Day 330. Bass, how low can you go? (26/11/13)

So,  yeah, bassists.

No, wait, come back, there's no need to be scared I'm not going to get all muso on you.

A couple of weeks ago a friend dropped me a line on Twitter,  set me a challenge. What he wanted was for me to write a piece on the world's greatest bassists (he is himself a fine bassist); he was interested in my thoughts on the subject.

Obviously that's a really lovely thing to say and makes the fact that I never quite got round to replying all the worse. I am, it has to be said, thoroughly awful when it comes to 'not quite getting round to replying to people' - is it possible to issue a blanket apology now for all past and future indiscretions of an ignorant nature?

Anyway, I thought about it. And my first thought was, 'there's going to be a lot of people that won't be interested in that'. It's a bit specialist to be honest and the interested parties would probably come down to me, Paul (the friend in question) and Mally.

And I thought a bit more. And I realised that I didn't actually know that much about bassists, that I wasn't overly qualified to lecture on the subject, couldn't possibly talk about technique and style as others of my friends could.

I could talk very subjectively about what I like in a bass player. I could talk about the dynamism and force of personality that Bruce Foxton brought to the Jam, how he was always more about 60s classic pop than punk and that the Motown groove of 'Town Called Malice' was no shock. It seems odd now but we always thought that Foxton was the cool one in the band.

Paul Simonon went from barely capable on The Clash's first album to the rolling reggae of Guns of Brixton and was endlessly, effortlessly sharp.

McCartney - nobody thinks about how basically bloody great Macca was/is as a bassist because it's all tied up with everything else he does and being a Beatle but listen to his mid 60s psych pop peak -DayTripper, Paperback Writer, Rain, all that stuff - the bass pops and moves and carries melody with it

But the two bassists that I'd highlight (if I were going to) aren't names that are known to most.

Their work is though.

Carol Kaye was a member of The Wrecking Crew, the collection of ridiculously talented L.A. Session musicians that played with quite literally everybody in the mid to late 60s; The Beach Boys, Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Glen Campbell (Glen played guitar for TWC before he became the star that he was in the 70s), Barbra Streisand. If you were on the West Coast and you needed a bass player that could play anything you needed then Carol was pretty damn close to the top of your wish list.

If you wanted the greatest bass player on the planet though you needed to be in Detroit. Specifically you needed to be at Hitsville U.S.A, home of Tamla Motown. All those records, all those songs with the incredible grooves, with that early touch of funk (oh bugger, I forgot Bootsy Collins, inventor of the Funk), all this was the uncredited work of one man; James Jamerson. You've never heard of James but you've definitely heard him; My Girl, Reach Out I'll Be There, Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Let's Get It On, Papa Was A Rolling Stone, My Guy, I Can't Help Myself. James brought an extra touch of genius to works of genius and in doing so played on thirty number one singles; more than any other person or group in history.

But I've established that I'm not qualified to talk about bassists with any real credibility so, instead, I'll pass on my favourite (possibly apocryphal) story about the genius of James Jamerson.

Marvin Gaye was recording 'What's Going On'. The sessions had basically hit a bit of an impasse and ended for the day so the band that played on everything that Motown put out (The Funk Brothers, subject of the great film 'Standing In The Shadows of Motown') went to a bar or several.

And somewhere in the night Marvin decided that he knew exactly what he wanted from the title track of his masterwork and he sent for his band. It took some time to find the band who had been drinking for several hours by this point.

James Jamerson was at the point where he was no longer able to stand so they carried him into the studio, lay him on the floor and gave him his bass.

And, so drunk that he was unable to stand upright, James Jamerson played a piece of music that sits somewhere beyond perfection.

I'm not acclaiming the fact that he played this while drunk; his drinking killed him at the stupidly early age of 47, there's no glamour there. What I'm acclaiming is a man who was so talented that he could be in that condition and still be greater than anybody else in his field.

We live in a world where the description 'great' is applied to any half arsed talentless chancer every Saturday night on ITV. The greats are the people that you may not know but whose work outlives their memory.