Bass Player: Dave Holland This transcription is the title track of Dave Holland’s first album on the ECM label. ‘Conference Of The Birds’ featured a pianoless quartet of Holland, saxophonists Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton and drummer Barry Altschul. The music is very ‘free’ but there is structure and composition in there. The interplay between…

Bass Player: Ben Wolfe In 1999, the Wynton Marsalis Septet released a seven cd boxed set of performances recorded ‘Live At The Village Vanguard’. Given the flexible nature of membership in Jazz ensembles, the bass players changed and, alongside Marsalis mainstay, Reginald Veal, one of the gigs recorded featured bassist Ben Wolfe who has also…

Bass Player: Dave Holland Wolverhampton born Holland has had the kind of career we all dream about and has performed with everyone from Miles Davis, Hank Jones, Chick Corea, Anthony Braxton, Pat Metheny, Kenny Wheeler and a myriad of other legendary players the world over. His own recordings are pretty much essential listening and feature…

Bass Player: Will Lee Will Lee is one of the busiest bass players in the history of popular music. A first call New York session guy, his list of credits runs into hundreds of pages. And that is just the ones beginning with S…. Donald Fagan’s ‘The Nightfly’ features a few bass legends including Anthony…

Bass Player: Ron Carter Ron Carter is arguably one of the most influential double bass players in modern Jazz. Having been the bass player for Miles Davis’s second Classic Quintet, alongside pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and drummer Tony Williams, Carter found his voice in one of the most interactive ensembles ever to take…

Bass Player: Milt ‘The Judge’ Hinton In 1989, saxophonist Branford Marsalis recorded a sax/bss/drums trio album called ‘Trio Jeepy’. The band featured long time Marsalis sideman Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts on drums but, for the bass chair, Marsalis strayed from the stable of so called and called a bass player who was as steeped in the…

Bass Player: John Francis ‘Jaco’ Pastorius III Jaco invented the fretless bass. Well, actually, no; he didn’t. He wasn’t even the first bass player in Weather Report to use a fretless bass. What he did was to present the world with a sound that was so overwhelmingly influential that it has come to define what…

Bass Player: Jeff Berlin ‘Age Of Information’ was the opening track from the third Bruford album ‘Gradually Going Tornado’. When these LPs came out in the late 70s and early 80s, the playing of Jeff Berlin was a breath of fresh air and he and his contemporaries, Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke, were redefining what…

Bass Player: Chris Squire One of the most iconic Prog Rock recordings of all time, ‘Close To The Edge’ is widely regarded as the most important recording in the Yes catalogue. The album features the classic Yes line-up of JOn Anderson (vocals), Stee Howe (guitars), Rick Wakeman (keyboards), Bill Bruford (drums) and, last but by…

From: Brand X – Product Bass Player: John Giblin When people talk about UK Jazz Rock legends Brand X, there is a tendency to think about the iconic fretless bass player, Percy Jones. Where Brand X was concerned, however, Jones was only half the story and, during the band’s career, another bass player snuck in…