Ever endeavored to explicate what salt tastes like to someone that’s never tried it? “Uh, it tastes like – salt. No wait – it tastes like, umm – oh, never mind.” See what I mean? Just think about it for a moment. It might actually be easier to explain quantum physics. Or better yet, just wave the white flag on the elucidation – and let them experience it.
And if that relatively simple undertaking throws you for a loop, imagine describing jazz to the uninitiated.Or maybe just save them – and yourself – some aggravation, and thump them with a few of jazz legend Stanley Clarke’s fusion flavored bass licks.
Clarke erupted onto the jazz scene in 1971 as a lanky teenager from the Philadelphia Academy of Music. Notwithstanding his supposed youthful inexperience, Clarke’s fellow musicians instantly recognized his ferocious dexterity and complete musicality on the acoustic bass.
Both ripe and raw jazz fans get the rare chance to witness the melodic brilliance of the influential jazz musician and the rest of his iconic Return to Forever IV bandmates on their current tour. The RTF lineup reads like a who’s who of jazz royalty, including keyboardist Chick Corea, drummer Lenny White, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, and guitarist Frank Gambale.
Clarke spent some time with Examiner.com last week to chat about his innovative career, the current tour, and all that jazz.
2011 has already been an exceptional year for the jazz giant, picking up another Grammy Award (Best Contemporary Jazz Album) and being honored as this year’s winner of The Miles Davis Award at the Montreal International Jazz Festival.
Clarke is only the 18th recipient of The Miles Davis Award, which celebrates the work and influence of an international jazz musician. To get an idea as to the magnitude of the Davis award, he joins such previous Davis award winners and jazz luminaries as saxophonist Sonny Rollins, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Dave Holland, keyboardist Joe Zawinul and guitarist Pat Metheny.
Clarke has received much well-deserved recognition over his career, but the Davis award had to be special for him.
“Yeah, it was,” agreed Clarke. “It’s one of those kinds of awards that only a handful of people have won and some of the guys on there are some pretty serious guys. Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner are serious idols of mine you know? Guys I looked up to when I was younger.”
“I was surprised actually and it was nice. It’s a wonderful award. It’s the heaviest award I’ve ever gotten (laughing). Just its weight, you know. You look at it, it looks like an Oscar. It looks like a guy holding a trumpet there but you could lift weights.”
“When I grabbed it I said, ‘I’m right in the middle of a tour. You guys definitely have to send this to me. No way I can carry this thing around (chuckling).’”
Clarke’s career has been defined by his innovativeness and willingness to take risks. I asked him if he ever consciously said to himself, “I just want to do it my way and the let the cards fall where they may.”
“You know, that’s a good question. When I look back on my life in retrospect from where I am right now, I don’t know if it’s possible to be a real innovator on the outset by saying, ‘I’m gonna innovate something.’”
“I think you can invent something, like you can invent a new car or something like that. But I think certain types of art like painting and music, I think to be quite honest, some of the guys that are like that are just bull-headed.”
“Be the way you are and that’s it. When I started playing the bass, I knew that there were some guys that could handle the way I play the bass. And there was sometimes when I used to go to gigs and I remember some guys used to think I was a little wild or over the top or something like that or just different.”
The jazz colossus’ peers were stunned with his teenage virtuosity.
“When I put a band together and I was a leader of the band – I think I was about eighteen and probably younger, seventeen, I think – and that was very unusual at the time. I think Charley Mingus probably was the only really active jazz bass player with a band.”
“To be quite honest, a lot of the stuff that I did really stemmed from composition. I could have almost played any other instrument. But because I played the bass, I think that that made it unique you know, because I was always sort of a melody driven person.
“And the fact that I played the bass – that was my instrument so I would play melodies on the bass as much as I could along with the other duties of a bass player. And I think just that combination of all those things kind of made it unique and different.”
It’s interesting that Clarke should mention the inventor analogy, since his astounding innovative gift extends to his ability to create new instruments. Was it as simple as saying, “I need a different instrument to do something that I’m not able to do right now”?
“Sure, sure. If you look at the piccolo bass guitar and later, the tenor bass guitar – these instruments were born out of the need to create something musically. And I’m really happy with the piccolo bass because a lot of bass players actually went and got piccolo basses and kind of incorporated that in there.”
“I remember one time I was home and a bass player – I think his name was Victor Bailey – knocked on my door around ten in the morning. It was a weird thing. Usually no one knocks on my door at ten in the morning (laughing).”
“So there’s a knock and I open the door and he was real flustered and he just flew in from somewhere. He says, ‘Man, I need some piccolo bass string.’ ‘What?!’ I said, ‘You got a piccolo bass?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I made one. I just sort of put one together but I don’t have the strings.’ I said, ‘Okay, okay.’ It was nice just to see that, you know?”
Clarke and Corea have been playing together for close to forty years and the two of them with White for only a few years less. Given their respective individual musical growth and evolution, is the musical dynamic different today than it was back then?
“I actually find that with me, Lenny and Chick, it’s actually much easier for us to play right now. You know, we’re fortunate that we have a long history behind us. We have a lot of people that admire us, you know, that have followed us along on this path. So, that makes it easier, too.”
“It’s like, almost like an odd form of religion, you know? People that follow someone and you understand the language. The reason you’re following that person or persons – you just understand, they understand. So it’s kind of this group.”
“You know, our fans are a big part of it, too. We make music. Some of it, particularly jazz and really creative artists, some of it is a bit self-indulgent and – and I won't say selfish but – it has to be. I mean, we’re not out there with gold lamé suits on (chuckling).”
“Our minds are set but at the same time, we think about our fans. And we’ll do things and many times you know, one of us will go, ‘Yeah, the audience is really gonna like that!' or ‘Yeah, that’s gonna be really nice, let’s put this there.’”
“We didn’t have that so much in the beginning. In the very beginning, we really didn’t know what was happening, whether anyone would like us or whatever. We were just kind of very young and we were moving forward with something that we really like and were just surprised every day that people liked us, you know? And it just grew and grew and grew.”
Clarke pointed out that his musical evolution continues even today.
“Oh, yeah. In many ways, more so now than ever, you know? The musical development of an artist, people usually say, when you’re really young, that’s when it jumps in quantum leaps. But actually, there’s just one other factor that usually never gets mentioned.”
“When you’re young, that’s the time when you’re probably considered fresh. Usually young guys that have something really unique, that is to say they come along and it’s really different than everything else that’s around them. That’s not musical development, that just means you’re different, you know, and that’s cool.”
“Somebody said this, 'You spend your whole life making your first record, but you separate the men from the boys when it comes to your second and third record,' you know. So, I would have to say the development is much greater the older you get.”
RTF has played to packed houses on the current tour. And even veteran fans are declaring that it’s like they are hearing the music for the first time. Clarke agrees.
“Well, when you address a song at a certain point in life, interpretation really becomes the thing. I mean, the way we interpret the music right now is really, really something, because we’ve all gotten better as players and there’s a certain sense of freedom that we all have."
“So we address the music. And every night, I have to admit it, it all sounds fresh. I haven’t yet played a concert yet on this tour – I think we’ve done fifty concerts – where one of those songs has felt stale.”
Given the large number of young music enthusiasts that are starved for great music, it’s no surprise that the RTF crowds are a fantastic mixture of the youthful – and the more youthful. With popular music’s increasing focus on production and decreasing focus on, well, music, that’s wonderfully refreshing.
Does Clarke feel that the changing music scene makes it more difficult to pick up younger jazz fans?
“No, I actually think it’s difficult if a guy is focused in on – let’s say I’ve got to get these machines to work ‘cause I’m trying to make this track like Lady Gaga. He’s like focused in on that and he has no idea that there’s other things out there where people actually play instruments.”
“I have to tell you a story – something that constantly blows my mind when I see this and it happens a lot. The other night, a guy was a fan of ours, you know. He was probably about my age and he brought his son.”
“His son was probably like twenty years old, something like that – maybe nineteen. And his kid was just so blown out. And I asked him just out of interest, ‘Well, did you hear our records?’ The guy said, ‘I didn’t even know you guys existed – that this existed like this.’”
“I think where this leads me is, I’m telling you that the problem with music and art in general – just art in general, is the commerce part of our business, you know. The record companies, even radio stations – it’s just the whole thing. It’s gotten very good.”
“I don’t think it’s planned. I don’t think it’s some kind of insidious plan or something. But it’s like polarization between the young and the little bit older and the older. It is solid as a rock. Maybe if that ever gets reversed in some way, we might have a chance.”
“But I will say about our fans that we have a lot of kids coming to see us this time and it’s like the parents saying – ‘cause this guy told me, ‘My son, I told him, just come. He didn’t want to come.’ He says, ‘Trust me, just come and see this band.’"
“And then the guy says we’re on You Tube. I said, ‘Are we on You Tube?’ I said, ‘You’ve got a very interesting six months ahead of you, boy – you’ll see.’ And that’s the way it happens.”
Yes, that is the way it happens. But there has to be an easier way to explain jazz to someone. And after spending some time with Stanley Clarke, I think I’ve finally figured it out.
Simply expound on the sweetest thing you can think of – honey, sugar, nectar – and they’ll be begging for a Return to Forever…
Here are the remaining tour dates:
17 Sep. Mesa, AZ Mesa Arts Center
19 Sep. San Diego, CA Humphrey's
20 Sep. Los Angeles, CA Greek Theatre
21 Sep. Davis, CA Mondavi Center
22 Sep. San Francisco, CA Warfield Theatre
23 Sep. Eugene, OR Hult Center
24 Sep. Seattle, WA Paramount Thtr.
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