How The Rhythm Section Got Its Name - Jerry Coker - Part 2, Bass and Guitar

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

This feature is a continuation of The Rhythm Section Part 1 Drums which in its completed form is Chapter 3 of Jerry Coker’s excellent book.that is focused on enhancing your appreciation of the music. 

Jerry Coker, himself a teacher, composer/arranger, and noted saxophonist, has written How To Listen To Jazz to fill the need for a layman's guide to understanding improvisation and its importance in the development of this artistically rich yet complex music form. Without relying on overly technical language or terms, Jerry Coker Shows how you can become a knowledgeable jazz listener - whether you are an aspiring musician, student, jazz aficionado, or new listener.

BASS

“Although the bass seems in most jazz groups to be the heartbeat of the group, as well as the instrument best suited to carrying a bass line, the earliest jazz groups were apt to be without a string bass or to use a bass horn or tuba instead. In fact, it was quite common in the twenties and early thirties for the bass player to carry along a bass horn as well as the string bass to play on some selections. Even when the string bass became a more standard instrument in the jazz bands, its role was subdued and restricted to playing simple chord tones on the first and third beats of the measure most of the time, and he seldom, if ever, played a solo.

The liberator of the bass was Jimmy Blanton, bassist with Duke Ellington in 1940-41, who is credited with creating the walking bass line as well as producing some of the first melodic bass solos. A bass line, generally in quarter notes (one note for each beat), that moves in a scalar, semi-chromatic fashion, as opposed to two notes per measure on simple chord tones.

Blanton died very young, before his full potential was realized. Ellington recorded an album with Blanton that illustrates his great talent. In its 10" LP form of the fifties (already a reissue of the 78 RPM originals), the album was called Duos. His lead was taken by bassists of the forties, like Oscar Pettiford, Milt Hinton, Slam Stewart (who bowed his solos and hummed in unison with himself), and Curley Russell. Pettiford's impressive technique and hornlike melodic style was followed by several bass virtuosos of the fifties and sixties, like Charles Mingus, Paul Chambers (with Miles Davis), and the astoundingly swift and complex style of Scotty LaFaro. It was most unfortunate that the lives of Blanton, Pettiford, Chambers, and LaFaro were all cut short, at the height of their playing careers. Another important bassist Ray Brown, is a master of the walking bass line, playing with one of the biggest sounds possible to achieve. He played with Dizzy Gillespie and, later, with the original Modern Jazz Quartet (before Percy Heath). The MJQ was the first jazz concert chamber group. Ray then joined the Oscar Peterson Trio, beginning a long and productive association. Percy Heath is an uncommonly well-schooled bassist, having spent most of his career with the Modern Jazz Quartet. For the last decade, the giants of the bass have been Ron Carter (with Miles Davis) and Jimmy Garrison (who gained fame with the John Coltrane Quartet). Garrison, probably inspired by Mingus and Brown, was largely responsible for the use of double-stops (playing of more than one note simultaneously) in bass solos. Another strong contributor to the bass style is Charlie Haden, who is most often heard with Ornette Coleman's Quartet.

When the rock style began to permeate jazz music, many bassists switched from the acoustic bass (wooden, upright) to the electric bass. Most of them, like Ron Carter, continue to play both acoustic and electric basses. Probably no bassist today rivals Stanley Clarke (with Chick Corea) in his handling of both kinds of bass, perfectly accommodating the jazz and rock styles.

A stunning arrival on the jazz scene was bassist Jaco Pastorius (with Herbie Hancock and Weather Report), whose remarkable speed, mastery of double-stops (actually many were full, rich chords), command of the harmonics range, and tasteful use of electronic gadgetry when needed made him an overnight sensation. [Harmonics are achieved on stringed instruments by very lightly touching the strings at certain places (while plucking with the other hand, of course), causing the pitches to be much higher but related to the pitch that would have been produced had the string been depressed all the way, as it normally is.]

On Portrait Of Tracy (Epic PE 33949) he played the piece unaccompanied, supplying melody, chords, and bass line, making his bass sound much like an electric piano. His improvisations, which moved as quickly and gracefully as solos heard on any other instrument, were highly original and filled with choice melodies. Pastorius also composed and arranged music with a talent comparable to his performing level.

The bass has undergone quite a transformation. Like the drums, the bass was relatively insignificant at first, sometimes not even included in the earlier jazz groups, and the first assignments were pretty mundane. People like Blanton, Pettiford, Mingus, and LaFaro proved the instrument's virtuoso possibilities and soloing capacity, while Clarke and Pas-torius have brought the instrument to its full fruition, technically and stylistically.

GUITAR

“The earliest jazz guitarists were mostly blues singers, like Huddy Ledbetter ("Leadbelly"), who used the guitar in an almost purely accompanimental capacity. In fact, a banjo was the instrument more likely to be found in the early jazz groups. Banjoist Johnny St. Cyr was a regular member of the famous Joe "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong Orchestras in the early and middle twenties. In time the banjo was replaced by the guitar; for a while, at least, the guitar's role in the group was somewhat limited, like those of the bass and drums. The early guitars were not amplified, played virtually no solos, and simply supplied a strumming, pulse-keeping part. Eddie Lang (with Red Nichols, Miff Mole, Joe Venuti, and other Dixieland groups of the late twenties and the thirties) was one of the first liberators of the guitar, playing solos occasionally and having a more important role to play in the rhythm section.

Charlie Christian was one of the most significant and widely imitated guitarists in jazz history. It is remarkable that Christian lived for only two years after being discovered by Benny Goodman. Although he died at the age of twenty-three, his influence has been felt by nearly every major guitarist since that time. Furthermore, Christian was simultaneously involved in two different eras of jazz history: the Swing Era (the period that was noted for the profusion of famous big bands and the jitterbug dancers) and the Bebop Era that followed. Christian's guitar was amplified electronically, and he was a heavily featured soloist. His improvising style was angular (that is, his improvised melodies contained many wide leaps) and extremely original, seemingly without precedent, though Christian claimed that Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt was a strong influence for him.

After Christian, the guitar became a much more popular jazz instrument than before, giving rise to a number of fine guitarists during the Bebop Era (and thereafter), like Jimmy Raney (with Stan Getz), Tal Farlow (with Red Norvo), Billy Bauer (with Woody Herman and Lennie Tristano), Arv Garrison (with Charles Parker), and studio guitarist Johnny Smith (with Stan Getz). 

Perhaps the most inspiring impro-viser of that group of guitarists is Jimmy Raney, who developed a flowing, graceful improvising style that always contained interesting note choices (sometimes deriving from polychords, the stacking of two unrelated chords simultaneously). Raney was also responsible for inspiring Stan Getz to one of his finest performances as a sideman on the album, 'Jimmy Raney Plays,'' for which Raney was the composer. Ironically, Getz appears on the album under an assumed name, Sven Coolson, because he was under contract to another recording company. Getz' playing style was typical of the "cool school" (a restrained manner of playing) popular at that time.

The great master of jazz guitar, Wes Montgomery, was a self-taught player with a bittersweet career. Wes played with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra in the forties, and though already a very accomplished player and ripe for stardom, he returned to his home, Indianapolis, to live a more conventional and stable family life. It took him away from national exposure before he could rise to early fame, but the people in the Indianapolis area, especially the jazz musicians, were intensely aware of his mastery. Wes and his two

brothers, Monk (bass) and Buddy (piano), teamed up with Pookie Johnson (tenor) and Sonny Johnson (drums) to form a quintet that was legendary, performing for many years at the Turf Bar. It ranked among the finest jazz groups ever assembled. Individually, every player was an excellent soloist, and as an ensemble, their repertoire (mostly originals) was enormous, yet full of complexities in the arrangements, which were all played from memory. It was a perfect example of a group of self-taught players whose music nonetheless was expertly crafted and stylistically abreast (or ahead of) the times.

Wes Montgomery's improvising style was revelatory, especially in terms of building a solo to a point of climax, which he accomplished by playing the guitar in different ways (in themselves innovative). The first part of his solo, perhaps the first chorus or two, would be played as most players do, that is, in a single melodic line. Then in the middle of the solo, Wes would begin playing in octaves (two notes that are eight scale steps apart, bearing the same letter name but in different registers), which he could do at about the same speed as other guitarists would play single lines. Incidentally, most guitarists today will, at times, play in octaves in the manner invented by Montgomery. Then, in the next stage of his solo, Wes enlarged the octaves into tightly-compressed chords that moved in a melodic fashion, which harmonized his melodies. Finally, the compacted chords would open up into very full, widely spaced chords. By combining the various textures (single line, octaves, tight chords, and open chords), in their particular order, his solo would grow in intensity throughout its length, and the solo acquired an acute sense of order. Montgomery's sense of form also extended itself into the weaving of his melodies, each melodic fragment getting repeated, developed, and played in variations.

Suddenly, around 1959, Wes was rediscovered by the rest of the world, almost overnight, resulting in many semi-pop albums, in which Wes played tunes like "Goin' Out Of My Head" in octaves and little else. For those who knew him

well musically, it was frustrating that he finally gained deserved recognition and economic reward for his genius, but at the expense of much of his musical greatness. Wes Montgomery died just a few years after his rediscovery.

Because Montgomery brought the guitar to perfection in the existing jazz style, it is natural that, after his death, the next great guitarists, with the exception of George Benson, played in a jazz-rock style that contrasted sharply with earlier guitarists. The new giants of guitar included Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin (with Miles Davis and Mahavishnu), and John Abercrombie (with Billie Cobham). Their manner of playing involves the use of string stretching (when it is applied to sustained tones, the pitch "yaws") and a profusion of electronic gadgetry, like phase shifters, reverberation, echo-plex, fuzz-tone, and cry-baby [wah-wah]pedals, much of which originated in the rock style.”

To be continued with Piano and the Functions of the Rhythm Section in Part 3