Joe Pass – Back in June this year we blogged about a great recording featuring Canadian jazz guitarist Ed Bickert, playing beautifully well (as always) in a duo setting with trombonist Rob McConnell. This got us thinking about other great jazz duos which feature a guitarist.

It didn’t take us long to come up with the name of the great jazz guitarist Joe Pass. Not only was he a master of solo guitar playing, a wonderful accompanist and a great single-line soloist, he was also quite incredible in a duo setting.

One of his most famous collaborations was with the acoustic jazz bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. Their seemingly telepathic musical communication is quite incredible to listen to and at times it is easy to forget that the vast majority of what they were playing was improvised right on the bandstand, with little or no pre-planning.

Both masters of the jazz language and especially jazz rhythm, feast your eyes and ears on this video filmed in Oct 1992 of Pass and Pederson playing ‘Oleo’ by Sonny Rollins. (“Oleo” is one of a number of well-known jazz standards to feature rhythm changes – chords drawn originally from George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”)

Duo jazz playing really doesn’t get much better than this.

We are quite often asked by JGG customers what our most popular vintage guitar model is. This may be just to see what others are buying or perhaps it’s because customers are looking for a really good investment.

Regardless of the reason, we thought we would investigate our records to see what actually was our most popular guitar model. The answer was very interesting.

We guessed initially that it might be something like our very popular Gibson ES-175’s or maybe even the timeless ES-330, but in actual fact (and by quite a long margin) it turned out to be the Gibson ES-125.

There is something about the classic design, unrivaled tone and sheer versatility of this great Gibson guitar that really resonated with a lot of players and clearly a lot of JGG customers too.

The Gibson ES-125 had a number of different model variations over the years and we have pretty much stocked them all at one point or another here at JGG.

Btw – In case you are puzzled by all the different variants and there different codes here is a quick guide:

• ES-125 Full body archtop with single P-90 pickup
• ES-125T (T = Thinline)
• ES-125TC (C = Cutaway)
• ES-125TCD (D = Double P-90 pickups) versions available starting in 1956 and 1960, respectively.
• ES-125C Full width body with cutaway
• ES-125CD Full width body, double pickup (P90) with cutaway. Looks like the ES-175D without neck binding

So there you have it, our most popular guitar is by far and away the Gibson ES-125 and if you want to see what the fuss is all about with these incredible Gibson guitars, then have a browse through the site to hear and see more about this amazing Gibson guitar.

If you want to hear what one of these guitars can do in the hands of a master then you need go no further than checking out the music of long-time ES-125 player George Thorogood.

Here’s a great interview with George from the Gibson website where he discusses his love for the Gibson ES-125.