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Double Bass Buell Neidlinger
- Thread starter Earl
- Start date
He had one of the very best free walking lines. He was incredible on the early Cecil Taylor and Steve Lacy albums.
I have not. There has to be footage of the LA years, but maybe locked away in the archive of a TV station. He seemed to be a "small club" guy in his NY years. I had read he had "cabaret card" problems. A lot of the old jazz footage is from Europe, I am sure he went at some point.
Do you remember what kind of strings he used? On those early records gut of course, but later on they sound more like bowing strings like maybe Flexocor rather than spiros.
Unfortunately I didn't get to hear him play. He had moved to Whidbey Island few years before and was a big part of the cultural scene there, but had stopped playing bass and was only playing cello. Didn't get to hear him on cello either, but I did talk to him for quite a bit. What a character!
I was in high school when I met Buell. He was still with the Boston Symphony then, as was my teacher, Leslie Martin. I met him again when I came out to CalArts in the early 70s to do my MFA. One of my prize possessions is a cake of Liebenzeller gold rosin I got from Buell with his named scribbled on the inside of the carton cover. He was a VERY interesting guy, and obviously a great musician in any context.
Damon, have you tried transcribing any of those free walking lines? From the looking ahead album, say? I've a mind to have a go at one, or maybe this one of Izenzon's:
Transcribing isn't my thing - though I know them pretty well and probably play whole sections of them when free walking comes up...
Yes, he is on some great early New Music albums. He is also on this Braxton Monk album:
It's a wise decision, as transcribing, and the siren call of slowed-down looping, can lead to madness - just ask my doctors. But I have to say it was following piano intros around on bass - Corea's, on various versions of Nefertiti, for example - that greatly improved my ability to hear the inner voicings of chords.
Once you can do it, it can lead to "listening to your favorite records when you should be working through Simandl".
I had a realization that I knew every line, part, counter melody, drum hit, etc. on Blues and Roots by heart and that is a form of transcription as well coming to terms with how many Dave Holland licks I play on a daily basis! Still, in general, it is the former. Being up on the instrument and listening in the moment if you are playing with great players more important. If you are lacking in collaborators then transcribing can have more value.
In case of Buell's free walking I am not sure the notes are the important part of the story. I think you will find a lot of chromatics and jumps. In the case of Cecil, he is providing something to play against, not play "on".
The aggression of where his beat would be the place to start. This is not "feel good" walking. The is an anger and an urgency to where his beat is paired with precision. It isn't shaggy or ragged like Don Moore, one of my other favorite free walkers. Both are masters of the art form!
Damon have you been reading Homer? ("Anger be now your song" - Iliad) I'm sure Taylor and Neidlinger did.
Yours are great, apt, eye-opening points. When the palate tires of song forms, Tin Pan Alley, cadences, AABA, Take the A Train, 2-5-1, fraidy-cat harmony . . . give me heterophony! Give me angry minors! Give me Cubist jazz lines! Give me aleatoric counterpoint!
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I have been making my way through the same Iilad translation Cy Twombly used to make 50 Days at Iiam.
