He's got the background. Played with guys like Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Gil Evans and Stan Getz, was probably best know for his work for Return To Forever, Chick Corea's band. Playboy Magazine chose him as top jazz bassist 10 years in a row. He helped bridge the gap between jazz and fusion, along with all the genres that sprung from there.
That slap-and-pop technique, really more a funk sound than a jazz sound, is something that Victor Wooten, that killer bassist with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, does so well.
Here's another vid, with Clarke sharing bass time with Wooten and Marcus Miller. It's interesting hearing the bass take a lead guitar role here. So kick the bass up and rip the knobs off:
I wasn't terrribly surprised to see that Stormy Monday is probably the most-recorded blues song of 'em all, with at least 1,134 versions out there. Without a doubt it's the most played by bar bands.
It's a great song. T-Bone Walker originally played it, and the lyrics take you through a week of the blues:
"They Call it stormy Monday, But Tuesday's just as bad ..."
It was also the first blues I've played in public, if you don't count Miles Davis' "All Blues," which is a jazz piece from his Kind Of Blue album.
But in my first sessions on stage, this harmonica player discovered something about colliding perceptions and reality:
All harmonica players do nothing but blues.
All bar bands know "Stormy Monday."
Therefore, all harp players end up playing "Stormy Monday." A lot.
It's hysterical. Every bar band in the world plays "Stormy Monday." In fact, with many it's the only blues they know. They play it to "prove" they know blues, but in actuality it just proves the band doesn't know much of anything.
So after years of playing it, and even hearing it in my sleep, I ran out of ideas. Got tired of playing it. There are only so many ways you can attack a slow-blues standard, and I probably used all of them at some point. Double-time in the solos. Long pauses and held notes, going into clusters of sixteenth-notes. I quoted other songs -- my favorite version was throwing a few notes from that other blues chestnut, "After Hours," into it. I had to do something with it. In 1994, I stopped playing it.
In a famous interview, jazz innovator Charlie Parker said he had the same feeling with "Cherokee." He'd played it so many times he could do it while nodding out (and apparently he often did). Got sick of that song. But he did break through that wall, by using the upper intervals of the chords. This gave him a larger pool of notes to work with, and he said he came alive musically at that point.
I didn't go that far; even in my fantasies there's no way I can get close to Parker's musicianship. Instead, I chose to "boycott" the song. Any time it came up on stage, I sat it out. Which was all right; I was working in more of a country/rock direction then. I'd do other blues every so often, but indulged my interest in other musical forms.
It wasn't until 10 years later that I consented to play "Stormy Monday" again. I was playing with a vocalist named Jayne Valentine, who had this really powerful, expressive voice. We also shared an intuituve musical rapport, and every time we got together on stage, sparks would fly. More than a few folks swore we were an "item," that's how high the energy level was. But one night she decided to sing T-Bone's song, and because it was someone with the talent level and emotional level of Jayne, I joined her on it. And again, the song came alive.
Working with folks like that would put muscle, blood, and breath to any song.
T-Bone is still one of the great blues guitarists, and Stormy Monday is still a great song.
It was around 1990, I was learning my way around the blues, and my friend Kathe had a CD she wanted me to hear.
Bless Kathe's heart. She had a killer voice and good stage presence, and we'd hit the jam sessions together. I'm still amazed at how she was able to belt out a song like that though she was confined to a wheelchair -- you'd really have to adjust your air column to do something like that. Shoot, just blowing a wind instrument, I can't do it sitting down. I have to play standing up.
Anyway, this album was Bonnie Raitt's first, and it had the feeling of a front-porch picking party. But Kathe wanted me to hear the harmonica player. "He kind of sounds like you," she said.
That was the first time I'd really listened to Junior Wells.
Junior's been dead since 1998, but if he was still around he'd be celebrating his 75th birthday this week. He was a gang kid when he was known as Amos Wells Blakemore Jr., but developed a reputation as a harmonica player. Still in his teens, he was with a group called The Aces.
Among Chicago blues harp players, there was one job in the world to have -- playing in Muddy Waters' band. Muddy knew talent, he knew blues, and he knew harp players. During Wells' Aces days, Muddy had Little Walter Jacobs in the harp slot -- the guy that all harmonica players try to emulate. We have 50 years' worth of harp players using Fender Bassman amps and Shure Green Bullet microphones -- modeled after a taxi mic -- for gear, and they're all trying to replicate the honking, distortion-heavy Little Walter sound.
For some reason, though, Little Walter and Wells traded jobs. Walter got The Aces, and Junior, by virtue of his seat in Muddy's band, became the heavyweight champion of harps.
After his time with Waters, Wells struck out on his own, recording songs like "Messin' With The Kid" and "Hoodoo Man Blues." But it was a long association with guitarist Buddy Guy that kept Junior active and in the forefront.
I have some tracks of Junior and Buddy together, a live set at the House Of Blues in Chicago. It was just those two, playing and singing with no real heavy equipment. Their blues were about as lean as you can get, with Guy alternating between chords and single-note runs, and Wells playing in short bursts, phrasing his stuff. Really an unconventional recording, without filler. A little hard to listen to at first because it's so stripped down, but once you get accustomed to the feel of it, an enjoyable recording.
And no, Junior didn't sound like me. He'd never even heard of me. I wouldn't mind sounding like Junior, if I couldn't sound like myself. Or something. But he was right up there with the Little Walters and Sonny Boy Williamsons in the harp world.
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(Video: With Buddy Guy and a band -- "Messin' With The Kid")
What's rock music without a guitar to set things up?
Rock has been a haven for fast-fingered guitarists since Chuck Berry, and many of the guitar riffs stick in a person's mind decades after the song was first laid down on vinyl. From the relatively-primitive Berry and Bo Diddley riffs, the music has evolved in the decades since. But you can listen to part of a song, hear someone on guitar, and identify the song at 50 paces. Eric Clapton's “Layla” (which featured Duane Allman on the out solo), Lynrd Skynrd's “Freebird,” and Deep Purple's “Smoke On The Water” are among the most easily-recognized tunes just from the guitar licks.
But Jimi Hendrix' “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” was recently chosen as the song with the best guitar riff by a poll at musicradar.com – edging out “Sweet Child O'Mine” by Guns N'Roses.
When the site's sister magazine Total Guitar last conducted the survey five years ago, the list was headed by the G N'R song ... the list shows that the older riffs are the best. Just two from the past decade make it into the top 20 - Muse's Plug In Baby at 11 and The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army at 15 ... Michael Jackson's Beat It, with its Eddie Van Halen guitar part, props up the top 20 ... Voodoo Child - with its distinctive 'wah-wah' opening - was first released on Hendrix's Electric Ladyland album and led on from an earlier track, Voodoo Chile, which was a 15-minute blues jam ... confusingly, by the time it was released as a single in 1970 it too had been named Voodoo Chile.
No surprise there. Hendrix was a monster, and Voodoo Child was just part of his body of work.
A few years ago, Guitar Player Magazine chose Hendrix the best guitarist ever, beating out the Claptons, the Stevie Ray Vaughans, the David Gilmours, and the Eddie Van Halens. So many choices, so many choices ...
Hendrix was an oddball in the guitar-playing world. A southpaw, he played a guitar strung for a right-hander – meaning he had to flip his guitar upside down and use his thumb to form part of his chords – something no sane guitar teacher would allow. But, like fellow lefty blues guitarist Albert King, he had his own immediately-recognizable sound that, I think, could only be done on an upside-down guitar.
Really, the only one I can think of who came close to Hendrix's sound was Ernie Isley of the Isley Brothers (a really underrated guitarist – check out some of his stuff in the late 1970s and early 80s). But there's a reason for that. One of Hendrix' first regular gigs was as a touring guitarist with the Isley Brothers. It wasn't Isley building his sound from what he heard Hendrix play, but it might have been the other way around.
Some years ago, a band I was in played “Little Wing,” one of my favorite Hendrix songs. It's a heavy, bluesy piece, with lots of sustain and serious note-bending. We did it in E minor, and our guitarist (Stef Rodman) took his solo on it. Then signaled me to take a lead. Man, I remember telling myself, you don't know what you're getting into here.
Apparently I didn't screw it up too badly; that song became a staple of our set list. Years later, I did “Little Wing” with local guitarist Everette Bigbee at a jam session. Ol' Ev is a real beast on guitar and has probably heard everything twice, but he blew his mind at the thought of someone “doing Hendrix” on harmonica.
One hoary Internet rumor I've heard floating around was that, shortly before he died in 1970, Hendrix came friendly with jazzman Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and they played together informally a few times. Now, this is entirely plausible. Hendrix was definitely headed in a jazz direction, and Rahsaan was, well, Rahsaan. A totally singular performer who could play three saxophones at one time, sing over the mouthpiece of his flute, and shift from Dixieland to avant-garde without using a clutch. Jimi had often cited Rahsaan as his favorite musician, so such a meeting was not only possible -- but likely.
Shoot, if the two recorded anything together – even a tape of them tuning up in someone's apartment, it would be worth moving heaven and earth to get.
Eric Pulsifer is a former reporter who left the journalism field in 1997. Now working as a freelance writer in Charleston, South Carolina. Wrote "The Column," a regular opinion piece that was published in newspapers in California, Arizona, and Indiana -- and is resurrected for the Web with fresh content and new issues.
"I always wanted to be a brain surgeon, but they wouldn't let me use a crowbar."
-- Eric
