Posted by js on July 08, 2002 at 20:51:31:
Inquiries come up about this fairly regularly. "How? Where? What?"...etc.
Good advice is always offered: "Listen to Rich Matteson play with Louis Armstrong and the Dukes of Dixieland." "Listen to this or that string bass / tuba player."
All of the sources offered are excellent, and the majority of them are (what I separate out as) "swing" types of examples.
When we go back and listen to very early jazz, it did not really "swing". The eighth notes were fairly straight most of the time, but with a lot of "bounce" and direction (wow, just like "real" music). Today, there are quite a few bands that imitate this "original - bounce" style.
Regardless of taste, it is a very good idea to learn to be able to play with this "bounce" feel, along with being able to play with a "swing" feel with other bands (or on other types of tunes).
The guy in the picture was a superb bass saxophonist - Adrian Rollini. Besides playing the bass saxophone, he was also a great pianist and played with noted bands in the early days of recorded jazz. As far as I'm concerned, his most remarkable recorded bass lines (though he also recorded with Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, and the Dorseys) were those that he recorded with Bix Beiderbecke in the 1920's. I've not kept it a secret that I'm a Bix "nut", but Bix's best recordings would not be as notable without Rollini's incredible bass sax lines. (Remember, stuff like this was brand new and not copied [as we do today] from the recordings of proven artists of old.)
Many recommend that one avoid "playing too many notes" when playing traditional jazz bass lines. That's usually very good advice, but Rollini actually played quite a few notes - MANY notes, and that was just fine because all of them were right, still "out of the way" of the other players, and contributed incredible energy to the ensemble. Below is a link to a fabulous website where one can download over a dozen of these (complete) Bix recordings (recorded by Okeh, and mostly in New York). To "steal" some of Rollini's great ideas, one might listen to "Rhythm King", "Lousiana", "Since My Best Gal Turned Me Down", "Jazz Me Blues", "At the Jazz Band Ball", "Goose Pimples", and "Wa-Da-Da (Everybody's Doin' It Now)" as possibly the best examples of Rollini's work available on this website.
There are some contemporary tuba players of note who work to echo this style, but in my opinion none match Rollini's creativity, energy, and superb linear logic.