,
I believe that article stuck with me all these years as one of my best friends, who was a phenomenal professional bass player suffered a similar fate when brain tumor surgery resulted in amnesia for him. He had to not only relearn how to play electric and upright bass, but also had to relearn many so things that were wiped clean from his brain. I can only imagine what Martino went through. Doug was the best and I miss him.
Pat Martino passed away on November 1st of 2021. He was forced to retired from playing guitar in 2018 as a result of chronic respiratory disorder. Mr. Martino to stop performing after a tour of Italy in November 2018.
Martino became active in the rock scene around Philly, playing with the likes of Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin and more. His first touring gig in jazz was with organist Charles Earland, who was a friend from high school.
Pat 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.
As a result of his return to the music scene after his traumatic episode in the early 1980’s, he was chosen as Guitar Player of the Year in the Down Beat magazine Readers' Poll of 2004. And in 2006, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab reissued his album East!
Pat Martino's career spanned six decades and evolved into a variety of styles, from his formative years performing in organ groups to the Wes Montgomery-influenced hard bop of his early recordings, spiritual explorations in the late 60s ceding to the blazing, virtuosic fusion of 1970s classics.
Perhaps one of the most unusual guitar he owned was a late 1960's Univox 335 style 12 string guitar. His wife bought it for him for $80. He used that guitar on a recording of Desparado.
On the Starbright LP, Martino used a Gibson L-5S. He says he went to Gibson with the ideas for a guitar that could provide a lot of different sounds. The Gibson people let him know they already had the L-5S, but it wasn't on the market. So Gibson sent him one of their prototype models.
In the early 2000's he played a Gibson Pat Martino Signature Model. This guitar featured a carved mahogany body with f-holes, mahogany neck with ebony compound radius fingerboard, and beautiful figure maple top with white binding. It had a Tune-O-Matic bridge with 2 Classic humbuckers and came with gold hardware. It was a gorgeous instrument with an unusually shaped headstock.
This guitar has a very light weight, chambered mahogany body, with a carved maple top, fast ebony fingerboard, and two A6 Benedetto pickups that have dual volume and tone controls. It features Pat Martino's signature etched into the pick guard.
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| Guitar Player featuring Pat Martino |
Martino had suffered from an undiagnosed condition called arteriovenous malformation, which is a congenital malady caused by a tangling of arteries and veins. He had to have emergency surgery to remove a large tumor which resulted from this abnormality.
His doctor had told him he would die from an aneurysm within a matter of hours if he did not have surgery.
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| Pat Martino "Starbright" LP |
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| Pat Martino |
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| Guitar Institute of Technology |
Unfortunately the result of the surgery on his brain was complete forgetfulness: total amnesia. Among other things, he forgot how to play guitar. Martino said that he began learning to focus on the present instead of the past or what may lie ahead.
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| Pat Martino with ES-175 |
had I realized that I then would’ve felt the feelings that went along with the events. What they went through and why they were standing there looking at me then would’ve been very painful for me. But it wasn’t painful because to me they were just strangers.”
It was his parents that helped him relearn his past, showing him family photographs and playing him his own albums. This is what the Guitar Player article from back in the 1980’s stressed,
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| My friend Doug Abbott |
I believe that article stuck with me all these years as one of my best friends, who was a phenomenal professional bass player suffered a similar fate when brain tumor surgery resulted in amnesia for him. He had to not only relearn how to play electric and upright bass, but also had to relearn many so things that were wiped clean from his brain. I can only imagine what Martino went through. Doug was the best and I miss him.
Martino stated that for him picking up the guitar again was another form of memory recovery. Martino described the process of recovering the ability to play with these words, “As I continued to work out things on the instrument,” he wrote, “flashes of memory and muscle memory would gradually come flooding back to me — shapes on the fingerboard, different stairways to different rooms in the house. There are secret doorways that only you know about in the house, and you go there because it’s pleasurable to do so.”
As most professional musicians know, muscle memory is a key factor in the ability to play any musical instrument. I cannot stress enough how much of a life changing event this was for Pat Martino. He was forced to listen to all of his former recordings and learn how to play them on guitar, note-by-note. He was a brilliant guitarist before the amnesia, but afterward Martino was just flat out amazing.
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| Pat Martino |
He spent the rest of his life using oxygen support. This condition was what finally resulted in his death. He passed away at the same Philadelphia home that his parents had owned.
He was born as Patrick Carmen Azzara in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1944. He was first exposed to jazz by his father, who sang in local clubs and briefly studied guitar. The elder Azarra sang in a band led by guitarist Eddie Lang.
Pat began playing guitar at age 12 and left high school to pursue music, by studying with famed music instructor Dennis Sandole, who also had taught John Coltrane.
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| Pat Martino and The Hurricanes |
Martino became active in the rock scene around Philly, playing with the likes of Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin and more. His first touring gig in jazz was with organist Charles Earland, who was a friend from high school.
Pat Azarra took the stage name Pat Martino when he began playing professionally at the young age of 15 after moving to New York City.
He lived for a brief period with Les Paul and he began playing at jazz clubs such as Smalls Paradise Club. Martino later moved into a suite in the President Hotel on 48th Street.
Martino 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.
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| Martino, Gene Ludwig, Randy Gillespie |
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| East! LP |
As a result of his return to the music scene after his traumatic episode in the early 1980’s, he was chosen as Guitar Player of the Year in the Down Beat magazine Readers' Poll of 2004. And in 2006, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab reissued his album East!
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| Pat Martino through the years |
Martino played the guitar with an intensity of focus and finesse at even the most amazing speed.
Through the years Martino used a variety of guitars and amplifiers. In 1954 his father purchase a Les Paul Standard for him with "soap bar" pickups.
About six months later, after he proved he was proficient he traded it for a Les Paul Custom.
He then used a Gibson ES-175. It can be seen in some of his younger pictures.
He also owned a beautiful Gibson L-5 CES and a Gibson Johnny Smith model. Smith was one of his favorite players.
Martino also owned a custom made Sam Koontz guitar that at first glance resembles a Gibson Howard Roberts model. This guitar has a oval center sound hole and was built by Mr. Koontz especially for Martino.
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| Univox 12 String Electric |
Perhaps one of the most unusual guitar he owned was a late 1960's Univox 335 style 12 string guitar. His wife bought it for him for $80. He used that guitar on a recording of Desparado.
In later years he owned a Gibson ES-335 twelve string.
For the most part, before his brain trauma, Martino relied on Jazz boxes, with a few exceptions. He also used fairly large amplifiers, such as a Fender Twin Reverb, and later a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus.
Around 1983 when he restarted his career, he started pairing things down. Instead of a heavy Twin Reverb or Roland Jazz Chorus he began using a Polytone Mini-Brute, which is still a fairly heavy amp, but is preferred by Jazz players
He later on he relied on an Acoustic Image Clarus head that he could carry in his guitar gig bag. His contract rider stated that the venue provide speakers for his amplifier. The Acoustic Image was small but it was powerful and rated at 600 watts into 2 ohms minimum load.
He preferred using Raezer's Edge speaker cabinet when they were available.
Around that time he started using thinner bodied guitars such has his Abe Scepter custom made guitar.
Martino played a Polytone guitar. In an interview he stated," I didn’t get back into a relationship with the guitar until ’83. At that point, Tommy Gumina approached me and asked to endorse a solidbody he had just designed for Polytone. I used and endorsed that guitar, and Polytone amps, for about a year."
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| Gibson L-5S |
On the Starbright LP, Martino used a Gibson L-5S. He says he went to Gibson with the ideas for a guitar that could provide a lot of different sounds. The Gibson people let him know they already had the L-5S, but it wasn't on the market. So Gibson sent him one of their prototype models.
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| Gibson Pat Martino Model |
In the early 2000's he played a Gibson Pat Martino Signature Model. This guitar featured a carved mahogany body with f-holes, mahogany neck with ebony compound radius fingerboard, and beautiful figure maple top with white binding. It had a Tune-O-Matic bridge with 2 Classic humbuckers and came with gold hardware. It was a gorgeous instrument with an unusually shaped headstock.
For the remainder of his career Martino played The Benedetto Pat Martino Signature Model. This guitar took nearly a year of collaboration between Bob Benedetto and Pat to develop the perfect instrument for Pat.
He was able to use it every single day on the road, in the studio, while conducting clinics, and while composing new music and revisiting the classics.
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| Pat and his wife, Ayako Asahi Martino, holding both of his Benedetto models |
This guitar has a very light weight, chambered mahogany body, with a carved maple top, fast ebony fingerboard, and two A6 Benedetto pickups that have dual volume and tone controls. It features Pat Martino's signature etched into the pick guard.
He owned a few different models of this guitar. The guitar is still available with Autumn Burst and Black finishes.
Click on the links below the pictures for their source. Click on the links in the text for further reading.
©UniqueGuitar Publications 2021 (text only)
This is a brief documentary and worth viewing.
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