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Electric bass in Jazz/Standards

#21
Peter McFerrin said:
One last straightahead BG recording of note is Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay, with Ron Carter on SLAB. The record is often classified as a fusion date because of the title track and the cover of John Lennon's "Cold Turkey,"
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That's what I was saying earlier - that anything with bass guitar on it is classed as fusion - because of that fact alone!

Having said that - "Red Clay" is definitely not a straight ahead tune and is pretty funky/rocky - although the bass solo is probably Ron Carter 's lowest moment on record!! :hmm:

On the more Jazzy tunes with Freddie Hubbard - Ron plays Double Bass!! :)
 
#22
Really? Sounds like a slab to me, but that might just be a really crappy magnetic pickup.

Magnetic pickups and DB just don't mix. Carter's sound in the late '70s/early '80s was amazingly awful. This makes it all the more ironic that the liner notes to his duets dual-disc with Jim Hall, Telepathy (combining Telephone and Live at Village West) go out of their way to talk about how much Carter had been working on his pizz DB tone, to the extent that he stopped playing arco altogether. (Considering how nasty his intonation was on his early-'60s cello recordings, though, maybe that was for the best. :rolleyes: )
 
#27
I remember seeing Dizzy Gillespie's ensemble doing a 1990s TV concert with a guy on slab. I would imagine that slab is a lot more accepted in Latin jazz circles than in straightahead. After all, bass is one of many sources of pulse in Afro-Caribbean styles, whereas it's the only steady pulse in most post-WWII jazz.
 
#28
Hou said:
I will check out those guys. Stewe S is great but still he playing a acoustic.
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Actually, Swallow hasn't touched DB in 35 years. Even when the pioneering Giuffre-Bley-Swallow avant-garde trio had a reunion 10 or so years back, Swallow played bass guitar.

Speaking of the avant-garde, when I saw Sam Rivers a couple years back (oh, to be young enough again to qualify for those half-price seats at the Jazz Bakery), his bassist switched between a 6-string electric and an upright. The numbers that had bass guitar were decidedly not of a "fusion-y" nature.
 
#29
Peter McFerrin said:
Speaking of the avant-garde, when I saw Sam Rivers a couple years back (oh, to be young enough again to qualify for those half-price seats at the Jazz Bakery), his bassist switched between a 6-string electric and an upright. The numbers that had bass guitar were decidedly not of a "fusion-y" nature.
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Saw Sam Rivers early last year (his first UK tour in twenty-odd years). His longtime bassist is Doug Matthews, who switched between upright, six-string BG and bass clarinet. Rivers played tenor, alto, soprano, flute and piano, and the drummer, Anthony Cole, also played tenor and piano. AMAZING gig.


Laurence Cottle is a fairly well-known UK bass guitarist. He seems to play fretted more than fretless these days.

There's also Michael Mondesir, who plays with cutting-edge composers like Django Bates. He's also done some stuff on John McLaughlin's next album.
 
#31
Bruce Lindfield said:
It was on the "New Standards" thing with Herbie Hancock - again classed as fusion, not straight-ahead Jazz!! ;)
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That album sounds closer to "Straightahead" than it does "Fusion".

...and I recall covering "Mercy Street" from New Standards...that was acoustic bass, IIRC.

Now on the Hancock-Metheny-Dejohnette-Holland DVD from a few years back(which I finally just bought recently)...Holland does strap on a P-syle EB for a couple NON-Fusion cuts. I was floored & wondered, "Why".
 
#33
Just remembered Carles Benavent, formerly with Paco de Lucia, who is currently playing with Chick Corea.

The new Corea album, 'The Ultimate Adventure', isn't out over here yet, but I've got a number of bootlegs of Chick's current band and the sound is reminscent of the first two RTF albums - lots of latin and flamenco influences - but with Carles and his distinctive electric bass sound.
 
#34
Peter McFerrin said:
Actually, Swallow hasn't touched DB in 35 years. Even when the pioneering Giuffre-Bley-Swallow avant-garde trio had a reunion 10 or so years back, Swallow played bass guitar.

Speaking of the avant-garde, when I saw Sam Rivers a couple years back (oh, to be young enough again to qualify for those half-price seats at the Jazz Bakery), his bassist switched between a 6-string electric and an upright. The numbers that had bass guitar were decidedly not of a "fusion-y" nature.
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Sorry! I did mean Acoustic bass guitar?

Does any of you guys play ABG in jazz?

-Christian
 
#35
JimK said:
Now on the Hancock-Metheny-Dejohnette-Holland DVD from a few years back(which I finally just bought recently)...Holland does strap on a P-syle EB for a couple NON-Fusion cuts. I was floored & wondered, "Why".
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I went back and had a look at that DVD - there are only two tracks where Dave Holland plays BG and they are both not really swingin' Jazz - so both are Dejohnette originals and the first is a kind of funky samba - where you can clearly see Dave doing some slapping - nice funky thumb work!!

The second one is called "Nine over Reggae" and it has a Reggae Stylee, written bassline, that presumably Dejohnette wrote with BG in mind!

As soon as they start Miles Davis "Solar", DH is back on upright and stays with it for the rest of the gig - so it makes perfect sense to me why he chose BG for those 2 tracks - as they are original "fusions" with funk/samba/reggae ! :)
 
#36
JimK said:
Now on the Hancock-Metheny-Dejohnette-Holland DVD from a few years back(which I finally just bought recently)...Holland does strap on a P-syle EB for a couple NON-Fusion cuts. I was floored & wondered, "Why".
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I saw that group at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 1990. It was interesting that Holland's electric bass approch was nothing like it was on the 1969-70 Miles stuff -- but then the music was not similar. Holland's electric bass tone on the Dejohnette gig reminded me of Berry Oakley (!?).
 
#37
Bruce Lindfield said:
Yeah that period of recordings is notorious for Ron Carter's amplified DB sound that was more "electric"
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Call me wierd, but I love Ron Carter's upright sound on those CTI recordings. My favorite is on Freddie Hubbard's "Skydive" album -- it sounds like Creed and van Gelder chained several compressors together. The Marsalis brothers have specifically vilified this sound.
 
#38
RHFusillo said:
I saw that group at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 1990. It was interesting that Holland's electric bass approch was nothing like it was on the 1969-70 Miles stuff -- but then the music was not similar.
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That's an understatement!
;)
 

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