Posted by Joe S. on September 07, 2000 at 20:45:09:
In Reply to: Really Upset.... What would you guys do? posted by David RN on September 07, 2000 at 09:36:10:
I did a lot of this type of work in the late '70's and early '80's as a large part of my living with a band called the Hot Cotton Jazz Band.
One of our l.p.'s has been reissued as a c.d. on the G.H.B. division of Jazzology Records. If you go to the link below, you can locate the Hot Cotton c.d. "Take Your Tomorrow". It is on the G.H.B. label under Jazzology, and its catalog # is BCD-188. On their shopping cart, it is item # 63.
Perhaps unfortunately for this example, on that particular record I played mostly string bass (an old Ampeg thing), but there are a few tuba tunes also. If you actually follow through and purchase it ($15.95 or something - no royalties to me, anymore), I (at the risk of seeming authoritative and pompous) think you will hear some very good examples of how the bass instrument in a traditional jazz band should function. Referring back to the string bass tunes, I think the same rules apply as far as appropriate bass lines, regardless of the instrument.
Eli Newberger is a friend of mine, his band guested at a festival that Hot Cotton hosted, the Black Eagles and Hot Cotton toured together/separately throughout Great Britain one summer, he and I shared the stage at a silly jazz tuba thing at the George Hotel in Edinburgh, and we still occasionally communicate by email. His Black Eagles Band has a unique sound with a lot of "hints" at things, rather that straight forward harmonies. That leaves "space" for Eli to do some of the things (in his CONTROLLED way) that he does on his mightly old Holton. Occassionally, in ANY traditional jazz band one may fit in some (or any) of the things that Eli does, but more sparingly, since the harmonic texture of most bands is more obvious and more tenor-prominent than the New Black Eagles Jazz Band, which is very treble-prominent.
I suspect that some of the things that you might be doing may be some of the things that I "overdid" in my early years of trying to play traditional jazz. The glares that I received from various front lines players, combined with listening to hundreds of hours of recordings of different bands, sort of cured me of being a "free spirit" bass line player. After all, the medium is TRADITIONAL jazz, not avant garde.