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Double Bass Jazz Albums


Frank Blank

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23 hours ago, Rexel Matador said:

Not a bass player led album, but Ron Carter's bass playing on Jim Hall's Concierto is a delight.

Nice! The live album Alone Together is just the two of them and is a lovely example of duo playing

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On 01/03/2020 at 22:41, paul_5 said:

Obvious place to start would be ‘kind of blue’ by Miles Davis, in fact I’d recommend any Miles album with Paul Chambers on bass, but that’s just me.

Billie Holliday’s ‘songs for distingue lovers’ is a great album too, as the mix is great, and it’s not difficult to hear what the bass is doing and how it works with everything else.

Kind of Blue is a mainstay on the iPod but I'll certainly listen to more with Mr Chambers. I'm not sure I'll be able to get around my intense dislike of Billie Holliday's voice to listen to that album but I'll give it a shot. I realise this is probably some kind of Jazz heresy but there it is.

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On 02/03/2020 at 17:40, tinyd said:

Anything with Christian McBride is well worth hearing. There are s couple of recent recordings with him playing with Chick Corea that are excellent, but his own bands are also really good.

Christ, quite possibly on a bike ...

 

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22 minutes ago, Frank Blank said:

Christ, quite possibly on a bike ...

He's great, and even when he's 'just' walking he's still amazing. He's been fairly good at playing bass for a while now :)
 



He's currently on tour in Europe with Chick Corea- gutted that I won't get to see him.... 

Edited by tinyd
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I grew up with Masahiko Satoh's "Amorphism" album, which I still love to this day, and Eddie Gomez was the bassist on it. He's a legendary player but it seems he's not as highly regarded as some of the other big names. I personally love his playing because he's always melodic and entertaining, while I find many upright bassists boring to listen to. 

Someone did upload the album to YouTube, but the sound quality is terrible because the stereo imaging and the center are strangely skewed and anemic sounding compared to the actual CD. But if you like what you hear, just go buy it. 
 

 

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Gomez and Haden intonation flaws?  Really?  I always counted them as particularly good; at least, compared to Ron Carter (who is often awful) and Mingus (who cared more about the music than the notes).  Need to get my ears recalibrated

Gomez on Joni Mitchel's "I've got a blue motel room" and with Bruford & Ralph Towner on "If summer had its ghosts" .. I love it and need to get more of him.

Meanwhile I'm just playing an el cheapo CD I bought from HMV (yes there ARE still CD shops!!) that has The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus on it (for about a fiver).  In places it sounds like Mingus was playing a laminated bass with tired gut strings on it, recorded using a mike wrapped in a wet cloth .. but Oh can Mingus swing a band a long behind him - sometimes intonation isn't all that.

PS: so much great music in this thread .. should take up a couple of weeks of self isolation (when it inevitably descends) quite nicely!! :¬)

 

Edited by NickA
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26 minutes ago, NickA said:

PS: so much great music in this thread .. should take up a couple of weeks of self isolation (when it inevitably descends) quite nicely!! :¬)

Yes it’s taking me an age to get through but that’s because each player leads off down a warren of discovery.

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2 hours ago, NickA said:

Gomez and Haden intonation flaws?  Really?  I always counted them as particularly good; at least, compared to Ron Carter (who is often awful) and Mingus (who cared more about the music than the notes).  Need to get my ears recalibrated

Gomez on Joni Mitchel's "I've got a blue motel room" and with Bruford & Ralph Towner on "If summer had its ghosts" .. I love it and need to get more of him.

Meanwhile I'm just playing an el cheapo CD I bought from HMV (yes there ARE still CD shops!!) that has The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus on it (for about a fiver).  In places it sounds like Mingus was playing a laminated bass with tired gut strings on it, recorded using a mike wrapped in a wet cloth .. but Oh can Mingus swing a band a long behind him - sometimes intonation isn't all that.

PS: so much great music in this thread .. should take up a couple of weeks of self isolation (when it inevitably descends) quite nicely!! :¬)

 

They are not absolutely on point like the real A-list players. Ron Carter is hit and miss sometimes. I really don´t like the "smear" or playing everything with "glissandro", for me the intonation has to be on point- as a reference I studied classical music (vocals and upright), so I might have differect expectations for that.

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Ear training is not my strongest suit. If something is clearly out of tune then I can definitely hear it, but in the context of multiple instruments playing together and in the hands of a professional musician playing melodically challenging music, I don't think I can hear the problems. Also, I think maybe jazz is more forgiving of intonation since so much of it relies on passing notes (which to non-jazz musicians sounds like sour notes) and there's so much modulation and key change and complex harmony, that if there are slight intonation issues, they'd likely just blend right in. 

How would y'all rate Eddie Gomez overall? He seems to be one of those upright bassists who sometimes makes it onto "best upright bassist" lists, and sometimes don't. Would he be considered middle-tier among other jazz upright bass players?

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