Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Slap Bass Orgins Argument
- Thread starter Kaden Daniels
- Start date
I've always considered Graham and Jackson to be akin to Jelly Roll Morton. All great with unapologetic self-aggrandizing egos.
If he wishes to continue flying the flag that he alone invented slap bass in a a secret lair with no outside influence whatsoever, more power to him.
On the flip side, too bad he didn't have the frame of mind to "trademark" said technique. I mean, if Taylor Swift can trademark words and phrases...
In his own interviews, he talks about a gig where the drummer did not show, and he developed his technique to supply the backbeat, which became what we now call the slap style of electric bass.
Two similar things can be discovered/invented without one inventor's knowledge of the other. It has happened before, Mr Happy.
Rockabilly and Jazz upright slap finds unlikely roots in classical music, most notably in the music of Bartok, where the slap is named after him...
From Wikipedia (but I know from personal experience of the music)...
"A further variation is a particularly strong pizzicato where the string is plucked vertically by snapping and rebounds off the fingerboard of the instrument. This is sometimes known as the Bartók pizzicato, after one of the first composers to use it extensively. Gustav Mahler famously employs a Bartók pizzicato in the third movement of his Seventh Symphony, in which he provides the cellos and double basses with the footnote 'pluck so hard that the strings hit the wood'..."
WRT electric bass , I always think of Larry Graham as being the name most synonymous with bringing the slap style to the attention of the masses, although it is inevitable that he was not the only one...
From Wikipedia (but I know from personal experience of the music)...
"A further variation is a particularly strong pizzicato where the string is plucked vertically by snapping and rebounds off the fingerboard of the instrument. This is sometimes known as the Bartók pizzicato, after one of the first composers to use it extensively. Gustav Mahler famously employs a Bartók pizzicato in the third movement of his Seventh Symphony, in which he provides the cellos and double basses with the footnote 'pluck so hard that the strings hit the wood'..."
WRT electric bass , I always think of Larry Graham as being the name most synonymous with bringing the slap style to the attention of the masses, although it is inevitable that he was not the only one...
I have a bass only version of Stevie Wonders "I Was Made To Love Her" where Jamerson was playing bass and at the very end of the song Jamerson is slapping the bass in a funk style groove.
When I was a kid, my older brother went to a public high school that had an orchestra and a band. This was in the 70s. Just a regular high school. I just can't imagine middle-class school districts willing or able to shell out the money now. Priorities are different.
I know this isn't the answer you're looking for , .... but ...
I was exposed to Slap Electric Bass around 1976 when I went on my very first cruise to the Caribbean ... I sat in every night with one of the bands on the boat ... playing keys/bass , .... the bass player did some slapping ... I thought that was pretty cool as an 18 yr old, who had been playing bass for 4-5 yrs ( piano for 12 yrs at that time ) ... so I fiddled around with that when I got back home ... !!! bandmates got a laugh out of it ...!!
I was exposed to Slap Electric Bass around 1976 when I went on my very first cruise to the Caribbean ... I sat in every night with one of the bands on the boat ... playing keys/bass , .... the bass player did some slapping ... I thought that was pretty cool as an 18 yr old, who had been playing bass for 4-5 yrs ( piano for 12 yrs at that time ) ... so I fiddled around with that when I got back home ... !!! bandmates got a laugh out of it ...!!
No offence but that was Marcus Miller. From the standing in the shadows of Motown tapes, where now famous bassplayers pay (play) tribute to Jamerson.
OR my theory has always been that somewhere along the line a bassist tragically lost a finger or 2 somehow, so invented slap bass in order to keep playing
- Jan 12, 2011
- 4,578
- 2,460
- Disclosures
- Artist, Trickfish Amplification Bartolini Emerging Artist, MTD Kingston Emerging Artist. Artist, Tsunami Cables
A decent thread. I would offer the cliche' it's not what you do it's how you do it. Obviously the way Larry Graham does it has brought it to the masses. To add Louis Johnson gave no credit to Larry Graham which is hard to believe but his style is somewhat different than Graham's. Now we have Cats like Victor Wooten who has added his twist. This discussion brings to mind the Van Halen debate concerning tapping. Again another case of how you do it as opposed to what you're doing. I happen to like the offering concerning the Bartók pizzicato. I may have to come up with a Funk Song and call it the Bartok Groove 
There were definitely upright players playing slap long before Larry Graham, but with different technique given the nature of the instrument. But as far as the Electric bass goes, Larry Graham was the first to do it or at least the first to popularize the technique. Whether he got his inspiration from Upright bass players or not, we'll never know. He's never claimed to have done so. He mentioned inventing the technique because his drummer didn't show up one day and he needed a more percussive sound to make up for the lack of a drummer.
Check out Eddie South. A classically trained violinist who, like many African Americans, wasn't accepted and consequently played with gypsies like Django Reinhart.Those clips are awesome. Both of those gentlemen could easily hold their own in any era. I mean we're talking about 60 and 80 years ago. We've become so jaded by the iPhone age. It makes me wonder how many artists, showmen and flat out musical geniuses have been lost to time. I can think of literally thousands of bands I seen over the years, and dozens of those nights were absolutely magical. Everyone in the room could feel it, you just waned to start a revolution or fall madly in love or both. And not even an old Polaroid (a type of instant camera kids) taken for the record. Now every garage band has a YouTube page.
Youth is wasted on the young!
Reefer Man.Ha! Ha! Ha! That dude has been hitting the pipe my friend. You know; jazz cigarettes, wacky tobakki, the Devil's lettuce. That boy is high-high! Guess some things never go out of style.
