Born Joseph Anthony Passalaqua in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1929, Pass grew up in a Pennsylvania steel town during the Great Depression. His Sicilian-born father, Mariano, made it a family goal that his children would not have to follow his footsteps into the steel mill. Young Joe, impressed by the six-string-slinging cowboy of the silver screen, Gene Autry, received his first guitar from a family friend, and started playing when he was nine years old.