Great Jazz in the San Francisco Bay Area (as Told by a Budding Bass Player)

I love jazz and will be writing a lot about great jazz groups and their music in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I will also be recording my personal trek from useless couch potato to cool and mysterious jazz bass player.   I will, of course, need to buy a beret and some shades, and grow a goatee.  But those flourishes can wait.  First I actually have to learn to play my upright string bass.  Priorities, you know.

I made good use of the four day weekend over the New Year holiday.  I cleaned out a bedroom upstairs that had been used as a storage room, carting boxes downstairs to the garage and dragging, by brute force, a bookshelf up from the garage.  I then neatly organized and arranged my many books, music CD’s and videos on playing  bass.

In the room I found an old boom box that belonged to my son in his teenage years.  I tried it out.  It had a lot of static and cut out a lot, but after I cleaned the CD player with alcohol swabs and blew the dust out of the circuits with canned air, it worked perfectly.  The speakers are great and allow me to clearly hear the bass in my music CD’s.  It’s perfect for practice.  Finally, I cleaned off and organized my desk, putting my laptop on it for playing instructional videos or listening to music videos.  Today I watched Roy Orbison’s last videotaped performance from 1999 and played along with the music.

I spent quite a bit of time over the holidays learning tunes from my Jamey Aebersold CD, “Maiden Voyage.”  Aebersold CD’s are for teaching you to play jazz, no matter what your intrument.  Each CD comes with a book of sheet music.  The sheet music provides you with the chord changes as you play along with the CD.  It really develops your ear and your ability to read chord symbols.  I am finding these CD’s invaluable in getting up to speed as a musician.

Since playing a string bass is physically demanding, I need a lot of practice just to get into shape.  I have put in the practice time and the muscles in my arms and fingers are sore.  I seem to be building up quickly as I can play for a longer period without getting tired.  I feel encouraged by my progress.   The bass neck no longer seems so daunting.

The San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, has a lot of great jazz groups and musicians.  I obtained a CD from one of them, a group called “Round Midnight.”  Their CD “We’ll Be Right Back” can be purchased from their website.  I’ve never heard the group in person but their CD is magnificent.  Fantastic jazz!  I will make it a point to go hear them in person soon.  The bass player is very impressive too.  If feeling joyous and energetic is your thing, you may want to buy their CD.

One of my major inspirations and personal heroes is Vince Guaraldi.  He was a San Francisco jazz piano player and the head of the Vince Guaraldi Trio, consisting of piano, drums and string bass.  The VGT provided the jazzy themes for Charles Schulz’s comic characters, “Peanuts,” e.g. Charley Brown, Snoopy, Linus and Lucy.  I love listening to CD’s of Guaraldi’s music.  Right now I am listening to “A Boy Named Charley Brown.”

Vince Guaraldi died on February 4, 1976 while relaxing between sets at Butterfield’s Nightclub in Menlo Park, California.  He was resting in a room at the Red Cottage Inn and died of a sudden heart attack.  He was only 47 years old.

On one of my days off I plan to pay homage to Vince Guaraldi by driving to Menlo Park and seeing where he died.  I don’t think Butterfield’s Nightclub is still in operation — I can’t find it in the directory.  The Red Cottage Inn is still in operation, however; I will see if the building where Butterfield’s was is still in operation.   Then I will drive to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California and visit his grave and take pictures.  I will write about this journey and share it with my readers.

Vince Guaraldi’s son David is keeping his father’s legacy alive and apparently has a music store in Stockton.  I’d love to interview David sometime.  We’ll see.

Playing String Bass (for Jazz)

One of the loves of my life is the string bass.  Also called the upright bass, the double bass or the contra bass, it’s that giant fiddle thing you see in orchestras, jazz bands and other musical groups.  I’ve wanted to become proficient at playing the bass for years, but it was always a secondary priority to getting an education and then establishing a career.  

My number one New Year’s resolution is to finally become proficient enough on bass to join a small jazz group.  I’m not getting any younger:  it’s now or never.  I have a string bass, but it’s made of laminated wood.  Laminated wood basses are strong and resist cracking, but they don’t sound as good as a bass carved out of a solid blocks of wood (they use different pieces for the front, back and sides).  These are called “carved” basses for obvious reasons.  They have a warmer tone than laminated basses and are much more expensive.  You could easily pay $8,000 to $12,000 for a fine carved bass, and if you were part of the San Francisco Orchestra you probably should.  Alas, neither my checkbook nor my musical abilities have attained that stature.

Another resolution is to buy a carved bass in 2009.  I want one and by gum, I will have one.  However, it will probably be more in the $2,000 price range.  Countries like China, Rumania and South Korea are now making fully carved basses and orchestra musicians are using them more and more.  My own music supplier uses a South Korean carved bass in the San Matero Peninsula Orchestra; it’s a Hans Kroger bass.  I will either buy one of those or a similar brand.

So far I am living up to my resolution.  I have been practicing my bass steadily for the past week or so.  Playing a big stand-up bass is physically demanding, so right now I am concentrating on building up my shoulders, arms, hands and fingers.  All are a bit sore right now.  My plucking fingers on my right hand are calloused.  My endurance will grow.  When I have the strength to play a gig, that is playing  job of about four hours, I will consider myself sufficiently in shape.

I love the twangy resonance of a string bass.  I love the clicking sound of the strings on the fingerboard.  Listen to some Vince Guaraldi records or some recordings of the American Songbook, e.g. what they call “standards,” generally dance music and ballads.  I especially recommend Rod Stewart’s American Songbook collection — the orchestral bass player is excellent and the warm bass tones are amazing.

Turn up the bass tone and listen to the string bass.   You can hear it “walking” up and down the scale and the deep rhythms attune themselves with my soul.

My approach to finally becoming a bass player include the following:

1.  Practice playing my bass daily — start with half an hour and build up to an hour once my hands and fingers strengthen.

2. Listen to jazz and standards at every opportunity.  To play great music you must listen to great music.

3. Study music theory.  Practice arpeggios, scales and following chord symbols on sheet music.  I have some play-along CD’s by Jamey Aebersold Jazz for this purpose.  You can order them from Amazon.com.

4.  Eventually, find a group of other musicians to practice and play gigs with.

If there are any aspiring musicians in the South Bay area who might want a bass player, give me a shout.