Jazz bass legend Stanley Clarke has been dazzling music fans with his ferocious technique and brilliant songwriting for over forty years. His forty albums and sixty film scores have made him one of the most respected artists in contemporary music. This year is off to an exciting start for Stanley Clarke, as he has just taken home the Grammy® Award in the Best Contemporary Jazz Album category for his latest recording “The Stanley Clarke Band.” The record also received a Grammy® nomination in the Best Pop Instrumental Performance category for the song “No Mystery,” but that award went to Jeff Beck for “Nessun Dorma.”
Stanley was the first bassist in history to double on acoustic and electric bass with equal virtuosity. Not only is he an expert at crafting bass lines in the traditional backup role, he has also used his sense of melody to propel the bass into a viable lead soloist role. Although he is fluent in several different music genres, he is best known for his electric jazz-rock fusion work in the early seventies. This work included the seminal fusion band Return to Forever as well as his solo recordings.
Stanley’s latest recording marks a return to his classic fusion sound, and he has assembled a group of young firebrand musicians that effectively updates this exciting style of music. For example, “No Mystery” is a modern remake of a classic Return to Forever tune, and the album includes a tribute to the jazz-rock fusion era that is humorously titled “Larry Has Traveled 11 Miles and Waited a Lifetime for the Return of Vishnu’s Report.” This title is a reference to the pioneers of the fusion genre: Larry Coryell & the Eleventh House, Miles Davis, Tony Williams Lifetime, Return to Forever, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Weather Report. The new record features keyboardist Ruslan Sirota, guitarist Charles Altura, pianist Hiromi Uehara, and drummer Ronald Bruner, Jr.
Stanley Clarke arrived in the jazz world in 1971 as a teenager from the Philadelphia Musical Academy. He would frequently travel to New York City where he landed jobs with famous bandleaders such as Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Pharoah Saunders, Gil Evans, and Stan Getz. During this period, Stanley met up with a budding young pianist and composer named Chick Corea, and the two of them formed the seminal jazz-rock fusion band Return to Forever.
The original version of Return to Forever was primarily an acoustic band featuring flute and horns, and the band recorded two albums before making a drastic change to its sound. The second version of the band was an electric jazz-rock powerhouse quartet featuring Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, drummer Lenny White, and an explosive young rock oriented guitarist named Billy Connors. This lineup released the record that shook the world in 1973. This record was titled “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy,”and it stunned fans and musicians alike with its artistic jazz played at rock band volume levels. The music featured the highest levels of instrumental technique in the service of very deep compositions, all highlighted by the daredevil improvisations of the four band members. This ambitious record was very well received by the public, and it was certified gold.
After the band had completed a lengthy world tour, guitarist Billy Connors decided to leave the band to focus on studio session work. For his replacement, the band recruited a teenage guitar prodigy named Al DiMeola to form what is now considered to be the classic Return to Forever lineup. This lineup released more groundbreaking albums that cemented the band’s reputation as a dynamic collection of brilliant musicians. For example, “No Mystery” won the Grammy® Award for Best Jazz Album in 1975, and “Romantic Warrior” was certified gold. Released in 1976, “Romantic Warrior” is considered by many to be the best jazz-rock fusion record of all time. Unfortunately, this was also the final recording by this version of Return to Forever. After the dissolution of this lineup, all four band members have maintained successful music careers that continue to this day.
Stanley Clarke launched his solo career in 1973 while he was still active with Return to Forever, and he further established the electric bass as a viable solo instrument. In 1974 he released his eponymous solo album which featured a hit 45 rpm “single” titled “Lopsy Lu.” He then released the “shot heard around the world” with his 1976 album “School Days,” of which the title track is now a bona fide bass anthem. The song features a funky bass introduction, a catchy melody, and an explosive bass solo that is still considered to be the standard for which all bass solos are measured against. Stanley Clarke has since continued to release one excellent record after another, and he has also composed numerous scores for movies and television.
In 2008, the classic Return to Forever lineup (Corea, Clarke, DiMeola, and White) reunited for a world tour. The band delighted their legions of fans with explosive performances of their classic material, and the tour was without a doubt the jazz event of the year. The excitement of the tour was captured on film for the DVD “Return to Forever Returns - Live at Montreux 2008.” The concerts certainly left many fans hoping that they wouldn’t have to wait too long for another reunion.
With his new band, Stanley has once again recaptured the excitement of the seventies fusion era. The Stanley Clarke Band is currently on tour to support the new record, and they will be performing at the Royale in Boston on March 24 (www.royaleboston.com) and at the BB King Blues Club & Grill in New York City on March 25 (www.bbkingblues.com).
I spoke with Stanley shortly before his latest Grammy® win, and our conversation is detailed as follows:
WM: Your new record has introduced a lot of “new talent” to the jazz community. Please tell me about some of these young musicians.
SC: The core members of the new band, excluding myself, include a Ukrainian-born keyboardist whose family has now moved to Israel, and his name is Ruslan Sirota. I met him five or six years ago, and he was right out of Berklee. He’s kind of a child prodigy, and a very serious musician. He’s actually working on his own solo record that should be coming out in the next month or two. His new record is a really good example of a young jazz musician of today. Young jazz musicians admire what we did, and also what guys who came before us did, but they have their own generational ideas and styles within their music. They like hip hop and the pop music of today. It’s all that stuff mixed into one, and it’s really refreshing. So that’s Ruslan.
The other core member of the band is an amazing drummer named Ronald Bruner, Jr. The only way I can describe him is that he’s kind of a force of nature. He’s out of the Tony Williams and Billy Cobham school of drumming. He’s very technical but has a tremendous feel. He also has a solo record that will be released this year. He also plays with a rock band called Suicidal Tendencies. He’s really creative, and what I love about him is that he does a lot of different things.
Also on the record is a guest of the band, and her name is Hiromi. She is the number one instrumental jazz artist in Japan today. She’s about thirty years old, and she’s an extremely serious musician. So last year, the Stanley Clarke Band played the whole year together through the summer and fall, and we had a lot of fun. Hiromi and I also sometimes play some duet music that we put together, and we played together at various performance arts centers. The duet music is very serious, and it’s quite nice. I really enjoy playing with all of these musicians.
WM: Your new record reminds me of your work in the early seventies with Return to Forever as well as your own records from that time. Was that the intent of this record?
SC: Yes. It was a very rich period musically for me, and these guys all grew up listening to this music. When I was their age, I was into guys like Freddie Hubbard, Art Blakey, and Dexter Gordon - the guys that came before me. These guys all listened to Return to Forever records, and I kind of had no choice. This is what they wanted to do, and this is what they love to do. I kind of just joined the party, and it’s a very nice thing to play with people that are younger than me and that love something that I did.
Out of all the music in the world, I think that jazz music is the only music like this. For example, when I started playing in jazz bands when I was in my early twenties, I always played with people that were much older than me. It’s a music that gets passed down. The leader is usually the oldest guy, and he hires a bunch of young guys. They learn things and get trained, and when they get older they hire young people. That’s a tradition in jazz. You don’t see that so much in rock and roll or pop music. Usually with those types of music, everyone in the band will be about the same age. I think that it is something that is unique to jazz music, and I think that’s why the music keeps being passed down and it keeps going and going. It’s really a cool thing.
WM: Going back to the beginning, what originally made you want to learn how to play the bass?
SC: When I started out in school, I went into the music room to pick out an instrument. I showed up late, and the only thing that was left was an acoustic bass in the corner. So that’s what I picked up and that was that.
WM: How much did you practice when you first started?
SC: Some of my friends would say that I was like an animal with practicing. I would go eight hours straight in practice. I spent a lot of time practicing the bass. I approached it as if I were training to be a football player or a baseball player. I really got into it musically, physically, and spiritually - the whole thing. I literally became the bass.
WM: Please tell me about your experience at the Philadelphia Musical Academy
SC: I went there after I finished high school. While I was in high school, I had already made up my mind that I wanted to be a musician and that was the only thing that I was interested in. The Philadelphia Musical Academy was a private school, and it was a beautiful place. It’s now called the University of the Arts, and it’s a much bigger school. It was a tremendous school that I went to.
WM: What was your first “big break” as a professional musician?
SC: I went to New York and I joined a band with Horace Silver. It was called the Horace Silver quintet, and I then began working as a traveling musician. It was nice because I entered this unusual, unique club of jazz musicians. I walked in the door and joined this club, and I never came out.
WM: When did you take up the electric bass?
SC: I started playing the electric bass when I was about fifteen or sixteen. It’s funny, during my early years playing the electric bass, I would play it and then put it down for a long time. It all depended on who I was playing with and what their needs were. When I played with Horace Silver, I played electric bass. After that I played with Stan Getz and Joe Henderson, and that was all acoustic bass. Then when Chick and I started playing together, initially it was just acoustic bass. But then the band added this whole electric thing to our scene, and I started playing electric bass again. It really depended on what the needs were.
You see I am really an acoustic bass player - that’s what I am. The electric bass is kind of a side thing for me. I won’t say that it’s a hobby, but it’s something that’s second to the acoustic bass. Within the music business I’m mainly known as an electric bass player, and I got a large amount of my success from what people think of me as an electric bass player - and that’s totally fine. But what I truly am is an acoustic bass player. In my time, when I was younger, there weren’t any schools to go and learn how to play the electric bass. It was just something that I picked up, but I did all my studies with the acoustic bass. So that’s the story there.
WM: Before you took up the electric bass, I don’t believe that there were too many jazz electric bass players. Who were your influences on this instrument?
SC: You’re right. There weren’t too many, especially guys that were really noticed. I played the electric bass, and so did my buddy Jaco Pastorius. He was mainly an electric bass player - I don’t think he knew how to play the acoustic bass much. To be quite honest, it was really the early stages of this whole new electric bass thing. When I started out, I mentioned Jaco and there were a few other guys like Miroslav Vitous and Alphonso Johnson. We were kind of the guys that were taking the electric bass and injecting that thing into the jazz world. So it was kind of a paradigm shift in the electric bass world.
Right before that you had Larry Graham, Paul McCartney, and James Jamerson. These were bass players that mainly played pop, rock, and soul music. What we did is we took some of that stuff - because I’m personally influenced by all those guys that I mentioned to you. What I personally did is take whatever influence landed on me, and I then coupled that with my knowledge of jazz music, harmony, classical music, and all that. That’s what laid the grounds for this new way of playing the electric bass. So we went forward with that.
It was a new thing. Education on the electric bass - that was not there at all. You couldn’t go to a school and learn how to play the electric bass. There was maybe this one book that was written by a woman named Carol Kaye, and I was also influenced by her. She played on a lot of those Motown records along with James Jamerson. Nowadays people can go to schools to learn how to play the electric bass, and it’s fascinating to me.
WM: For the Return to Forever record “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy,” you guys made a real drastic shift in your sound. What inspired you to make that leap?
SC: Well, we added an electric guitarist and Billy Connors was his name. We were really interested in playing louder, playing for more people, and having a bigger explosion out there. So we took our way of composing - which if you really listen to that music or look at those charts - it’s like classical music. An orchestra can play that stuff. What we did is we got really loud - we turned that equipment up and just played. It was great! We were young and we were trying a bunch of different things. We just went for it because it was a lot of fun. That was a great time period for me - I really enjoyed it.
WM: What made you decide to launch a solo career while Return to Forever was still active?
SC: It was only natural. Return to Forever was pretty much Chick’s band, and I was kind of his right hand man for lack of a better term. I was right there with Chick all the time. I was very supportive of him, but like anyone else I had my own ideas about things. Much of my early solo records had more to do with promoting the bass as a solo instrument. If you really listen to those records and listen to what else was going on at the time, you would see how weird those records really were. And if you looked at my shows, I was a bass player standing in front of a band. Typically at that time you would see a singer, or maybe a guitar player, leading a band. I just felt: “So what? I’m a bass player and I’m going to stand in front of a band and make my own music and that’s that!” The records reflected that, and that’s really the only way that it could have been done.
It couldn’t have been done in Return to Forever because that band had too many voices. Return to Forever was pretty much a keyboard and guitar oriented band that was supported by bass and drums. My solo records were bass records. I’ve been very lucky to hear some kids tell me that “School Days” is a bass anthem. Of everything that I’ve ever done, I’m most proud of my first few solo records. They shifted how people think about bass. Then when Jaco Pastorius came along, he took it even further. It was really a cool time!
The first few records weren’t even about making money. If I wanted to make money, I would have done something else. Although those records did sell and I made a lot of money, the initial thought was to do something that was really different. I didn’t even know whether those records would sell. If I really wanted to make money I would have worn some gold lamé, put some oranges in my crotch, got an even bigger afro, get really really funky, and have a singer out there. But if you listen to those records carefully, it’s really a celebration of the bass. That’s what I’m most proud of - that I had an idea and I did it!
WM: Moving back into the present, are you planning on taking The Stanley Clarke Band on tour?
SC: Oh yeah. I’m always taking that band on the road. We have a long tour in March, and we have some dates in May. We’re teaming up with another bass player and his band - Victor Wooten, and we’re playing all around the country.
We were nominated for two Grammy® Awards for our latest album. We’re hoping that we get at least one win there. If not, we’re very happy just to be nominated. Of all the albums that were made last year, we have a lot of gratitude that we were at least nominated. It’s a very nice thing. We have a cool band with some very nice people in it.
WM: After this tour is finished, what’s next for Stanley Clarke?
SC: We’re putting a new version of Return to Forever together for a major world tour this summer. The band will consist of me, Chick Corea, Lenny White, Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and Frank Gambale on guitar. We’re in Australia right now playing a few dates, and we’re going to tour the world starting in June. The tour will continue until the end of the year. We came to Australia to start it up, and we had some rehearsals in New York. So that’s what we’ll be doing.
WM: Will Return to Forever release any new music?
SC: I don’t think we’re going to have the time. For lack of a better word, this tour is going to be a celebration of the entire history of Return to Forever. It’s a pretty long show. This is the fourth version of Return to Forever, and we’ll be performing all the different things we’ve done since 1972. The band has a long history, and a lot of good people have come through the band. We’ve made some pretty significant records in the world of jazz, and so we’re going to celebrate that. I think it’s going to be a good thing for our fans.