Stanley Clarke - 'School Days'

 

You can count on your fingers the bass players whose legacy comes close to Stanley Clarke, who has done more for the electric bass guitar than almost anybody else.

Jaco Pastorius gets a lot of credit (and rightly so) for revolutionizing the electric bass, putting it front and center, but Stanley is equally important.  While Jaco relied more on harmonics and standard (yet extremely challenging) bass playing, Stanley delved far more into bass chording and slapping, and to my ears, all while staying in the boundaries of good taste, which many times is lacking in Jaco's playing.

Stanley's bass slapping, can be traced back to William Manuel "Bill" Johnson, who is generally considered the father of the "bass slapping" style, in early 1900s, New Orleans.  George and Ira Gershwin were fans of the style, wrote a song about it titled, "Slap That Bass" for the 1937 movie 'Shall We Dance'.  The slap bass went technique went on to be used by Western Swing and Hillbilly musicians, and became an important component of an early form of rock and roll that combined blues and what was then called hillbilly music, we know now as rockabilly.  In the 1960s, Larry Graham, of "Sly and the Family Stone" became the first electric bass guitarist to use the technique, which he called, "thumpin' and pluckin'".  Inspired by Larry Graham, Stanley made it an art, and pushed it to the limits.

School Days' album cover is a painting by Lynn Breslin.
Stanley's white flares aside, it has a very Hip Hop-esque quality about it.

'School Days' released in 1976 (the same year as Jaco’s legendary debut album) was Stanley Clarke’s third solo album, and it was the one on which his compositional skills and his flamboyant bass solos really caught the bass world’s imagination.  Stanley had already demonstrated his double bass chops on the first two albums with Chick Corea's Return to Forever, but with the advent of his custom-built Alembic bass guitars, he now had a distinctive tone.  The grooves are phenomenal, the playing is impeccable.  'School Days' always puts a smile on my face.

Track list

1. School Days
2. Quiet Afternoon
3. The Dance
4. Desert Song
5. Hot Fun
6. Life Is Just A Game

The Players
Stanley Clarke on electric bass guitar, piccolo bass guitar, acoustic bass, acoustic piano, vocals, hand bells, gong, and chimes.
Raymond Gomez on electric guitar.
David Sancious on keyboards, mini-Moog synthesizer, organ, and electric guitar.
Gerry Brown on drums and hand bells on tracks 1 & 3.
Billy Cobham drums and Moog 1500 on track 6.
George Duke all keyboards on track 6.
Steve Gadd drums on tracks 2 & 5.
Milton Holland percussion on tracks 3 & 4.
Icarus Johnson electric & acoustic guitar on track 6.
John McLaughlin acoustic guitar on track 4.

Produced by Stanley Clarke and Ken Scott.

For the freeload, tell us who a few of your favorite bass players are