Here are some tunes featuring Alphonso followed by Ralphe Armstrong.
Here is an excerpt from a Ralphe Armstrong interview with For Bass Players Only involving him and Jaco:
FBPO: How did you manage to get that audition for John McLaughlin? And you were how old?
RA: I was 16. Bass Player magazine did a story about that. I’m glad I’m talking to you, man, because I want to get some things straight. I was coming from Cass Tech High School in Detroit with this Czechoslovakian bass. I was on a bus and I got off at Seminole Street and I went by Michael Henderson’s house. And at that time, Michael Henderson was playing with Miles Davis. So I went by Michael’s house and I brought the bass. And he said, “Man, I know these bad guys up in Connecticut. They need a bass player.” So he put me on the phone and I played over the phone with this Czech bass.
The next thing I knew, four days later, I got an airplane ticket, my first airplane ticket, to go to New Marlborough, Massachusetts. Actually, I landed in Hartford, Connecticut. They picked me up in this old ’61 Cadillac limousine and I met Narada Michael Walden, the great drummer/producer. This was 1973. And I met a guy named Sandy Torano. He was from Miami. And we played together. I had brought my fretless Precision bass. It was candy-apple red. This is the one I recorded with John McLaughlin. So we were playing in this group. Believe it or not, the group was called the New McGuire Sisters. That’s crazy! I don’t know why they had that crazy name. We weren’t gay or anything!
I had a good experience there and then I returned home to Detroit. That summer, I went back to Connecticut and stayed on a farm in Canaan, Connecticut. During that time, Michael Walden told me that Mahavishnu was coming. Next thing I knew Michael had changed his name to Narada and he was wearing all this white stuff and burning incense. John McLaughlin came up there and I played with him and Narada with my fretless Precision bass. I’m pretty sure I’m one of the first musicians that ever recorded with a fretless Precision. John liked the bass so much that he invited me to join the group.
Now, on that same day, Jaco Pastorius came with his “bass of doom.” He came and auditioned after me and John gave me the gig because he loved the sound of the fretless Precision bass. And Jaco got mad and ripped all the frets out of his bass and put epoxy in there! I played his bass like three months later, man. You’d play G on it and sounded like F. It was out. It was so out! Jaco was a good cat, but he was kind of mad he didn’t get the gig. I also found it funny that he never had a case for that bass. He and Michael Henderson were very similar. They’d each walk around with the bass without a case.
Interesting.
