THERE’S A GEM OF A BASS LESSON IN THE NEW MILESDavis reissue set, Kind of Blue: 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition. On the included DVD, Celebrating a Masterpiece, pianist/singer Shirley Horn comments, “That was a perfect marriage there, you know—Jimmy Cobb and Paul Chambers.” Then the video cuts to P.C. playing the bass line on the A section of “So What,” from a 1959 television appearance of Miles Davis with the Gil Evans Orchestra.
“So What” shows us the power of simplicity: Take two basic chord changes, play an ear-catching melody on the bass, and dig deep into the rhythmic pocket. Shown here is the classic melody from Kind of Blue, plus the first two choruses of P.C.’s walking line over the form. Many bassists who just read the melody line from a fake book do not get the classic P.C. slide from D to E. Use P.C.’s vertical fingerboard approach as shown in the tablature.
As the walking line starts in bar 34, P.C. plays down the D Dorian scale, putting a chromatic passing tone on beat four (Bb), between the scale’s 6th (B) and 5th (A). He uses this technique again in bars 44, 58, and 64. Adding the half-step allows P.C. to put the 5th of the Dm7 chord (the note A) on a measure’s downbeat. In bar 37, he uses the chromatic passing tone Db on beat two and plays a Bb on beat four, which allows him to lead strongly to the root (D) on beat one of bar 39. Note that he does not always use a pure D Dorian scale, but carefully chooses his notes to clearly outline the Dm7 sound.
Beginning in bar 50, the tune’s B section, P.C. alludes to a Db major scale over the Ebm7 chord, often playing patterns—such as the Db major arpeggio starting on beat three—that indicate he is thinking in Db. Indeed, the key of Db major generates the Eb Dorian minor scale (the Db major scale’s second mode), and P.C. seems to prefer this approach on the B sections of “So What.”
So Who Wrote The ‘So What’ Bass Line?
Musicians have long wondered whether the signature bass-line melody to “So What” was an unaccredited Chambers creation. Says drummer Jimmy Cobb, the Kind of Blue band’s sole surviving member: “He [Chambers] might have come up with it. Miles used to have ideas and tell you about them and ask what you could add to it. Then there’s the possibility it was a little thing Gil Evans wrote. I can’t say exactly where it came from.” Says former Davis collaborator Marcus Miller, “I would guess that Miles gave it to him or gave him something close, and Paul made it his.”
As for the artfully simple tune itself, says Miller, “Miles said that he went to a hear a Karlheinz Stockhausen concert, and somehow what he heard inspired him to put together ‘So What,’ based on two scales. The actual composition isn’t very complicated, but what those guys played was just unbelievable when he brought it to the studio.”