Stanley Clarke

[Norris]

How can I have been a bass player for 30 years or so and never seen/heard Stanley Clarke play before?!!

I was watching my Old Grey Whistle Test DVDs (the third disk that they call "Disk 2" for some reason) and up popped Stanley. It's not my style or even the sort of stuff I usually listen to but heck is it impressive, even if just as something different.

If you've never seen or heard him play before then I urge you to get searching on youtube

[FlatEric]

Stunned!

How did you managed to avoid Stan the man, all these years.

You must have been in a music shop and heard someone playing School Days.
Maybe you just didn't realise who had perfomed it.

Top player.

Cheers.

[Conan]

To be fair, although SC is an awesome player, a lot of his music is very ordinary. I can quite understand how someone (even a bass player!) could have avoided him for many years....

At his best, he is an incredible composer as well as being a monster player. But his back catalogue contains some absolute dross too (IMO of course!)

[Cosmo Valdemar]

[quote name='Conan' timestamp='1396526881' post='2414627']
But his back catalogue contains some absolute dross too (IMO of course!)
[/quote]

Pretty much. Mostly from the 80s, unsurprisingly! Although his hip-hop dalliances in the 90s are also pretty painful.
Still, with albums like Journey to Love, we can't complain.

[Leen2112]

This reminds me...........I'll need to dig out my copy of 'Hideaway'.............and a record player!

[Dingus]

Stanley Clarke is a brilliant bass player and all-round superb musician who has indeed produced plenty of crap music over his long career, as well as some sublime moments, too.

Funnily enough, that Whistle test clip of Stanley Clarke is from a special one-off program they broadcast in May 1981 featuring Stanley Clarke and George Duke together, and I remember it so well because, by incredible coincidence, it was shown on BBC2 the night that I got my very first bass guitar. It was a revelation to me at the time , not least of all because it struck me at the time that this guy who I had never heard of up to that moment [i]might actually be better than Geddy Lee[/i](!), and it made such a lasting impression on me that I am still under its' influence over thirty years later. The rich twang and growl of Stanley's Alembic bass and his incredulous facial expressions have never really left me.

Stan made his best music in the 1970's , when he was one of fusion music's leading lights. His more recent records have all been a huge disappointment by comparison , and he needs to stop buggering about so much playing the tenor bass and piccolo bass and just play the regular bass more in my humble opinion, and preferably not to the kind of awful muzak he far too often churned out for public consumption in recent years.

It's worth mentioning that Stan is also a virtuoso double bass player, too, and arguably even better on that instrument than the bass guitar.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Dingus

[Bilbo]

Some of Clarke's best early work was with other people; Chick Corea's Return To Forever are the obvious example but there were others. I find Clarke to be like Jeff Berlin|: monster players that are great sidemen but, when left to their own devices are less satisfying. I think they are also both guilty of chasing commercial success instead of artistic success and that often manifests itself with poor product (there was a LOT of this thing going on in Jazz in the 1970s and 1980s)

Clarke's stuff on Return To Forever and Light As A Feather is great (mostly double bass, not electric).

[White Cloud]

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1396531780' post='2414730']
Stanley Clarke is a brilliant bass player and all-round superb musician who has indeed produced plenty of crap music over his long career, as well as some sublime moments, too.

Funnily enough, that Whistle test clip of Stanley Clarke is from a special one-off program they broadcast in May 1981 featuring Stanley Clarke and George Duke together, and I remember it so well because, by incredible coincidence, it was shown on BBC2 the night that I got my very first bass guitar. It was a revelation to me at the time , not least of all because it struck me at the time that this guy who I had never heard of up to that moment [i]might actually be better than Geddy Lee[/i](!), and it made such a lasting impression on me that I am still under its' influence over thirty years later. The rich twang and growl of Stanley's Alembic bass and his incredulous facial expressions have never really left me.

Stan made his best music in the 1970's , when he was one of fusion music's leading lights. His more recent records have all been a huge disappointment by comparison , and he needs to stop buggering about so much playing the tenor bass and piccolo bass and just play the regular bass more in my humble opinion, and preferably not to the kind of awful muzak he far too often churned out for public consumption in recent years.

It's worth mentioning that Stan is also a virtuoso double bass player, too, and arguably even better on that instrument than the bass guitar.
[/quote]
I can relate to this as I had a very similar introduction to SC. I would also assert that I much prefer his double bass playing over his electric work (he just seems to play the same riffs over and over again).

[spongebob]

Great work with Return To Forever as well.

I'm slowly working through his solo work - +1 on 'Journey To Love' - I actually prefer it to 'School Days'.

[ezbass]

School Days is my ring tone, it makes me smile every time someone calls me.

[jazzyvee]

I remember seeing Stanley Clarke for the first time on the old grey whistle test when return to forever was playing. I recall going into the kitchen to make a coffee then hearing this absolutely astounding double bass playing and ran back and watched the whole thing. Later in the 70's I started to hear his name but still had no idea who he was until I heard the Romantic Warrior Album and was astounded by his dexterity and control of the electric and acoustic bass. I actually recorded the Clarke Duke Project on betamax and recently transferred to dvd.
Even though i'm a massive Stanley Clarke fan i actively avoided most of his electric stuff between return to forever and the 1,2 to the bass album although I did get "Hideaway" and "If this bass could only talk" from that era. Although quite poppy I liked some of the Animal Logic stuff he did with Stuart Copeland and Deborah Holland. The Griffith Park Collection was another superb example of his double bass playing with Chick Corea, Lenny White, Freddy Hubbard, and Joe Henderson.

Give or take a few tracks, I think his last three albums have been absolutely superb as was the 1999 album Vertu which I think up to that point has his most impressive electric bass playing on record since the RTF days.

A few years back I did a full gig playing his stuff and it went down a storm. I'm trying to do it again but include some RTF stuff but finding musicians who like the stuff enough to play it live is a challenge.

Jazzyvee

[lonestar]

Having been a big fa ca schooldays ive been listening to toys of men, bought on impulse on holiday last summer. Superb!

[TheGreek]

My first encounter with Mr Clarke was through my Art Teacher and "Rocks, pebbles and sand"..

"We supply" is possible my favourite bass line of all time..

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVBaCAhgRPA[/media]

Edited April 3, 2014 by TheGreek

[Spoombung]

One of my heroes. I loved those flamenco techniques he introduced to the bass. The other side of him was like Hank Marvin: GA -TWANG!!! Wow!

It's true his style isn't as harmonically sophisticated as some others and I remember his solos were once criticised for sounding like someone going 'bibble, bibble bibble' but I still think he's great.

[steve-bbb]

[url="http://youtu.be/0SQjCYnnAU0"]http://youtu.be/0SQjCYnnAU0[/url]

[Cairobill]

Ah 'We Supply"…that's funky right there...

[visog]

Agree with comments so far... RTF and early solo albums great, post-70's iffy.

However it's worth remembering that whilst the records were a bit ropey, his live shows were great. During the 80's with Clarke/Duke, he used to get musicians out of the audience to play bass, sing as he did when I first saw him at the Manchester Apollo. Also wandered through the audience with a long cable.

Another bit of trivia is that Animal Logic was going to have Allan Holdsworth in it and be called 'Electric Rush-hour' but AH baled.

Earlier comment from a poster saying they caught him on OGWT when the poster got their first bass made me smile as this happened to me too only it was with a Clarke/Duke show (where he played his Carl Thompson - can't find on YT anywhere) and in the same week, Joni's 'Shadows and Light' with Jaco - both on BBC2. Those were the days. Amazingly I soldiered on with bass!

Edited April 4, 2014 by visog

[Spoombung]

[quote name='steve-bbb' timestamp='1396551518' post='2415068']
[media]http://youtu.be/0SQjCYnnAU0[/media]
[/quote]

That's one of my favourite clips of him. Perfect duo with Gadd

[EMG456]

[quote name='visog' timestamp='1396554689' post='2415131']
However it's worth remember that whilst the records were a bit ropey, his live shows were great. During the 80's with Clarke/Duke, he used to get musicians out of the audience to play bass, sing as he did when I first saw him at the Manchester Apollo. Also wandered through the audience with a long cable.
[/quote]

One of the best gigs I've ever seen was Clarke/Duke back in the 80's. Stan was awesome, they had guests - Phillip Bailey on vocals and either Robben Ford or Mike Sembello on guitar - the memory's getting a bit hazy now - and when George wheeled out the plexiglass clavinet with a giant whammy-bar on it, you just knew the night was complete!!

Them were the days...

Edited April 3, 2014 by EMG456

[Bilbo]

Romantic Warrior and Musicmagic were important early sources for transcribing for me. I did loads of transcriptions of each (only notes as I recall, not chords). I remember thrashing through the charts on my Aria SB700 so that dates it to pre-1986. A drummer friend turned me onto RTF (I already know of Al DiMeola and SC because of Tommy Vance (I remember Silly Putty being used as a link) but had not got as far as RTF yet) and I was amazed at this bass player. As I moved on, I lost interest in him as I found other players I preferred (Jaco, Jeff Berlin, Jimmy Johnson and Percy Jones mainly) but he was certainly there at the start of my relationship with Jazz and Jazz related music.

I also have The Toys Of Men and there are some duff tracks on there but some of it is really great.

[lonestar]

I wonder what percy jones is up to these days . I only know him from Brand X

[Urban Bassman]

[quote name='lonestar' timestamp='1396624657' post='2415802']
I wonder what percy jones is up to these days . I only know him from Brand X
[/quote]

Looks like he is still out there doing his thing

http://www.percyjones.net

[icastle]

He's one of the many bass players I've only heard of since arriving here and I've been playing for about 35 years.

Like nearly all of them, he just doesn't 'do it' for me.

[yybass]

Sorry for brevity fellow bass players, but musicians need to earn a living and I'm afraid like George Benson (in the early years) 'hits' paid the bills. It allowed them to continue doing what they love best......if only we were that good to make a good living for several decades :0)

[sblueplanet]

I spoke briefly with Stan when I was working at a Jazzfest. I had been expecting lots of Alembic action but was in awe of his double bass playing and told him so. "Thanks man", he said and was gone.