Ron Carter

As I near the end of the semester I’ve gotten more picky and have spent more time researching top bass players and Ron Carter is one that almost slipped right by me. Ron Carter is right up there with Ray Brown, the Miles Davis quintet and other greats in terms of his influence. According to allaboutjazz.com: " He was named Outstanding Bassist of the Decade by the Detroit News, Jazz Bassist of the Year by Downbeat magazine, and Most Valuable Player by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences." [1]   


Ron Carter was born on May 4, 1937 in Ferndale Michigan. His initial instrument was the cello that he started to play around the age of 10. He attended the Cass Technical High School in Detroit, followed by the Eastman School Music in Rochester, New York. He played in the Philharmonic Orchestra there and graduated in 1959. He then graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 1961 with a master's degree in double bass performance.

After graduation he worked as a free-lance bass player, playing and touring with several different bands. In the early 1960s he really started to make some noise and became noticed as he came to fame with second great Miles Davis quintet. He played with the New York Jazz Quartet in the 1970s. In 1993 he earned a Grammy award for Best Jazz Instrumentalist group with the Miles Davis quintet and also another one in 1998 for a song that he composed for the film ‘Round Midnight. He has composed music for A Gathering of Old Men, starring Lou Gosset Jr. He has composed music for many films as well as worked on many projects for Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

He was Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Studies when it was in Boston. He was on the faculty of the Music Department of The City College of New York and is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

For my listening this week I picked a piece by the Miles Davis Quintet. This features Ron Carter on bass. Herbie Hancock on piano, Miles Davis on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on sax and Tony Williams on drum set. This piece starts out very fast. They keep this speed and intensity throughout the piece. It seems to be in an AABA form with a 4 beats per measure time feel. It is hard to tell exactly just because there is so much going on. We start out with a trumpet solo by Miles Davis. Backgrounds come in a bit later. At about the 2:20 min mark we go to a sax solo. All this time we hear Carter in the background just literally cruising on the stand-up bass. The ending is really cool. It slows down and the band fades out to the piano and sax. A really great listen!

Francis Rocco Prestia

As I continue my study on jazz bassists I chose to modernize my search a little bit and Francis Rocco Prestia came to the top of my list. Rocco is the current bass player for the band known as Tower of Power.

Prestia was born in Sonora California on March 7th, 1951. Having gone to school with Emilio Castillo, (who currently plays with Tower of Power as well) Prestia had been taking guitar lessons and he auditioned for Castillo’s band at the age of 14. After studying with Terry Saunders Rocco made the switch to the bass guitar. As Castillo started to get more proficient on his tenor sax, Saunders added horns to his band and they began playing songs by bands such as The Temptations and James Brown.
As they added a total of five horns the band became known as Tower of Power or”T.O.P.”. At this time the band began composing original songs and having successful major performances they became more noticed. In 1971 Bill Graham signed the band to his management company and they released their first recording known as East Bay Grease with his San Francisco Records label.  As the band toured excessively for the next 10 years they started to lose a little bit of their luster. Substance abuse began to take its toll on the band and in 1977 Prestia was fired to set an example in the band.

Prestia continued to tour and play with bands such as the Bay Area blues band. In 1983 he was hired by Frank Fiore who was the conductor of Lola Falana. He took Prestia in and began to teach him how to read music. Much to his surprise, in 1984 Prestia received a call from Castillo and was offered to rejoin the band. He continues to play with them today.

In 2002 Prestia was diagnosed with severe liver failure and was told he would need a liver transplant. The Rocco Prestia Medical Fund was formed and this made his operation and recovery possible. Over the next 8 years he recovered and in 2010 he rejoined the stage with Tower Of Power. A quote from Prestia shown by allaboutjazz.com Prestia states “I'm proud I've had a vehicle like Tower of Power to develop a personal style. A lot of cats - great players - never get that chance. They bounce around bands and sessions; they don't have the opportunity to cultivate a sound. So it’s been an honor and a privilege to be able to grow as an artist, as a player, in this band. Thank God I happened to be in the right place at just the right time.”[1]

For my listening selection this week I chose to spice things up a little bit. I chose a song by Tower of Power called Diggin on James Brown. this song features the band as a whole. I picked this song because it has Rocco Prestia playing bass. You can hear the "funk" he puts in his playing. It's ridiculous! This is an AABA song in a four beats per measure time feel. In this song you can tell the band thrives on each individual musician. They are very articulate and tight as a band. There is a saxophone solo around 2:45 min into the song that is very good. This song is very repetitive. Over all a very solid piece that is very fun to listen to! I especially thought this was cool being a live piece. The ending is spectacular. Give this one a listen! 

Charlie Haden

The next bassist in line that caught my attention was Charlie Haden. Haden became known as one of free jazz’s founding fathers. Born in 1937 in Shenandoah, Iowa he grew up with a musical childhood. His family had their own radio show broadcast twice a day from a 50,000 was station. Charlie grew up singing with the family band until he was diagnosed with polio at the age of 15. Due to the permanent damage from polio to his nerves in his face and throat, this was the end of his signing career.
After picking up the bass guitar he was hosted with Red Foley on a network broadcast in 1955 playing the bass in Foley’s band. As he became more proficient he moved to Los Angeles and began playing jazz. In 1957 he began playing with pianist Paul Bley at the Hillcrest Club. After hearing Ornette Coleman play for the first time he was impressed with him. Coleman as released from his band he met with him. Later that year Coleman and Haden teamed up with trumpet player Don Cherry and set player Billy Higgins to from the Ornette Coleman Quartet. A quote from allaboutjazz.com “Haden...” revolutionized the harmonic concept of bass playing in jazz. His ability to create serendipitous harmonies by improvising melodic responses to Coleman’s fee-form solos (rather than sticking to predetermined harmonies) was both radical and mesmerizing. His virtuosity lies…in an incredible ability to make the double bass ‘sound out’ and Haden cultivates the instrument’s gravity as no one else in jazz. He is a master of simplicity which is one of the most difficult things to achieve.” (Author Joachim Berendt in The Jazz Book).”[1]
In the years 1967-1976 Haden played as a member of Keith Jarrett’s trio, quarter and quintet. He teamed up with Coleman again and Don Cherry to form the band Old and New Dreams. In 1970 a pieces arranged for Charlie and several other soloists became a milestone in recorded jazz winning Japan’s Gold Disc Award from Swing Journal and France’s Grand Prix Charles Cros award.

In 1982 he formed the Jazz Studies program at California Institute of Arts. Haden formed the band Quartet West that has been together over 20 years. In 1997 classical composer Gavyn Bryars wrote “By the Varr” for Haden and it was recorded with the English Chamber Orchestra on the album “Farewell to Philosophy”. In 2001 Haden was awarded a Latin Grammy Award and in 2009 he received Bass Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He continues today to play and record and as quoted from allaboutjazz.com: “Charlie Haden truly is beyond category!”[2]

For some reason the blogger program would not find my youtube selection so I have left the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEwXcgwzIYE&feature=related

My listening selection this week features Charlie Haden with Pat Metheny. This song starts out in a very slow melodic form. I believe it is an AABA form but it is hard to follow with it being so slow. Around the 2 min mark (just before it) there is some silence and there is a key change. Although this really doesn’t feature Haden all that much, one can tell that he truly is very skilled. I thought this was an exceptional peace to select since it has him on a stand-up bass. These two musicians complement each other extremely well. Truly an amazing piece of music if you have a love for acoustic music, if not this may be a little hard to sit through!

Jaco Pastorius

Jaco Pastorius is the next jazz bassist on my list of influential jazz bassists. He and Stanley Clarke were by far two of the jazz bassist in the 1970s. He was just as talented at composing, arranging and producing as he was playing.
Jaco was born in December of 1951 in Pennsylvania to a family already involved in music with the birth name of John Francis Pastorius III. His dad played drums in the band that he played in. At a young age he and his family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he was raised. He was very skilled in football basketball and baseball. He took the name “Anthony” at his confirmation. He had a nickname that was influenced by baseball umpire Jocko Conlan and later when one of his pianists sent him a note and spelt it “Jaco” he liked it and changed the spelling.

As he grew up and played locally with bands, he became some sort of a well-known local legend. Soon after he started playing with Pat Metheny he was invited to join Weather Report where he became a third leading voice behind Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul. He played with them for several years and while playing with them he free-lanced on the side as a session man and a producer as he played Blood Sweat and Tears, Ira Sullivan albumns, Joni Mitchell, Paul Bley and many more. He recorded his album in his name in 1976.
The older he got the more mental health issues he had. He became very addicted to alcohol and some drugs that led to many instances where he was embarrassed in public. According to allmusic.com “…one was a violent crack-up on-stage at the Hollywood Bowl in mid-set at the 1984 Playboy Jazz Festival.”[1] He died in 1957 from a physical beating he took as he was trying to break into the Midnight Club in Fort Lauderdale. Many musicians and artists have written songs in his honor including Marcus Millers “Mr. Pastorius”.


http://grooveshark.com/s/Chicken/2g08km?src=5

Copy and paste the above link into your url.
(I used Groovesharks song because I liked the arrangement better. There are plenty of copies of this on youtube, some are of the band doing concerts so you can watch them play however the music quality is not there.)


The piece I picked for this weeks listening was a piece that Pastorius played called "Chicken". It appears to be in an AABA format. It is a funk chart. Jaco is laying down a funky beat on his bass and the guitar or keyboard is playing over him. Then we go into a guitar solo with the bass all funky in the background. We go from solo to solo and stay in this 4 beat per measure time. This is a good example of the type of music Pastorius is known for. Most of this peace is improvisation on top of the bass line with a swing feel on the set. Towards the middle of the song the bass into a solo at the same time the guitar is. He mixes it up quite a bit while keeping the tempo the same. These are some amazing solos! Towards the end of the song they take it back to the initial riff at the beginning of the song and end it with a typical quick hard ending.

Oscar Pettiford

Oscar Pettiford was born in September 1922 in Okmulgee Oklahoma. He was a primarily a double bassist but he also played the cello and was a well-known composer. He is considered one of the pioneers of bebop. He was a Native American but this was not known by most. The family band was his first real experience with music. He initially was a singer and dancer but he moved to piano and shortly thereafter to the bass around the age of 12. A few of the sources say that he was unhappy with the way people were playing the bass so he was going to develop his own individual way of playing it. According to allaboutjazz.com, “Pettiford is considered the pioneer of the cello as a solo instrument in jazz music.”
After a few years he joined Charlie Barnet’s band and was one of two bassists with the other being Chubby Jackson. In 1943 he made himself known when he was involved with Coleman Hawkins “The Man I Love”. In 1943 he formed a bebop group with Dizzy Gillespie in 1943 also. In the late 40’s he worked for Woody Herman and Duke Ellington. In 1949 Oscar broke his arm and wasn’t able to play his bass. So instead he picked up a cello that a friend had loaned him, tuned it in fourths an octave higher than the bass and became very proficient on the cello. He did not perform while his arm was broken since it was in a sling. Throughout the 50’s Pettiford did some freelance work but he mostly was a leader on bass and cello. He played with Thelonious Monk in the mid 1950’s as well. In 1958 he moved to Copenhagen in Europe and ended passing away from what doctors call a “polio-like-virus”.

My listening selection for this week is from the Oscar Pettiford band entitled "Blues in the Closet". This song starts out in  a 4 beat per measure feel. It seems to be in an AABA form. Pettiford plays a bass riff over and over again on a cello until a guitar comes in and they solo together as a type of duet. Then Pettiford and the soloist break up and the piano comes in. Then after a bit they all three come back together and play the initial riff together before a wonderful piano solo. All this time the set player is playing a laid back smooth bluesy feel. We know move on to a guitar solo and back to the cello solo with Pettiford. He takes the song out and shows off a little bit as the song comes to a close. Even though this is a basic song, one can see that Pettiford has some amazing talent on the cello.