Double Bass Bass Playing in Folk Music

[brianrost]

Edgar Meyer... "Uncommon Ritual"!

The musical style is closer to what Pentangle did in the late 60's

Danny Thompson of Pentangle is a jazz player, as were many of the bassists who were heard on recordings of folk music that came out of NYC in the early 60s. A lot of what they were doing was based on the modal style that grew out of "Kind of Blue" and "My Favorite Things".

So go transcribe Danny's lines or pull ideas from Mingus, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Garrison, particularly over blues forms.

EDIT:

Russ Savakus played bass on "Leaving On A Jet Plane". He can be heard on a zillion folk records from the 60s. He even played with Chet Baker!

Dave Richmond played on "Your Song". He had been in Manfred Mann and later was a busy session player in the UK.

Danny Thompson is on a bunch of John Martyn and Richard Thompson albums, he worked often with both in duo settings as well as full bands. He also plays on Nick Drake's debut "Five Leaves Left".

You might want to listen to Richard Davis on Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks".

 

[oliebrice]

Amazing how these threads return - this one is 15 years old! Hopefully the original poster has listened to some Danny Thompson by now...

 

[jthisdell]

My acoustic church group does songs from the like of Sandra McCracken, 10,000 Reasons by Rend Collective, Dayspring by High Street Hymns, Cornerstone by Hillsong Worship. It seems to work best when I play in a very simple style, less is definitely more, you will want to be behind the vocals and guitars. We typically do 5 songs a week, maybe 3-4 contemporary worship songs and 1-2 hymns that we arrange to fit guitars, etc. Doing the hymns is much more challenging as the BL will send out sheet music and then I look on You Tube, etc. for recordings. But he can send out something like Take Up Your Cross and I will find a hundred traditional recordings of it and I know that we will do it nothing like any of them. Playing with this acoustic contemporary worship band has helped me a great deal. Full disclosure, I play my Fender with this band and it just feels good to me. There is an active Worship Band thread over in the BG side with all types of worship players.

 

[Johnny Fingers]

I do solo worship on folk guitar, would be great to add some bull fiddling and mandolin chops.

 

[brianrost]

I didn't notice that this was a zombie thread before I replied earlier. Oh well

 

[AGCurry]

Joan Baez's "Farewell, Angelina" has been one of my very favorite albums for 50+ years, not least due to the great playing of Richard Romoff on double bass and Bruce Langhorne on electric guitar.