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Is Marcus still with Sire?
- Thread starter diglo
- Start date
He always (often, at least) still plays his famous 70s Fender Jazz, the one he based the Sire V7 on. Still with Sire, still plays them live.
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I just saw him Friday. He played his '77 Jazz most of the night, plus two Sire MM basses - a fretted four and a fretless five - and a bass clarinet.
I love, love, love his bass clarinet playing. Man after me own heart! hehe
DiabolusInMusic
Functionless Art is Merely Tolerated Vandalism
Crazy to think he still takes that old Jazz out. With the amount of copies of it, you'd think he would keep the original safe. That being said, I get why he prefers "his" bass.
The video I watched, it looked like a copy. I didn't see the M initial between the pickups.
no point in keeping it safe if that means not playing it.
Especially everything below a low B. So throaty. Somewhere between a bass clarinet and a tuba is the bass guitar tone I've been hunting for for close to 3 decades lol.
He got himself one just like the original and doesn't take the original one out anymore.
This makes me wonder sometimes what the rules are regarding endorsement deals -- is it cool to be using an instrument from one company when you're endorsing someone else? I guess it depends on the terms of the endorsement contract, but there must be some kind of common expectations.
The terms of endorsement deals vary with each deal, some are restrictive, some are not. The more "power" an artist has, the more likely they'll be able to get more flexible endorsement deals.
Last time I saw him (pre-pandemic), he played the Fender most of the night but he had two Sires on stage and played both of them.
I'd guess he never agreed to complete exclusivity with Sire in his deal, but he agreed to make reasonable effort to use them in appearances.
I'd guess he never agreed to complete exclusivity with Sire in his deal, but he agreed to make reasonable effort to use them in appearances.
From what I remember, it was really important to MM to get quality basses into the hands of younger players without a large price tag. I don't know that Fender would have been willing to do what Sire did. But he elevated Sire for sure.
It's funny, I "discovered" him as a kid in 1980 listening to Grover Washington Jr's "Just the Two of Us" (w/ Bill Withers doing vocals), fell in love with that album as a whole ("Winelight"), then picked up the bass about 10 years later, started learning who the 'good bassists' are at that time, and heard some of Marcus' other more bass-centric stuff, and then about 5 years ago was reading the liner notes to Winelight and my jaw hit the floor: "Bass: Marcus Miller." I was like "No wonder I think the bass on that album is so great! It's freaking Marcus!" And sure enough, wherever he goes and whatever sessions he records, I hear that '77 Fender Jazz bass. And frankly, I love the way he sounds with it.
Yeah he's way more involved than a typical endorsee. Almost a co-founder, basically, at least in terms of influence on the design of the product.
Fender doesn't make inexpensive decent instruments? News to me
Funny that this topic was posted today. I was just thinking about Marcus' Fender Jazz and scrolled by a picture of him playing live somewhere recently. Then I noticed it, I did a double take while thinking to myself: wait didn't his '77 Jazz have his initials right above the bridge pickup? I know i saw a pic of it somewhere years ago, Bass Player magazine maybe? This one didn't have it. It then occurred to me, oh he probably had the custom shop make him at least one or two copies of THAT bass way back in the day. All this time I've been thinking it's been the original still lol.
I was in the Navy, and my ship was home-ported in San Diego where there was a great modern jazz radio station. I heard all kinds of great music without ever knowing much about it -- sometimes I would catch the announcer saying who played, often not. Anyway, I loved David Sandborn's music, even went to a couple of concerts (sadly, after Marcus had moved on to something else). Never knew who any of his players were. But there was this one song called Run for Cover that was just phenomenal. I figured out how to mimic the main riff, and to this day it's about all the slap I know.
Anyway, over 30 years later, I have a computer and the internet, and I start following musical rabbit trails. I looked up Run for Cover. I found it. Watching the video it became clear, in a way that listening to the song never was, that the entire song was basically just an excuse for a bass solo. But I STILL didn't know who the bass player was! I finally connected the dots when I looked up some Marcus Miller videos after reading about his involvement with Sire, and only because Marcus has a rather distinctive bass-face (he does this thing with his lips). I saw those lips and thought "wait a minute...", went back and looked at the Sandborn video, and sure enough, "IT'S HIM! IT'S HIM! Holy smokes, it's him!" So I found out I'd been a Marcus Miller fan for over 30 years and just never knew it.
