Holding It Down With Maceo
Maceo Parker is the gold standard of funk alto-saxophone players. Since the ’60s, he has played with everyone from Ray Charles to James Brown to Prince, in addition to leading his own funk-fired bands. I had the pleasure of touring with Maceo last year in a two-rhythm-section combination that featured electric bassist Rodney “Skeet” Curtis [see The Bassists of P-Funk, July ’05] and drummer Dennis Chambers, alternating sets with drummer Hans Dekker and yours truly. Skeet and Dennis took care of the funk set—in a major way—while Hans and I played the swing, ballads, and boogaloo.
Let’s look at the opening chart of our live set: Ray Charles’s “Hallelujah, I Love Her So,” which is also the first track on Maceo’s live CD from the tour, Roots and Grooves [Heads Up]. We play the tune with a head-bobbin’ boogaloo groove. The boogaloo (sometimes spelled boogalu) was developed in the late ’60s in New York by Cuban musicians who were looking to cross over with a mainstream, fanny-shakin’ dance groove. On Maceo’s recording, Hans Dekker interprets the style with a fluid approach and a jazz sensibility. Here he plays what is sometimes referred to as the “Sidewinder” groove, named after drummer Billy Higgins’s infectious playing on the famous Lee Morgan standard (Ex. 1). My job was to lock in with Hans, give the big band horns a fat “one” to hang their hats on, and make space for the syncopated backbeats—which gives the groove the aforementioned fanny-shakin’ quality.
The arrangement, by Michael Abene, begins with the band playing a three-against-two pattern (Ex. 2). The eighth-notes are “swung”—they are played with a slight triplet feel, although the groove is not a swing groove. Ex. 3 shows the basic bass groove for the melody sections. I set up each one and three by playing a dead note—muting the F on the D string with my left hand and playing a pickup note into each strong beat on one and three. The crucial element here is what I do not play: the eighth-note rests on beats two and four make space for the drummer’s backbeat. This is what makes the tune groove: the space … the rests! Always play a rest just as consciously as you play a note. Don’t shortchange the funk, or it won’t be funky.
Ex. 4 shows the bass line in the song’s A section. I use a combination of dead-note pickups and eighth-note fills, often leaving the rests for the backbeat on beats two and four. The breaks in bars 5-8 are also extremely important. How long is the quarter-note? Notice the tenuto marking under each note—the line that tells you to play the note long. In this case the quarter-note is big and fat, the end of the note being just as important as the attack. The three quarter-note rests have to be in time also—yes, the silence has to be in the pocket just as solidly as the notes.
Organist Frank Chastenier takes the first solo on the track, and I provide a good cushion so he can crank up his mojo (Ex. 5). In bar 1, the upbeats on the “ands” of three and four can be a little dangerous—I have to play this figure so that the downbeat in bar 2 is still felt—even though I have a rest on that beat. Once again, the rests have to be “played” just as strongly as the notes. In a situation like this, we know that the point of the whole thing is to get the soloists to throw down—go nuts and get stoopid. The bass player’s job is to make sure the house’s foundation is stable enough for the party.
At about 3:50 into the track, Frank goes ballistic and the crowd (at the Rex in Paris) freaks out along with him. Maceo jumps into the fray for his solo. At about 4:45 the horn sections enter with thick backgrounds. The big band horns are jumping in and out like popcorn in the pan; all hell’s breaking loose, and the joint is jumpin’. At this point, the little voice in my head is saying, “Hold down the fort . . . .” I switch to a bass line that’s less syncopated (Ex. 6) to make the groove more grounded. Everyone else is playing so much stuff off the beat, someone—the bass player—has to lay it down.
Listening back to the CD, I realized that the key was not in what I played, but how I played it. I hope the lessons I learned stick with you the next time your band goes ballistic:
(1) Play the rests as well as the notes. (2) Make space in your bass line for the other parts. (3) No matter what’s happening on the bandstand, build the foundation and keep it solid. Until next time … hold down the fort!
Read more about jazz concepts in John Goldsby’s The Jazz Bass Book [Backbeat Books], the definitive guide to jazz bass players and their techniques. Also check out John’s newest CD, Live at the Nachbar [Bass Lion, www.goldsby.de]. E-mail John at john@goldsby.de.
