Ron Carter – Bass Ron Carter is arguably one of the most recorded bass players in Jazz and has appeared with pretty much every major Jazz artist in the last 60 years or more. he actually went to school with Paul Chambers, the bass player he replaced in the Miles Davis Quintet although the two…

Christian McBride – Bass A simple performance on the melody of the tune “Where Are You?“, a popular song composed by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson. The song was written for the 1937 film ‘Top Of The Town’ but has become a Jazz standard that has been recorded by everyone. It is simple enough and…

Matt Penman – Bass This one is only an excerpt and features only the first 1:23. It came up on my mp3 player which is on shuffle. I love what the SFJazz Collective are doing. They get together for a few weeks every year for the SF Jazz Festival and play some incredibly creative arrangements…

Dave Holland – Bass From the 2001 Dave Holland Quintet album, ‘Not For Nothin”, this is the complete Holland bass performance of the tune ‘Go Fly A Kite’. There are some struggles in transcribing this one as I hear the tune in 6:8 but some of Holland’s phrasing moves out of that and into 3:4.…

John Benitez – Bass Grammy award-winning latin bassist John Benitez cut his teeth in Puerto Rico and has made a name for himself through his work with many well-known American and Latin artists. Bassist/composer/arranger John Benitez was a widely acclaimed musician in the jazz, R&B, and Latin scenes in his native Puerto Rico by the…

Carlos Henriquez – Bass What I love about the Marsalis stable of bassists is that they are all monster players but keep their chops under control in favour of musicality. Bob Hurst, Reginald Veal, Ben Wolfe – they all have chops to die for but they only appear when the music calls for it. This…

Dave Holland – Bass Dave Holland has produced some great solo albums over the years; ‘Emerald Tears’, ‘Life Cycle’ (mostly cello) and ‘One’s All’. The performances are generally very difficult to transcribe and call for a lot of liberties to be taken in the recording. This tune is no exception. ‘Reminiscence’ is a Holland composition…

Gary Willis – Bass Another Willis penned track from the 1987 Tribal Tech album, ‘Dr. Hee’. This one has a bass part that is double by a synth to help create the ominousness that the composition warrants. I have left a lot of the ‘drone’ sections vague as pinning down every note is challenging when…

Gary Willis – Bass Another strong album from the Tribal Tech ensemble (albeit with one of the worst album covers ever!), this is the complete Gary Willis bass part from the tune ‘Rituals’ that closes the band’s 1990 album , ‘Nomad’. This is not a typical Willis part chock full of ghost notes, it is…

Dave Holland – Bass Another one from my main man – I have been listening to this guy for decades. This one is from a lesser known album Holland did with Chilean singer Claudia Acuna. The tune is the standard ‘Nature Boy’ but the arrangement is really interesting – you really cannot phone this one…