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Double Bass Steve Swallow, Double Bassist

#6
Yeah, Michael - "Oh Big Love" is a favorite of mine, as well.
Looks like SS used (kind of) the second finger on top of the first finger pizz technique (in the right hand) - I guess playing on guts/no amp called for a lot of "meat" into the string.
Do you know who the drummer is on this? I can only see "R...." - is it R.Haynes?
Thanks.
 
#9
According to what Jack Bruce said in an interview, Steve Swallow "immediately ran out and got an electric bass upon seeing Cream perform."

Steve is a great musician - and would sound great on ANY insrument, including a tin can - but I'm curious as to why such a complete shift from upright bass to electric bass, played with a plectrum no less!

Looking at the vids above, why did he "quit" double bass? I mean, didnt Steve play with Bill Evans, thus placing him in the vaunted LaFaro-Gomez-Johnson axis? I'm sure he's answered the question many times (not that he has to), but I'm curious.
 
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#10
From www.jazzweekly.com | Interviews:

I resisted the electric bass on principle for years. I refused to touch one. I had the usual jazz musician's attitude toward electric instruments and rock and roll. I was working with Gary Burton. This would have been in late 1969 and we were doing a NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) show. I guess it was an early NAMM show, all the instrument manufacturers and Gary was doing demonstrations and brought me along so he didn't have to play solo and so the two of us were playing, playing twenty minutes, taking an hour off, playing twenty minutes all day long in a giant exposition place in Chicago. Midway through the second day, I was bored to tears and I had done everything, but gone into the Fender booth and so I went over there during one of our breaks and I made sure that nobody saw me. I ditched Gary and kind of snuck over. It was really like going into a peepshow or something. I looked stealthfully around to make sure nobody saw me and then split very quickly into the Fender booth. I picked up a Fender bass and the same thing happened. My fingers sent an immediate message to my brain and saying that we liked this. We want to do this. My brain was appalled and said no, but the dye had been cast. I went to the Gibson booth and did the same thing and preferred the Gibson instrument and so I asked them if I could take it back to the hotel and they said, "Sure." I took it back to the hotel and took the instrument out of its case and played it for what I thought was about twenty minutes. I looked up and looked at the clock and a couple of hours had gone by. There was no turning back. It was a very base and physical attraction that I just couldn't deny. Luckily, Gary was very supportive of all of this and receptive to the idea of using it in the band. So I began just using it on one or two tunes a night and it just gradually grew to the point where I was using it on more tunes than I was using the acoustic bass and then I moved to California with my family for a variety of reasons, but among them, to really learn to play the electric bass. At that point, I felt that I couldn't play both the acoustic and electric any longer. There just weren't enough hours in the day. I was just constantly guilty as well, when I was playing one, I saw the other sitting in the corner looking forlorn and very conflicted and so eventually, I got rid of my acoustic bass and I haven't had one since and I haven't regretted doing that either.
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I really like the Jimmy Guiffre Trio recordings. It's interesting to compare the 60s recordings with the "reunion" recordings of the 90s with Steve on BG.
 
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#11
I found the following, decade-old TB post regarding this:

Why did Steve Swallow switch? | TalkBass.com

...and about halfway down the following post:

brianrost said:
Stuff I've garnered from various interviews:

1. The Burton band was on a bill with Cream at one of the Fillmores and Steve dug what Jack Bruce was doing.

2. He picked up a Gibson EB2 at a NAMM show but soon realized (as Stanley Clarke also did) that it was way too muddy. He switched to a P-bass which was extensively modified over the years. Around 1980 he started using custom basses with piezo pickups, first a Fillipetti, later a Parker and now a Citron.

3. He decided the two axes were too different to play both. When Keith Jarrett asked him to join his band but insisted he go back to upright, he chose to stay with the electric for good and turned Keith down.

4. He chose to use a pick as he felt that the instrument called for guitar technique.
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I, too, think that it is a very interesting shift that SS did (DB to EB with a pick). He's very unique; you don't hear a lot of "Steve-clones" like you do with Jaco, Marcus, Pino, etc.
 
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#13
Hey @Michael Karn - have you heard the out takes from the first SWEET RAIN session with Swallow and Haynes? Hearing that and the Pete LaRoca BASRA recording made me start thinking of SS's playing as a kind of amalgam of Charlie Haden and Red Mitchell.
 
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#14
Ed Fuqua said:
Hey @Michael Karn - have you heard the out takes from the first SWEET RAIN session with Swallow and Haynes? Hearing that and the Pete LaRoca BASRA recording made me start thinking of SS's playing as a kind of amalgam of Charlie Haden and Red Mitchell.
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You know, i've heard about those other takes but never heard them. As much as i love Grady Tate, and as great as he and RC sound together, that record screams Haynes to me, especially with Chick being on it. And i like the Charlie/Red analogy, especially the Charlie part. It's like he took Charlie's style and made it more professional in a way, and NY hip too. And in another direction, there's something in the O Grande solo that puts me in the mind of Dennis
 
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#17
Regarding: "Sweet Rain" - (a great record, IMHO).
RC gets tripped up in the form @5:19 - 5:35 - he stays too long on the 2 Dominant 7th chords 1/2 step apart, and finally gets back on the bus @5:37.
Also - in the YT below, the sounding key is Bbminor (1st chord of the melody), but you can clearly hear that the key is actually Bminor, as RC plays many open strings (low) E's, A's and D's.
Sorry for the French soft-core film clip below - I think it's from an obscure Jerry Lewis film "The Bellboy Meets the French Whore"(?) (..."hey, you're no Laaaa-dy, Lady!")
Merci.
 
#18
Michael Karn said:
You know, i've heard about those other takes but never heard them. As much as i love Grady Tate, and as great as he and RC sound together, that record screams Haynes to me, especially with Chick being on it. And i like the Charlie/Red analogy, especially the Charlie part. It's like he took Charlie's style and made it more professional in a way, and NY hip too. And in another direction, there's something in the O Grande solo that puts me in the mind of Dennis
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I'm sorry but I don't buy the Charlie/Red analogy. Swallow always sounds like Swallow to my ears, although I don't care for his tone on that Sheila Jordan cut (below).
 

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