Taking a lesson with a musical hero?

I had a year or so of lessons with Mark White, the bass player for the Spin Doctors, he's a phenomenal bass player.

 

I used to really dig the Spin Doctors... Bet you can't tell...

 

Each teacher has their strengths, and I did get a lot from lessons from Mark. I changed from a fixed to floating plucking hand and my right hand became much more efficient, and overall my speed increased. I'm not a slap guy but I learned a bunch about that. I stopped lessons with Mark when I moved out of state, and when I came back to [large metropolitan area in Texas] I wanted to be more jazz theory focused, so I'm now taking lessons with Andrew Pouska.

 

Mark was on TB as BIGBOTTOMBASS but he may not be active anymore.

 

I once had a lesson with Jeff Berlin and it was excellent. He gave me enough material to work for a long time, and I still work at it, as the matter of fact. I went for some of his instructional material afterwards, with new insights and understanding from that lesson.
If I remember correctly, somebody here on TB was supposed to start lessons with Doug Wimbish, I was really curious about how it would turn out, but the member kinda disappeared after that.

 

I had a semester of private jazz instruction recently with the great saxophonist Woody Witt. I got a very clear vision about what is important in music that i will be working on for a long time.
Woody doesnt play any bass, but he can hear a bass or chord line and dissect it immediately . He could also listen to my playing and offer a lot of valuable insight. He also had a few top notch drummers as students. Wished i had taken private lessons from him a decade ago.