Philly Strings: Pat Martino 80

Pat Martino Quartet - Sombrero Sam

The hot August nights are here -- OK, the hot tub August nights are here, it's not really that baking here in Oregon yet this summer so I just had a soak -- and we have a show that is (dare I say?) just as fluid and even hotter.

This avatar of guitar would have been 80 today, and he's still making other players cry tears of I'll Never Be Able To Do That Shit even though he passed from our presence 3 years ago.

As I was working on this one -- I slavered over it for 5 consecutive days because it was really all that and a bag of plectra -- I was thinking about the people watching and having their ears recalibrated in the audience.

I figured it broke down into 3 categories that night on Vallejo St. between Powell and Stockton.

First there were the women, who were probably at least partially, if not fully, disrobed by the third song.

Second there were the dates that brought the women, dudes wondering if the chicks were going back to the hotel with the band that night.

Lastly, there were the aspiring guitarists in attendance that night, who had all committed suicide at their tables by the set break.

Our birthday deity didn't dabble in Fusion for long -- he was far more notorious as a straight-ahead player -- but for the two records he did indulge that then-lucrative style, he sure did distinguish himself.

This 83-minute exercise in guitar immolation without lighter fluid is a glimpse into the power of that period of Pat Martino's career.

Soon after this, as everyone knows, he had the massive stroke and forgot how to play, which if you ask me was the Universe saying Hey Buddy, Give Someone Else A Chance, Will You?

It wasn't too long before he relearned the instrument from scratch and reclaimed his rightful rank among the six-string samurai of the Earth.

But back to this concert, which has circulated for 20 years in muddy-but-listenable form, with surges in the bass end a huge distraction that leaves the listener longing for what might have been, soundwise.

The fiery, no-prisoners playing and memorable melodies made me initiate the Sound Forge paragraphic EQ tool, among other secret weapons of audio necromancy, to get this thing as good as I could get it.

And you know what? I'd say I got it pretty good, if I do say so. Watch out for drum dervish Kenwood Dennard -- I almost moved into his loft once, in NYC in like 1989, but that's a story for his birthday someday -- who anchors the proceedings with dynamic ferocity.

Pat Martino Quartet

Keystone Korner 

San Francisco, California USA

3.2.1977

01 KRE-FM introduction

02 Joyous Lake

03 Mardi Gras/band intros

04 Sombrero Sam

05 Fall

06 Cat House 

07 Along Came Betty 

08 Dearborn Walk

09 Line Games

10 Solar Garden

11 Songbird

Total time: 1:23:13

disc break goes after Track 05

Pat Martino - guitar

Delmar Brown - keyboards

Mark Leonard - bass

Kenwood Dennard - drums

master off-air reel of the original KRE-FM broadcast, pitch corrected a ways back

edited, retracked, denoised and fairly aggressively remastered by EN, August 2024
563 MB FLAC/direct link

OK? I've got two more berfdaze at month's end before we begin to Septemberize ourselves, but I have always wanted to cover Philadelphia's own Pat Martino -- as wicked a guitar grinder as any person ever born with hands -- so I pulled out all the double- and triple-stops.--J.

8.25.1944 - 11.1.2021