Bass is the Place, II

If I had to pin it down to a single jazz piece, I’d have to go with John Coltrane’s “Africa.” Large ensemble, including two bassists, one of whom -- whether Reggie Workman or Art Davis -- lays down the pulse on top of which everyone else builds.

Bass is the Place, I

(or: Bass & Infrastructure, Part Whatever)

Simon told me he expected me to weigh in with a some candidates from the jazz canon, like I did during the drummage shootout. Far be it from me to disoblidge.

But as I said at the outset, I more often than not tend to hear the bass in relation to interplay with the rhythm section as a whole. This is especially the case with jazz. There's plenty of great jazz bassists I could cite -- the obvious list that'd include Charles Mingus, Paul Chambers, Reggie Workman, Jimmy Garrison, Charlie Haden, Ron Carter, Richard Davis, Cecil McBee, etc. & etc. And I’d taxed to identify exceptional work (as evidenced by this-versus-that short solo) by any of the above that’d work for yootubage purposes.

So I think I’ll try this another way. That being: the role of bass in different ensembles hailing from  different phases of a particular artist's career/evolution. The artist in question being Herbie Hancock.

Yeahyeah, maybe a bit of a cumbersome conceit, I know. Be that as it may, here goes...





After doing a brief live stint playing in Mongo Santamaria’s band, Hancock decided to do a "Latin" joint for his third LP as a frontman, a quartet outing that also included bassist Paul Chambers and percussionists Willie Bobo and Osvaldo "Chihuahua" Martinez. With the exception of one composition, Hancock completely ditches his usual heavily melodic style of playing; instead playing in an almost wholly percussive manner as he improvises and navigates his way in and around whatever the other three are cooking up (e.g., after the 4:20 mark in the clip above). As polyrhythmic patterns proliferate, shifting this way and that, the duty goes to Chambers to provide the pulse that threads everything together. In effect: Centering the isht.




One of Hancock’s contributions to the Blow-Up soundtrack. Supposedly the bassman this time around was Ron Carter, but this one sounds like it may’ve instead been handled by the sessions' guitarist Jim Hall. Whichever the case, chances are you’ll recognize it right away, seeing it was borrowed some years later Booty Collins when he provided the bass line for a certain very Huge International Dance Hit.





Early on Hancock had proven himself exceptionaly sharp in a couple of departments. Foremost was his ability to pen slick melodic hooks, the sort that put tunes like “Watermelon Man”, "Cantaloupe Island" and “Maiden Voyage” over with audiences and peers in a big way, scoring him a handful of very popular crossover hits. Second was the fact that he -- at the advice of his mentor, trumpter Donald Byrd -- got his publishing right in order from the outset; thus allowing him to collect all due royalties on the aforementioned hits. That money would serve him well by the early 1970s, when Hancock went into full plugged-in/dashiki-and-afro/Zen Buddhist mode with what became known as his so-called Mwandishi Sextet.

Comparisons to Miles’s electric material of these years are common, but there are major differences. Whereas Miles’s electro-fusion material was often cluttered, dense, and heavily scripted; Hancock & crew took a more open, organic, and spacious approach that made for a lot more breathing room between the musicians’ interplay and improvising. It was also a lot more “cosmic” (in a pysch-era/Sun Ra-ish sense) than much of Miles’s work. Aside from Hancock, the personnel for this period included Benny Maupin on reeds, trumpeter Eddie Henderson, trombonist Julian Priester, drummer Billy Hart, and Buster Williams on bass (with the later addition of one Dr. Pat Gleeson on synths). By the time they got around to recording their third and final album, Sextant, Hancock had all but fully ditched his acoustic piano, and Buster Williams’s bass pushed forward in the mix, weighting in with a buzzing, almost stoner-rock type heaviness. If that weren't enough, the bass parts are often multi-layered, usually with Hancock doubling it on the keyboard, and sometimes additionally fleshed with Maupin going low on the bass clarinet or Priester’s bass trombone.

As a musical experiment, the Mwandishi venture didn’t prove commercially viable. Audiences were reportedly enthusiastic, but limited; and the three albums the group recorded netted only modest sales. At which point all of Hancock’s royalties came in handy, him covering the losses and keeping the outfit going by paying band members and traveling expenses out of his own pocket before finally calling an end to the project.




With 1973’s Head Hunters, Hancock backed the whole electro-fusion enterprise up and tried it again -- this time with a more pop-minded approach in mind. And hey, did it ever prove lucrative. The funky New Orleans-style strut of the tune "Chameleon" became a massive hit, as well as a common staple in the repertoires of school marching bands across the country.

By this point he was working with bassist Paul Jackson, percussionists Bill Summers and Harvey Mason, and (once again) outre reedman Bennie Maupin. "Chameleon" is most often known in its abridged 7-inch version -- a version that shaves off a full 13 minutes of the original, largely paring the thing back to the tunes opening theme and vamps, in which Hancock carries the punchy tuba-like bass portions on an ARP Odyssey. It’s only in the song’s full version that you get the expansive middle section (roughly 7:32 - 13:00+ in the clip above), at which point Jackson takes over and helps open the groove up into more broad-vista terrain.






Hancock would record several more albums with the group in the years that followed. Jackson, Maupin and crew would record their own jazz-funk LP without Hancock, adding guitarist DeWayne "Blackbyrd" McKnight for 1975’s Survival of the Fittest; which would provide hiphop producers with a treasure trove of sample-worthy grooves in later decades.

In the Shadow of Mount Harissa (Interlude)

Or the umpteenth return of the son of drummige...

This one falling somewhere midway between Ellington's own "jungle music" of a prior era, and the "jungle" sound of nearly three decades later. I fell deeply in love with the latter when it first came around, with its "'amen' break" sample chopped, reconfigured, accelerated, and pitch-shifted every which way.

Note the similarities with the beat on the above, its patterning and fills, which was recorded some three years before the Winstons recorded "Amen, Brother." The beat on "Blue Pepper" is an unusual one -- more of a "pop" rhythm more likely to turn up on a Ramsey Lewis jawn of the same vintage, but not something you'd expect to hear behind Ellington.

The drummer for the session was one Rufus 'Speedy' Jones, who I'm otherwise unfamiliar with beyond Ellington's Far East Suite. Maybe because I was never much of a swing/big band aficionado; which was the domain where Jones did most of his work. A little research reveals that Rufus Jones originally hailed from South Carolina, and first gained notice behind the kit while working behind Lionel Hampton and Maynard Ferguson. This was followed by a three-year stint in Count Basie's ranks before being lured away by the Duke for the recording session at hand. Here's a clip of Jones kicking up something more akin to the standard big-band style solo...




Some sources have it that Jones also played with James Brown at some point. But I can find nothing that supports the claim, and am inclined to call bullshit since I can't imagine how or when it might've happened. Dunno, seems unlikely, especially seeing how Jones (accounts concur) was forced to put down his sticks in 1973, due to the debilitating effects of early-onset arthritis. He died in 1990, after reputedly having spent his later years working as a janitor.

Admittedly, it'd been many, many years since I last heard The Far East Suite. I'd forgotten about this number until it crossed my path again the other day. Weird to be reminded, to hear that a type of riddim that would figure heavily into part of your adulthood turn up in another earlier form, as recorded roughly around the time of your own birth.

While we're on the topic: Bonus beats. Some classic, disrobed oldskool choppage...




An old personal favorite, that one.

Everybody Else But Me

By now we all know that Abstract Expressionism was a CIA front. No surprise there, because Jackson Pollock's work embodied American freedom (dammit). Which was why after 1956 Pollock lived out his life in luxury. He bought some property in Colorado, never had to so much look at paint can again, never had to agonize over dick for the rest of his days. Ornette Coleman, being an unwitting stooge to the program, would continue the operation -- going so far as to call one of his albums Free Jazz, with said album sporting a Pollock painting on the cover. Isht put a bug up Leonid Brezhnev's ass like you wouldn't believe. Unfortunately, Coleman was (pardon the pun) a "free" agent...a dupe. He was never on the payroll proper, he never realized that the same policy that covered inarticulate paint-slingers from Wyoming might not extend the same largess to a soft-spoken, non-caucasoid note-spatterer from Texas. The CIA didn't wasn't so enlightened about having it's EOE ducks in a row back in those days, so where else can a dude go from there but to Harlem? Here's to being ahead of your time, yet still being behind it...or something like that.

And those who claimed Coleman was a "charlatan" were actually part of a covert psych-ops campaign; one that supposed to throw people off and smokescreen the origins of the first (real) operation. It paid off handsomely, too -- because Brezhnev and his politburo didn't know to collectively shit or wind their wristwatches by that point.

Anyway, anyway, enough with the sarcasm. The clip above is new to me, though the person who kindly posted it cross-ref's it with the Roland Kirk/John Cage film (also by Dick Fontaine) that's been circulating (thank you internet) for several years now. I found the Who's Crazy? LPs many years ago -- back when I was in college -- but haven't revisited them in a forever. Coleman switching out between sax and trumpet and violin, to maximum deliriating effect. Executed as the soundtrack for some obscure European film that supposedly had some Living Theater connection. Coleman reworked some of the resulting material for his Blue Note album The Empty Foxhole less than a year later, letting his ten-year-old son Denardo step in to bang away on a drumkit at times. The latter outing being, if I recall, mostly an abridged and weaker version of the former.

Not that anyone noticed, except for Brezhnev and the apparatchiks in the politburo. Man, they hated it. Plus, The Empty Foxhole had even more of that slapdash "free"-style American paint-y stuff on the cover, and it came out when the whole Vietnam thing was building. Far from a subtle message, that. Plus it was all Chinese music to begin with, wasn't it? So what more evidence do you need? It all fits, once you think about it.