Joe Beck
Joe Beck was born on July 29, 1945, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The city was his starting point, and his American citizenship placed him within a musical tradition that he would spend his career working inside. Philadelphia was the place that gave him his origins, and it remained part of his biographical record as a jazz guitarist who came up in the United States.
Beck's occupation was that of a musician, specifically a jazz musician and jazz guitarist. Those three descriptors — musician, jazz musician, jazz guitarist — appear consistently in the record associated with his name. The genre he worked in was jazz, and the instrument he played was guitar. That combination of genre and instrument defined the professional category he occupied throughout his working life in American music.
As an American jazz guitarist, Beck carried a professional identity that the available record ties closely to his instrument and his genre. His work was in jazz, his country was the United States, and his role was that of a guitarist within that tradition. The facts that survive him describe a musician whose occupation and genre remained consistent points of identification across the sources that document his life and career.
Joe Beck died on July 22, 2008, in Woodbury. He was sixty-two years old at the time of his death, having been born in Philadelphia sixty-two years and nearly a full month earlier. His death in Woodbury closed the record on a life the sources describe plainly: an American jazz guitarist.
Quotes by Joe Beck
I don't think the bands that hired me liked the sound, I didn't enjoy the experience, and as far as I know, none of the things we did together ever hit the charts, ... But what the hey, the money was good.
I know it's going to respond the way I want it to night after night. When I go into a venue, there are a lot of unknowns ... the acoustics, how well I'll connect with the audience, that sort of thing. So, having an instrument now that is all I could ever want in a guitar is a major plus.
It's really weird to have sold out shows along the west and east coast. We still have diehard fans in our hometown, but a lot of them are friends or someone who knows someone who knows us.
This is poor judgment. I want to make it clear that this does not involve the student, this is two adults.
Even if we have a bad day or something, we just get up on stage and pour as much of ourselves into the show as possible. We just pour out our hearts and souls and let everything go.
We haven't played in Brookings before. But we have gotten a lot of requests from student to come and play.
Yeah, I was Miles' first guitarist, but I never traveled with him, just worked on studio dates, ... Miles had a dark personality, and it was kinda scary working with him. He could be terribly intimidating at times, but I never thought he meant to be. He was just being Miles.
