Anthony Jackson – Bass

Another request from Talkbass – stonking line. I am guessing it was a written part as there are other aspects of the arrangement that mirror the bass part (keybarods, opening vocal etc). There is, however, a monster bass fill in there that would challenge even today’s super-musicians (Feraud, Linder etc). Remember, this was 1975 – before Jaco, before any of the hot-shot bassists we all know from that era. A little superficial research suggests that AJ started his professional recording career in 1974 (Patti Austin, Roberta Flack etc) so this Funk Factory recording was in the second year of his career – he would have been 22/23. That lick was absolutely decades ahead of it’s time and, had he done nothing else in his entire career, he could have dined out of that fill for the rest of his days.

The tune is ‘Watusi Dance’. The idea of members of the Watusi dancing to this is faintly ridiculous. However, the cultural context is somewhat simpler than that. The ‘Watusi’ is a solo dance that enjoyed brief popularity during the early 1960s. It was one of the most popular dance crazes of the 1960s in the United States. “Watusi” is a former name for the Tutsi people of Africa, whose traditions include spectacular dances. The naming of the American dance may have been inspired, in particular, by a scene in the 1950 film King Solomon’s Mines which featured Tutsi dancers, or by its sequel, Watusi. The bass fill is influenced more by ‘The Thing From Another World’.

It is a tough read but it is essentially a one bar pattern repeated, taken up a fourth and then down again. There are some monstrously difficult bits in there though.