Background and career
Pat Martino (born Patrick Carmen Azzara; August 25, 1944 – November 1, 2021) was an American jazz guitarist and composer.
Martino was born Patrick Carmen Azzara in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, to father Carmen "Mickey" Azzara (d. 1990) and mother Jean (née Orlando, d. 1989). He was first exposed to jazz by his father, who sang in local clubs and briefly studied guitar.
Martino studied with renowned jazz teacher Dennis Sandole, and in his studio met some of Sandole's other students, among them John Coltrane, James Moody, McCoy Tyner and others. Martino began playing professionally at age 15 after moving to New York City. He lived for a period with Les Paul and began playing at jazz clubs such as Smalls Paradise. Martino later moved into a suite in the President Hotel on 48th Street. He played at Smalls for six months of the year, and played summers at the Club Harlem in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Martino 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, Ray Allen (Raymond Chenot) and Joey DeFrancesco.
In 1980, Martino suffered a hemorrhaged arteriovenous malformation that caused a "near-fatal seizure". The resulting surgery, which removed part of his brain, left him with amnesia and no recollection or knowledge of his career or how to play the instrument that made him successful. Martino said he came out of surgery with complete forgetfulness, and had to learn to focus on the present rather than the past or the possible future. He had to completely re-learn how to play. He was subsequently chosen as Guitar Player of the Year in the Down Beat magazine Readers' Poll of 2004. In 2006, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab reissued his album East! on Ultradisc UHR SACD. In 2017, he created a series of educational videos, A Study of the Opposites and How They Manifest on the Guitar. Martino's recording career spanned more than 150 releases across multiple major jazz labels, with his work distributed among Prestige, Blue Note, Muse Records and HighNote Records, among others. His discography spans a variety of sounds, such as soul-jazz organ trio work, fusion experimentation, and his post-recovery mainstream recordings.
Martino's influences were Les Paul, Johnny Smith, Hank Garland, Joe Pass, and especially Wes Montgomery. To a lesser extent, he was influenced by the guitar stylings of Jim Hall, Mundell Lowe and Barry Galbraith. Martino said, "There are elements within an instrument’s architecture that initiate a continuous source of valuable information. For the guitar, there are two. The first is the major third interval, and the second is the minor third interval. Once we view their repetitive information, they begin to appear as a series of automatic functions." Martino's lines contain chromatic links outside any particular IIm7 chord that might be conceptualized over a chord progression, even in the examples he provides in his books and instructional videos. On his bulletin board he has stated that he formulated the system more as a way to explain his playing rather than as something to use to create music. In his own words, "Although the analysis of some of my recorded solos have been referred to as modal, personally I've never operated in that way. I've always depended upon my own melodic instinct, instead of scale-like formulas."
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
