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Failed the jazz audition

Steve Morse, Ottawa Bluesfest, July 18 2015; photo: © Nick Soveiko cc-by-nc-sa

PROG magazine has an interview with Steve Morse, highlighting the earliest years of his illustrious career.

But the music programme at Miami wasn’t ideal. I was very interested in classical guitar. I wasn’t that interested in the jazz department, because I was playing Jimmy Page songs and weird, teenage angsty music. So I didn’t know how that was going to work out.

When I got there I didn’t fit in with the classical people; I wasn’t advanced enough. And the jazz people were laughing when they saw me at the audition with my Telecaster – that wasn’t the right presentation. You were supposed to have an acoustic hollow body guitar with a pickup on it, like Wes Montgomery.

So they rolled their eyes and said, “Put him in the rock ensemble,” which was really a Latin jazz group. There were only six of us in that programme; guitarists like me that failed the jazz audition. So Miami started off really bad, but being around all those other guitarists, suddenly I could relate to them.

Read more in Louder Sound.

In other Steve news, he will make a guest appearance (along with Joe Lynn Turner and Bob Daisley) on Carmine Appice’s upcoming album Cactus Allstars Temple of Blues II, due out on Cleopatra Records in early April.

Thanks to Guitar.com and stevemorse.net for the heads-up.

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Posted by Nick on Thursday, February 5th, 2026, filed under News. You can follow comment on this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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