Dean Schmidt Live with Kelly Ash

I have posted some clips of Seattle bassist Dean Schmidt before, and here is a new recording from a club in Seattle called Lucid, that records every show and then posts them to Bandcamp. Living in the future is so cool. Check out some of the other sessions they have posted for some of the other acts in Seattle.

This recording is a quartet that has New York (ex-seattle) vocalist Kelly Ash and includes Eric Verlinde on piano, and Jose Martinez on drums. These guys are all some of the top players in Seattle and gig a lot. Like every night a lot. This entire band is sick. This gig was last week so this is fresh stuff.

Daily Licking 033: Bridge and Last 8 of Bill Evans on Oleo

Without further ado, let us continue. We left our hero approaching the bridge to Oleo, with 8 full measures of nothing but dominant chords for him to smite and lay waste to. Let us witness the destruction that ensues!

I added the generic Rhythm Changes for the bridge, just so you can see how many altered notes he plays against the standard chords. Again, no nice little box patterns in this solo for bass, it is all about melodic shapes that don't come from Bass-land. Knock yourself out analyzing those notes against those bridge chords. For instance on the D7 he plays F naturals, A flats, D flats - its a free for all!

Daily Licking 032: 16 Measures of Bill Evans on "Oleo"

Happy Pi day. And Albert Einstein's birthday. So if you saw a black hole today, thats why.

And speaking of Nobel-prize winning german physicists and the speed of gravity, how about some Bill Evans licks?

I took this one from "Oleo" off his record "Everybody Digs Bill Evans". I predict that after listening and checking out what he did in just the first 16 measures of the tune you will see why the title of that record is very accurate. It was a trio with Sam Jones and Philly Jo Jones.

Daily Licking 031: Bass Line for Chorus 5 & 6 of Mr. P.C.

Well, caught up with the tenor solo finally, both are all the way up to chorus number 6.

This bass line keeps getting more and more interesting, this guy is just as nuts as Coltrane. Let us examine these next 24 measures.

Daily Licking 030: Bass Line for Chorus 3 & 4 of Mr. P.C.

Two more choruses, (chori?) coming at you and guess what, this guy breaks the rules too.

To B natural

Some funny things start happening in these two choruses, and I don't mean funny ha-ha.

For one, a suspicious number of b naturals start showing up in the bass line. I think he is in cahoots with Mr. Coltrane. Up until this chorus, he would play B flats, but what do you think, do you think he and Coltrane got together beforehand and agreed to do this? Or do you think that now that he is three choruses in, and Mr. P.C. has heard Coltrane go all honey-badger bananas and spray B naturals everywhere, so him and his radar ears just said "Oh it's like that, huh? Okay, it's on!" and started throwing natural sevenths into the bass line as well. That is a bass player that is listening, right there.

Daily Licking 029: First Two Choruses of Bass on Mr. P.C

More bass this time, once I started I couldn't stop myself, so maybe we will catch up with the tenor solo and do the bass line up to chorus six as well.

Walking? More like running.

At this tempo it is more like a sprint than a walking bass line. But, just like Coltrane, does P.C care? Of course not. Let's see how he attacks this thing at a tempo this crazy.

Daily Licking 028: Bass Line For Head to Mr. P.C

A brief respite from the tenorisms of Mr. Coltrane for today.

Rather we shall take a look at what the songs name sake, Mr. Paul Chambers, is doing down there at over 200 bpm while Coltrane is busy abusing those poor chord tones.

So, below are the first two choruses of the bass line, the one played during the melody of Mr. P.C.

Daily Licking 026: Back to Coltrane - Chorus 5 of Mr. P.C

Okay, after having to resort to repeated listening of "Music Box Dancer" in order to offset the Coltrane that has been bored into my ear holes, it is now possible to resume with our next chorus of the merciless onslaught. Steel your loins. If you have them.

Flouting

He is not happy with just playing "wrong" notes all over the place, he is double-dog-daring someone to call him on it. He is saying, "hey, its not enough for you when I play the major seven huh, well how about if it is the very first note of an entire chorus, huh, now what you are gonna do? Huh? Oh you gonna do something now?".

Daily Licking 020: Chorus 2 Of John Coltrane's Mr. P.C. Solo.

Continuing from yesterday's episode...we left our hero, Mr. Coltrane rapidly, (and I do mean rapidly) approaching his second chorus...

And on this chorus he does some saxophone-isms that are somewhat simplified for bass here, some of the rhythms he plays are not exactly triplets, and they are not exactly 16ths either, they are of some kind of tenor-istic-phrasing-duration..so the rhythms represent as close as I could get. If anyone has any alternative suggestions, let me know.

Daily Licking 019: 1st Chorus Of Coltrane's Mr. P.C To Blow Your Mind

UPDATE - you can follow this entire series on this page:

http://bassoridiculoso.blogspot.com/search/label/Mr. P.C.

We have probably all played it. It is the defacto minor jazz blues, written by John Coltrane for one of the most famous bass players ever, Paul Chambers. It is on Mr. Trane's most famous album, "Giant Steps" and we are gonna look at his crazy solo, a chorus at a time.

Coltrane's solo on Mr. P.C might actually work on bass. This was before he went completely into another star child dimension of karmic existence and he was still playing in a way some of us humans might actually be able to emulate. Maybe.

I am going to try to go through his entire solo, all 16 choruses of it, and transcribe it all. I think it is doable. I have listened to it over and over and there is only one or two places that he gets really crazy and it might not be playable on bass, but over all, it just might be playable on bass with some minor tweaks. I think.

Also, since this is a blues and there are only 4 chords in the whole tune, it makes for really easy analysis and investigation into what he was playing. Even in only this first chorus, there is a dump truck full of goodies. I see posts from guys all the time saying "how do I know what to play when I solo?", well, look at these licks and dissect what he is doing and your cup will be overflowing with ridiculoso. Let us examine some things from The Master, shall we?

Autumn Leaves Bass Chord Melody

Adam Neely doing a very nice chord melody to Autumn Leaves on bass. Sounds killer. Check out his web page and YouTube Channel for many Basso Approved^© discussions and examples that will supply more than your minimum daily requirement of ridiculoso.

Jaco Pastorius - There Is No Greater Love

Here is another bootleg of the Bright Size Life band with a 22 year old Jaco playing the standard "There is No Greater Love". Jaco doing a classic walking bass line over a standard...with some Jaco thrown in of course.

The copy I have of this said it was from Pooh's Pub in Boston in 1974 (two years before Jaco's solo record), not sure where Zircon is but the poster of this says thats where it was.

Check out Jaco's solo, there are quite a few well known Jaco-isms in the solo that would become very famous.

Jaco Playing "All The Things You Are"

It's pretty rare to hear Jaco playing a standard from this era (or at all really, there are few but not many) the original poster claims this was in 1974, two years before his solo album came out, and would put Jaco at 22 years old. It's bootleg quality but pretty good.

It is with the same trio he recorded "Bright Sized Life" with, (metheny and moses) and he of course sounds freaking awesome. Pat does too. Heck, they all do.

This might be at Poo's Pub in Boston perhaps. Don't know.