One of my own fretless electric bass guitars, made by Rob Allen

I love the sound of the fretless bass guitar. Apparently the modern version of this instrument was invented in 1961 by Bill Wyman, bass player of the Rolling Stones, though it was popularized starting in the early ’70s  by Jaco Pastorius, best known for his work with Weather Report.

Jaco kicks of my selection of favorite fretless bass tracks. There are dozens, even hundreds, of mind-blowing Jaco recordings to choose from (I tend to prefer his recordings accompanying others to those he led under his own name). A great introduction to his style and to fretless bass in general is the title track from Pat Metheny’s first solo album, Bright Size Life. Recorded in 1975, this recording is also one of Jaco’s first.

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Next up is Mark Egan, a prolific modern bassist probably best known for electric jazz (and also for his work with Pat Metheny). One of his many rock credits is So Red the Rose, a 1985 “art project” album by most of the members of Duran Duran. His playing on “The Promise” inspired me to get a fretless bass guitar. The song is essentially a duet between his up-front bass and Simon Lebon (with some great “Money for Nothing”-style background vocals from Sting, not to mention guitar by David Gilmour and keyboards by Herbie Hancock). Just listen to the huuuuge slides up and down the fingerboard.

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And third for this post is a bassist not known for fretless: the late Allen Woody, who played with Gov’t Mule and The Allman Brothers Band. The superb Shades of Two Worlds solidified the Allman Brothers’ early ’90s comeback, and it ends with an acoustic version of Robert Johnson’s classic blues “Come On In My Kitchen.”

Woody must be playing a five string acoustic bass guitar here, because he goes down low. And it sounds great, immaculately produced by the great Tom Dowd. Turn this one up loud (and like all of these, play on on a setup that can reproduce the very low frequencies – not your laptop computer).

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And I can’t resist one Jaco Pastorius bonus track: “Coyote” from Joni Mitchell’s Hejira. Jaco just in a great place, easing all around and through the song – he’s a character. (Click here to play if you don’t see the Flash player below.)

• Jaco Pastorius on Wikipedia here
  • Pat Metheny’s Bright Size Life on Amazon here
  • Joni Mitchell’s Hejira on Amazon here
• Mark Egan on Wikipedia here
  • Arcadia’s So Red the Rose on Amazon here
• Allen Woody on Wikipedia here
  • The Allman Brothers Band’s Shades of Two Worlds on Amazon here

Related posts:

• My favorite upright bass tracks
• My most popular Flickr photo: Jaco Pastorius Artist Series Fender Jazz Fretless Electric Bass

"hands in music" by Giuliagas on Flickr

Time to highlight a few of my favorite recorded tracks by some of the greatest upright bass players of all time.

The first is by Milt Hinton, nicknamed “The Judge.” If any single person can be said to have created modern acoustic jazz bass, it’s Hinton. He’s the most-recorded jazz musician of all time.

The Judge was seventy-eight years old when he played on Branford Marsalis’ superb Trio Jeepy in 1989. Hinton’s playing is wonderful throughout (not to mention Branford’s and Jeff “Tain” Watts’), but probably at its most exciting on the ’30s standard “Three Little Words.” Who else ever played like this? Maybe Slam Stewart? The false start is great – Branford and Judge excitedly talking through the changes, followed by Branford’s crazy jump into the actual tune.

Next up is Arvell Shaw, another influential early jazz bassist. Shaw was born in St. Louis, and after WWII became known for his long-time work with Louis Armstrong. I really like his playing on Fats Waller’s “Viper’s Drag / The Reefer Song” from the 1978 Broadway musical review Ain’t Misbehavin’. This track is essentially a bass duet with the singer – I suspect the composer or arranger wrote most of the bass part, but Shaw really draws out the languid spirit by hanging way behind the beat.

And no bass roundup is complete without including Ray Brown, the pure embodiment of the jazz double bassist. I could include dozens of tracks here, but I just love how he takes over Harry Connick Jr.’s “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” a guest spot on Connick Jr.’s album 25. You’ve got to love Connick Jr.’s joyous shoutout to Brown toward the end, too. Beginning to end, this track is a double bass showcase.

• Milt Hinton on Wikipedia here
  • Branford Marsalis’ Trio Jeepy on Amazon here
• Arvell Shaw on Wikipedia here
  • Ain’t Misbehavin’ Original Broadway Cast recording on Amazon here
• Ray Brown on Wikipedia here
  • Harry Connick Jr.’s 25 on Amazon here

Related post:

• Some favorite fretless electric bass tracks (4 July 2010)

I’m not much of a Cirque du Soleil fan, though somehow over the years I’ve seen at least a half dozen of their productions. Most were in tents on tour in New York or San Francisco, though also a couple in Vegas at their purpose-built theaters. Only “Zumanity” was a total dud – I left at intermission – but I have a hard time remembering anything that really distinguished the others from each other.

Those by-now over-familiar Cirque du Soleil traits permeate “LOVE”: exquisite retro-French costuming, little vehicles that seem to drive themselves, Peter Pan-like trapezery (I just made that word up), and a maelstrom of apparent gymnastic chaos on the ground. “LOVE” is an ideal introduction to the (initially breathtaking) tricks of Cirque du Soleil’s trade, though the only gimmick likely to surprise frequent Cirque attendees is a bit in which the ushers pull a billowing sheet just over the heads of the entire crowd. (My colleague Mark made the apt observation that “LOVE” is heavier on the dancing and lighter on the acrobatics than usual for Cirque du Soleil, but there’s still plenty of the latter to keep you entertained.)

My favorite segment was “Help”, during which four roller skaters perform daringly choreographed acrobatics on two half pipes. I also enjoyed “Revolution/Back in the U.S.S.R.”, which included some fantastic antics on four trampolines. But if they had trampolines, why didn’t they use them in “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”?

Cirque du Soleil shows are not known for their narrative cohesion, and “LOVE” is no exception. “LOVE” does feature several recurring characters, though their individual segments are rarely compelling or memorable enough for the audience to establish any feeling for them. There seems to be a thematic undercurrent of “a chronology of The Beatles”,  occasionally made explicit by some superbly realized projections, but those segments are so infrequent that they add more color to the performance than actual structure.

That gets us to the main draw of “The Beatles LOVE”, the music. I love the soundtrack to this show, remixed and reimagined primarily by Giles Martin, son of producer and “fifth Beatle” George Martin. Working from the original master tapes, Giles creates a beautiful tapestry (dare I say “mashup”?) of Beatles music that flows beautifully, evoking a huge variety of memories and emotions. Purists need not apply – they’ll hear “Hey Bulldog” merged into “Lady Madonna”, or the bass line from “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” underneath “Here Comes the Sun”. But I love grasping for familiar snippets of Beatles tunes as they float in and out of other songs.

So should you shell out $125 to see this show in Vegas? If you’re a Cirque du Soleil veteran looking for innovations on a now well-worn formula, then “LOVE” is not the show for you. But if you would like an introduction to the acrobatics and visual splendor of Cirque du Soleil, then “LOVE” will do as well as any. And if you love The Beatles and are okay hearing the music teased apart and reassembled, then you absolutely should add “The Beatles LOVE” to your itinerary.

(By the way, NPR did a great interview with Giles Martin about the creation of the soundtrack – you can find it here.)

(And on the same trip I visited a few worthy off-Strip attractions, including the Liberace Museum and Hoover Dam. Photo albums of each are linked here.)

From Lefsetz’ blog…

Bob Lefsetz is the author of “The Lefsetz Letter.” Famous for being beholden to no one and speaking the truth, Lefsetz addresses the issues that are at the core of the music business: downloading, copy protection, pricing and the music itself.

His intense brilliance captivates readers from Steven Tyler to Rick Nielsen to Bryan Adams to Quincy Jones to EVERYBODY who’s in the music business.

Maybe Steven Tyler and Bryan Adams pore over every word this guy writes, but please tell me that not everybody in the music business is captivated by CD sound quality comparisons done on a PC.

In his review of the new remastered Beatles CDs (“The Beatles Remasters“) Lefsetz does a nice job conveying his feelings on listening to music he lived with and loved as it was released. He also rightly rails against the sound quality of modern rock and pop recordings, badly compressed in one way to sound loud, in another to “be” small (the more easily to fit onto iPods).

However, Lefsetz steps in it about two-thirds of the way through this review of comparative sound quality. My friend Michael Levinson says it more succinctly than I can:

From Michael Levinson’s Facebook comment…

“Upon insertion of ‘Help!’, I was told by computer…” = FAIL

If that sentence had been at the beginning, I would have been spared the four minutes I took reading the rest of the article, which included such gems as “This was no longer a record, this was someone real singing.” and “Listening for hours, all I can say is…I believe in yesterday.”

Was Lefsetz really inspired to write such treacle – and to make such detailed comparisons to the previous CD issues – by the listening experience on his computer? Even if he has a tricked-out setup worthy of his station in the “music business”, who’s going to believe his sound quality claims when this is his sole reference to the reproduction system?

Sigh. Let’s look forward to next week, when the CDs are available to regular consumers. The hoi polloi might not share the “intense brilliance” of a Bob Lefsetz, but they might have the sense to blog responsibly about how these CDs differ from their predecessors.