This month, while we were were sipping balloon glasses of brandy in celebration of Fender’s James Jamerson P-Bass, Dream Theater’s John Myung casually returned to 4-strings after decades of defining prog metal on a 6-string bass.

“While the 6-string is my comfort zone, I missed the physical freedom and generous string spacing of the 4-string bass,” said Myung of his latest signature collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man, and who are we to judge?

For this month’s roundup we also heard from Rickenbacker’s Brendan Duff on the release of the company’s 3030 semi-acoustic bass, which combines the body of the iconic Rickenbacker 330 guitar and a bass guitar neck. Yes, it looks nuts – so what? We like crazy-looking gear.

According to Duff, “The control layout is the same as the 330/360 Rickenbacker models, with a single mono output, three way selector switch, two tone, two volume and a blend knob that acts as a secondary volume for the neck pickup.”

Now available in limited supplies on the company’s Boutique site, so order three today, plus one to keep in a lead-lined vault.

From vintage-inspired signature basses and artist-approved short-scale strings to cutting-edge firmware, here's our pick of the best bass gear from June 2026.

Fender James Jamerson 1962 Precision Bass

What can we say about James Jamerson that you don’t know already? As part of Motown’s house band, Jamerson played bass on more number-one pop hits than Elvis Presley and The Beatles combined.

Arguably the most accomplished bass player ever to stalk the earth, Jamerson made his bones with a ’62 P-Bass dubbed “The Funk Machine,” which has now been faithfully reproduced by Fender, complete with a nitrocellulose lacquer sunburst finish, and that all-important single-pickup.

Other appointments include a chrome Pure Vintage four-saddle bridge with threaded steel saddles and a chrome cover, knurled flat-top controls, and reverse open-gear tuners.

In keeping with Jamerson’s preferences, each bass comes with La Bella Flatwound strings. Quite right too.

Squier Paranormal Precision Bass Thinline SJ

Reliable, versatile and great-looking. But that’s enough about our editor-in-chief… Squier’s bass guitar range fills a gap in the market in which a reasonable amount of money meets a respectable amount of quality, and they fill it well.

The Squier Paranormal Precision Bass Thinline SJ is the latest bass addition to Fender’s 75th Anniversary collection. As you might expect, this new model reimagines the iconic Precision Bass outline through a semi-hollow “Thinline” construction and a distinctive SJ-style body design.

It’s equipped with a carefully voiced pickup configuration that comprises an alnico single-coil '51 P-Bass pickup in the neck position and an alnico single-coil Jazz Bass pickup at the bridge.

Other player-friendly features include a 4-saddle vintage-style bridge with slotted barrel saddles, a satin urethane neck finish, and vintage-style open-gear tuners. It's available in Olive, Vintage White and 3-Color Sunburst.

Darkglass Anagram KosmOS 1.16

The latest firmware update for the Darkglass Anagram is one of the platform's biggest updates to date. The standout addition is a completely overhauled Scene Manager. While previous firmware limited users to three scenes per preset, KosmOS 1.16 increases that figure to an impressive 126 scenes.

Darkglass also added two new amplifier models. Peggy Classic delivers the warm, rounded response associated with one of the most revered bass amp designs ever produced, while Peggy Fliptop captures the unmistakable character of a vintage flip-top combo.

For users embracing Neural Amp Modeler technology, KosmOS 1.16 introduces full support for NAM Architecture 2 (A2).

Another welcome addition is a combined HPF/LPF block, merging high-pass and low-pass filtering into a single processor and freeing up additional space within the signal chain for effects or routing options.

Ernie Ball Music Man John Myung Bongo 4

While John Myung has been quietly pushing the barriers of 6-string bass playing for decades with his band Dream Theater, his latest signature model stems from a renewed appreciation for the traditional 4-string.

Available in JM Purple or JM Green, with Stealth pickup covers, the John Myung 4 sees a return to the normal string spacing of the original Bongo design.

“While the 6-string is my comfort zone, I missed the physical freedom and generous string spacing of the 4-string bass,” said Myung. “Each song needs to be played on what it was written for to capture its original soul. Returning to a 4-string during our 40th Anniversary Tour for the Images & Words tracks completely restored the musical conviction of those songs live.”

A notable change from the traditional Bongo is the streamlined control layout. Myung instead opted for a simplified setup featuring a volume control that doubles as an on/off kill switch alongside a five-way rotary pickup blend selector.

If that's not enough to grab your attention, the roasted maple neck has been paired with a hybrid rosewood and roasted maple fingerboard that Music Man refers to as a “Golden Ratio” design.

EMG NS-Wav Retro Fit

If Han Solo played bass in Star Wars, the NS Design Wav4 upright bass would be the one he’d choose. It's the bass you want stored in the Millennium Falcon in case of ‘imperial entanglements’.

The good news is that EMG has introduced a new drop-in system specifically for the Wav bass that’s designed to give you more control beyond the standard volume, tone, and arco/pizzicato controls.

It features a 20megOhm input impedance for each Piezo pickup for more low-end, and changes the Arco/Pizz switch to a blend control.

Along with master volume, there's also a variable low pass filter that maintains low frequency gain while cutting the high frequency response at 12dB per octave. The system runs on 18 Volts, so there’s plenty of headroom. It comes complete with a new backplate, battery holders, and takes minutes to install.

Rickenbacker 3030

If you’ve got a couple of grand to spare, you could do worse than investing in one of these splendid Rickenbacker basses. Combining the body of a 330 guitar and a bass guitar neck, the 3030 has a scale length that’s 9 1/4 inches shorter than a standard long-scale and 5 1/4 inches shorter than a typical short-scale.

It’s built with a maple body, a maple/walnut neck, and rosewood fingerboard in Jetglo, Mapleglo, and Fireglo finishes. A Walnut version features a walnut body and maple fingerboard. Both are fitted with a pair of Hot Toaster pickups.

“The control layout is the same as the 330/360 models,” said Rickenbacker’s Brendan Duff. “A single mono output, three way selector switch, two tone, two volume and a blend knob that acts as a secondary volume for the neck pickup.”

Other features include the “R” tailpiece, a four-saddle bridge, mono output, and Schaller M4 tuners.

Available in limited supplies on the company’s Boutique site, and expected to be offered in small batches from time to time. Most of the rest of us will never get to own one, but hey, a bassist can dream, right?

Trickfish Amplification L212

Trickfish Amplification has expanded its acclaimed L Series lineup with the introduction of the L212, a lightweight bass cabinet designed for players seeking the punch and warmth of dual 12-inch speakers in a compact enclosure.

Rated at 800 watts AES and weighing just 45 pounds (20.4 kg), the L212 features two Lavoce neodymium 12-inch drivers in a unique diagonal configuration, with the same compact footprint as the company’s L410.

“Players who want the warmth of 12-inch drivers at full gigging volume now have a single cabinet that gets them there,” said Trickfish president Ryan Owens. “The diagonal driver placement supports better stage coverage without changing the cabinet's footprint, so you get more coverage without giving anything up.”

D'Addario Backline Bass Case

Ever since there have been expensive bass guitars to love, cherish and obey, a range of protective bags and cases has grown up around them. This new gig bag from D’Addario’s Backline series has a water-resistant exterior, reinforced zippers, and an assortment of straps, handles and pockets.

There’s plenty of “shock-absorbing” padding too, and room to carry all of your gig essentials thanks to a detachable Breakaway Bag with Auto Lock mechanisms for storing your accessories.

La Bella Ian Martin Allison Signature Short-Scale Bass Strings

La Bella has been a big player in the bass strings game for quite some time – the original Deep Talkin’ range took the bass world by storm back in the late ‘50s. More recently, the company has widened its focus to include a signature set for bassist Ian Martin Allison, which is now available as a short-scale set.

Made with a hex core and polished stainless steel roundwound wrap, the new scale option has the same feel and custom gauges as the original set (.045, .063, .083, and .103) with the five-string adding a .125 B-string.

Z.Vex DB-1

If you like your pedals to be hand-built by people who love their work, it's worth taking a look at the wacky world of Z.Vex Effects, which now plays host to the DB-1. The DB-1 continues the company’s tradition of mutating classic designs into modern versions with a twist.

It functions as an ultra-high impedance analog signal meter that monitors signal activity on your pedalboard. It can be used anywhere in your signal chain without fear of affecting your tone. It also works in both directions.

We love the retro VU meter, which scales up to a maximum level of eleven in homage to the great Nigel Tufnel.

Fender is celebrating the legacy of a Motown legend with the James Jamerson 1962 Precision Bass – a reissue of a bass that “changed what the low end was capable of forever”.

Although the celebrated session player was uncredited for much of his work, Jamerson and his 1962 P bass were the bedrock of countless Motown hits, providing famous basslines for the likes of My Girl, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, and What’s Going On.

This reissue coincides with the instrument’s 75th anniversary, and at its core sits the James Jamerson ‘62 Precision Bass pickup at its heart, which voiced to replicate the “warm, punchy low end that anchored the Motown hit factory”.

The single-pickup bass pairs a classic alder body and period-correct C-shaped neck with a slab rosewood fingerboard. Other appointments include a chrome Pure Vintage four-saddle bridge with threaded steel saddles and a chrome cover, knurled flat-top controls, and reverse open-gear tuners.

Fender is also leaning into the trends of relic’d guitars and finishes that wear over time with an Heirloom nitrocellulose lacquer sunburst finish that will patina over time. That will make each copy age just like the original, albeit in their own unique ways.

The 34” scale bass features 20 vintage tall frets, clay dot inlays, vintage clay side dots, and a bone nut.

In keeping with Jamerson’s preferences, each guitar comes with .052- .110-gauge La Bella Flat Wound strings.

“Every detail of the James Jamerson 1962 Precision Bass has been obsessed over to put that same magic in players’ hands,” says Fender.

It's a fitting tribute. Jamerson was crowned the world’s best bassist by Bass Player in 2017, describing him as “the most important and influential bass guitarist in the 66-year history of the Fender Precision.”

“Jamerson is the reason the bass is what it is today. His 1962 Precision Bass wasn't just an instrument, it was the heartbeat of an era,” said Justin Norvell, Chief Product Officer, Fender Guitars.

“As we continue celebrating 75 years of the P Bass, we wanted every player, from bedroom musicians to touring professionals, to be able to hold a piece of that legacy in their hands.”

From funkifying Christmas classics to laying down classic basslines after one too many drinks and offering his peers sage advice they still live by, few players have impacted the instrument’s history quite like Jamerson.

The James Jamerson Precision Bass is available now for $2,999.

See Fender for more.

“I always liked Jaco, and I felt that if I'd known him better, I could have helped him out. I recorded him once, but he was sideways.”

One of the many prophetic and profound statements made by Bill Laswell, renowned bassist for the renegade groups Material, Deadline, and Painkiller, and producer of such cutting-edge bands as Public Image Ltd, Motörhead, Iggy Pop, and the Lambomaniacs

Channelling jazz, dub, punk, and hip hop influences, Laswell remains an enigma of bass-playing history and has blazed a trail in creating his own unique style.

“All I ever wanted was for a good drummer to say, ‘He’s bad. I wanna play with him,’” said Laswell in a rare Bass Player interview from January 1992. “There are guys beating up the bass and getting a bunch of notes out of it, but no one really plays great basslines anymore.

“What I value about the bass is the way the sound and the feel relate to an environment. There's an incredible amount of technique involved in just touching the strings, and very few people are aware of that.”

Laswell scored his first commercial triumph as bassist and producer with Herbie Hancock's 1983 album, Future Shock, which included the hit single Rockit.

After that, offers started to pour in, including Mick Jagger's She's the Boss and Laurie Anderson's Mister Heartbreak, as well as projects for Iggy Pop, Féla Kuti, Sly & Robbie, Motörhead and many others.

When asked about his aforementioned encounter with Jaco Pastorius, Laswell replied: “I was making a record with Deadline, Phillip Wilson's project for Celluloid Records in 1984, and Phillip ran over to the old Lone Star to get Paul Butterfield. Jaco was there, and he tagged along. We let him play for about three minutes at the end of Makossa Rock, but it wasn't happening.

“I saw Jaco play live in his early days, when he first came out. He had a voice – it wasn't even bass guitar, it was just this unique voice. The stuff he did with Joni Mitchell was great, but then he lost it.

“He made a great contribution, but what came after him was all these idiots trying to sound like him. That's why bass players today are so fucking lame. To me, bass is some serious shit. It's like a religion or a good Western; it's beyond music – it's about character.”

Is there anything you're especially proud of in your work as a bass player?

What I'm sort of happy about is the way I sound like a lot of different people – it doesn't sound as if I'm just rescheduling the same events. Also, the way I use a lot of different instruments implies a different approach, but it's got more to do with playing than it does equipment.

I don't talk much about instruments, and I don’t have huge respect for them. They're just tools; you use them to get ideas across and put music together.

What's your attitude toward the bass?

As a bass player, I'm more influenced by religious writers like Gurdjieff or Aleister Crowley than I am by some jerks who play fusion music. And the magazines that glorify these people are just a total waste. I'm not talking about one person in particular, I’m talking about 99.9% of that shit.

There are very few bass players I can listen to; I hear a lot of people with incredible technique doing exercises on the instrument. But as far as playing great lines, playing with a great sound, incorporating it into the music, knowing how to make music really work – I hear very little of that. People are getting around more on the instrument, but that's not interesting to me at all.

Are there any exceptions to that?

Jonas Hellborg is an exception. And Bootsy Collins is a great bassist; he has a limited style, but it's real. What he plays is coming from great experience and a real devotion to a certain style, but these people doing all these acrobatics, tapping and whatever, don't play what I value: good lines and creative ideas about how to juxtapose rhythms with drummers. The feel is what's important.

You must admire James Jamerson.

Everybody likes Jamerson. He played with a natural feel, he had a sound, he had a style. I admired Jamerson when I was a teenager; I heard a lot of great bass players when I was growing up in Detroit.

Do you use both your fingers and a pick?

Yeah, but I stopped playing with my thumb because I felt that style was being exploited without being understood. When Larry Graham did it, it sounded good. And Bootsy has his own style, which is not like Larry's at all.

There was a guy named Doug Rauch who played with Santana; he had a real original style of playing with his thumb. Outside of those three people, I don't think there's anyone else I would bother listening to in that style.

As far as playing with a pick, I'm not really an authority, but it's another technique that works for different kinds of music. It's good if you're going for some kind of conviction and intensity.

Guitarist Bob Quine once said you were the best bass player he ever played with, because you listen and react so well.

Well, Quine never could stand people just dicking around on their instruments. To be honest, I'm not a fan of Quine, but I'd rather hear his stuff than some of this other shit that people are passing off as guitar playing. It sounds like typing.

Have you seen any bands live that impressed you?

I don't go to concerts; I can't concentrate for more than a few minutes on one style of music. That's why I liked what John Zorn is doing with his band, because he jumps from one thing to the next. All the events are squashed down to precise statements – shorter and shorter. I think that's really clever.

You also worked with Motörhead?

They're not that versatile, but they had a commitment to what they do, probably more than most bands. Lemmy’s really into the shit that he's doing. He’s really committed to being in a band. I’m sort of the opposite of that; I have no interest in it, but I can see why it really suited him.

What do you think of thrash bands like Slayer?

I guess in principle I like them. I'm not real excited about that music, but I don't have a problem with it. I'd rather hear that than 90% of the shit that's selling.

Has your interest in Middle Eastern, Asian, and Indian music affected your approach to the bass?

It has, but in a gradual, indirect way; I can't really pinpoint it. I've been working on a kind of North African music called gnawa music. There's a three-stringed instrument called a sintir, which has a very low register – it sounds a lot like a bass. To hear that instrument played is really an experience, and I suppose that has influenced me – to some degree.

What did you think of Paul Simon using Olodum on The Rhythm of the Saints album?

I thought the sound was nice, but I'm not a Paul Simon fan ever, under any circumstances, at all. Neither is Olodum. All the rhythm stuff on his album was well played and everything; it's just that when he put his voice and the rest of that shit on top of it, it's like, ‘Why?’

Do you feel that people at record companies are opening up to more challenging music?

I don't think the people at most record companies would know challenging music if it was right in their faces. I've been hearing challenging music since I started listening; I've heard it in the streets, in the Middle East, in Africa, in India, in Asia. The shit's been there the whole time.

Is there a particular bass you're using these days?

It depends on what I'm doing. I've got a lot of different instruments, and I use them for different areas of music.

All these magazines that talk about equipment – I think it's a waste of paper. All it does is promote equipment; it doesn't explain why people are interested in music or how they got to where they are.

Do you favor a particular method for recording your bass?

The question is: what's the music and how does the bass fit in? Sometimes I'll use a really close delay just to project the thing. Sometimes tons of pedals; other times, straight into the amp.

I use a lot of different amps: Marshalls, mostly, but sometimes SVTs for warmer stuff or a combination of different amps. You should leave yourself open to random things occurring – a blown speaker might be exactly what you need.

“Just what we need – another damn bass player from Detroit!”

That friendly chide from bassist Eddie Watkins to fellow Motown thumper Ben Adkins about Allen McGrier, who had just arrived to live at Adkins’ Los Angeles pad, begins the tale of McGrier's successful move west.

The results would be a slew of great bass work, as well as songwriting and production with Teena Marie, Rick James, and many others.

Born on July 24, 1957, McGrier began playing trumpet at age 12. After transferring to a new junior high school, he met James Jamerson Jr. and began hanging at the family's home. “I had refrigerator privileges,” McGrier explained in the August 2018 issue of Bass Player.

When James Jamerson Sr. played at a school talent show and “tore the place up,” that clinched it. Equipped with an Epiphone semi-hollow bass guitar his dad bought him, McGrier made the switch from trumpet, applying the influences of Jamerson, Billy Cox, John Paul Jones and Rocco Prestia.

Following high school, McGrier, like family members before him, began working for Ford Motors. A successful audition for the Dells led to some regional touring, for which he took medical leave from his day gig. Eventually, the toil and risks of melting iron while balancing his playing career led him to leave the Ford foundry.

“I never wanted to make a car – I wanted to make music. James Jr. had moved to L.A. and was telling me to come out, so I bought a super-saver ticket and hopped on a plane. When I got there, he was on the road, so I moved in with Ben Adkins, who was the first bassist in the Jacksons after Jermaine quit.”

Soon after the 1979 move, McGrier got a break when Adkins recommended him for a Teena Marie audition. He landed the gig and went on tour with Marie, opening for Prince and Rick James. He also did some demos for Marie's second album, but with bills to pay, he hit the road with the Jones Girls.

For Marie's third record, McGrier and his buddies from the Motown band Ozone (keyboardist Jimmy Stewart and drummer Paul Hines) told the singer they would share their ideas with her, so that her music wouldn't sound like everything else on the radio. The unit did the rhythm and horn arrangements, and 1980's Irons in the Fire still stands as Marie's most critically acclaimed album.

The sessions took place at Motown's Hitsville Recording Studios in Hollywood, with McGrier on his '77 Music Man StingRay (strung with Dean Markley roundwounds and recorded direct).

“I had James Jr. come down to overdub acoustic bass on the track Tune In Tomorrow. Pops (James Jamerson Sr.) came with him to hang, and they brought his famous Motown upright.”

Among the ear-grabbing bass tracks is the ballad Young Love. “Pops asked me if I wrote the Young Love bassline, and he was mad at me for not getting a cowriting credit. Teena's original version had a I-IV-V chord movement. I changed it to I-bVII-IVm-I, and came up with the bassline, and she loved it.”

The first verse stays within the same harmonic framework, showcasing McGrier's heavy Jamerson influence: chromatic movement, open strings, and a drop down to the 3rd of the chord. He adds a killer fill at 01:14, coming out of the band accents at the end of the previous bar.

The mood alters for the bridge at 03:01, which drops to the relative minor. “I thought it was a bit harsh for the track's vibe, but Teena insisted.”

The last four bridge bars return to the original D major tonality to set up the final chorus at 03:51. Eight bars later, at 04:19, an outro begins, in which Marie improvises some final vocal thoughts. McGrier marks the shift by plugging in his Jamerson-esque drop-to-the-3rd figure in the first bar of the four-bar phrase.

For the final four measures, he gets a bit looser over the C chords. Finally, with a very slight ritardando at the back of the second-to-last measure, he ends on a 10th, adding some color tones before stating it again on beat four.

McGrier (who proudly contributed It's a Shame to Allan Slutsky's book Standing in the Shadows of Motown) went on to live off his royalties, thanks to his songs being sampled by the Fugees, Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg, and others. He also played with the Rick James Stone City Band and a Teena Marie tribute band.

Anyone who has played bass guitar in a dance band is familiar with songs like Parliament's Flashlight and Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker), Funkadelic's One Nation Under a Groove and Cosmic Slop, and group leader George Clinton's solo smash Atomic Dog – classic funk tunes with widely divergent bass styles.

Less commonly known are the bassists behind those styles, and how they influenced the sound and direction of the P-Funk collective over a history of nearly 40 years.

From the late 1950s doo-wop days in Clinton's Plainfield, New Jersey, barbershop, to the hip-hop leanings of the collective’s later albums, the P-Funk story, and the story of its bassists, is complicated.

For starters, the group’s name has changed, often for legal reasons. They were the Parliaments, then Funkadelic, then Parliament and Funkadelic.

Speaking to Bass Player in 2010, William ‘Billy Bass’ Nelson – who passed away on January 31, 2025 – said: “One day, Eddie Hazel and I were tossing ideas back and forth when we came up with the name ‘Funkadelic’, which perfectly fit the psychedelic funk music.”

Then there were the offshoots: the Brides of Funkenstein, Parlet, Fred Wesley's Horny Horns, and Bootsy Collins's Rubber Band.

While most are aware of William ‘Bootsy’ Collins, whose contributions to James Brown were as significant as those to P-Funk, less may know of Cordell ‘Boogie’ Mosson, Rodney ‘Skeet’ Curtis, Lige ‘Ligedelic’ Curry, and Billy ‘Bass’ Nelson.

“I'd hung around George Clinton's barbershop since I was a little kid, and I started to work there when I was 15,” Nelson told Bass Player. “Eddie Hazel inspired me to learn guitar, and when the Parliaments would go on the road, I would work out the arrangements for the house-band rhythm section.

“When we moved to Detroit, I met James Jamerson, who taught me how to play bass guitar. Music for My Mother is a good example of how he taught me to stay in the lower register. I used an Ampeg bass on that song.”

By the mid ’70s, Parliament/Funkadelic comprised a loose collection of musicians – including several bassists – whose abundant studio sessions ended up on albums by both bands, with Clinton often tending to put the more mainstream, horn-oriented tracks on Parliament records, while reserving the edgier, guitar-led tracks for Funkadelic.

Clinton eventually assembled a backing band consisting of Lucius ‘Tawl’ Ross on rhythm guitar, Ramon ‘Tiki’ Fulwood on drums, Bernie Worrell on keyboards, Nelson on bass guitar, and Eddie Hazel on lead guitar, but there was a definite rift between the vocalists and the backing band.

Due to compensation, and various other issues, the entire band split in 1971.

“I'm very outspoken, so I was the most vocal about being unhappy. That's when George grabbed Bootsy Collins and his band to replace us, but the sound wasn't nearly the same, because those guys were from the James Brown funk school.

“They didn't take what we were doing seriously, especially the look, and they lasted on the road for only about seven months before George wisely began to split the thing into Parliament and Funkadelic.”

Following his split from Clinton, Nelson continued to rely on his funk influences to create the sound that carried him across different bands and projects.

“I moved on to play with Ruth Copeland. We spent two years opening for Sly & the Family Stone, so I picked up a lot from Larry Graham, as he did from me.

“I freaked him out because instead of slap-and-pop, my technique is more like hit-and-pinch, where I use my thumb or index finger to hit the low note, and then use my thumb and index finger to pinch. The attack is more aggressive.

“I did session work for Motown, too, and you can hear me using that technique on the Temptations’ hit Shakey Ground from A Song for You.”

As has always been traditional in the US funk scene, Nelson started off by playing whatever he could blag or borrow, but his signature sound would often come from an unexpected source.

“It surprises people to find out that I sometimes used a Hagstrom 8-string, which produces an almost synth-bass tone when played with a pick. You can hear it on I Got a Thing, You Got a Thing, Everybody's Got a Thing and Free Your Mind….. and Your Ass Will Follow.

“We were touring primarily with Kustom amps until one very important gig opening for the Vanilla Fudge in 1968. We were forced to use their Marshall guitar amps and Ampeg SVT bass amps, and the sound was so huge.

“We already had the look and the material, but it was at that moment that the true Funkadelic sound was born.”

After touring with several Parliament/Funkadelic lineups in the early ’90s, Nelson rejoined the group in 1994, released solo material under the name O.G. Funk, and also toured with 420 Funk Mob and Sons of F.U.N.K.

According to Nelson, he would never age out of the genre.

“I sat in with P-Funk when they came to Pittsburgh in 1994. George really dug having me play on the old tunes and asked me to come on the road, which I did for 10 years.

“I was disappointed it became a settle-for-less organization, but despite the shortcomings, I really enjoyed coming back and working with the band again. It gave me more confidence in my abilities as a bass player than ever before.”

The Temptations' version of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer was originally recorded in October 1968 and released both as a single and as part of the December ’68 album Merry Christmas From Motown. It also made the group's 1970 side, The Temptations Christmas Card, as well as the top-selling 1973 double-album A Motown Christmas.

The track captures the legendary Jamerson at his peak powers, before personal and health problems began to take their toll. So said Allan Slutsky, author of the epic bass tome Standing in the Shadows of Motown, which he later developed into the 2002 film of the same name.

“It's a smorgasbord of many of the revolutionary techniques and devices he pioneered,” Slutsky told Bass Player in 2016.

“Not to the level of masterworks like Bernadette and I Was Made to Love Her, but a quality performance nonetheless, with a feel similar to other challenging Jamerson tracks, such as Darling Dear, I Second That Emotion, and Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing.”

The track begins with a rubato intro that contains the true revelation of the entire part: Jamerson climbing to the upper-register 10th (F#) on the G string, while playing an open D, at 00:27.

“I've never heard Jamerson use this device. By then, it had made its way onto the bass guitar landscape, so he probably picked it up from hearing it somewhere.”

Tempo starts at 00:32, which contains the song's AA sections, in what is an AABA form. Jamerson immediately establishes several keys to the part, including his use of two eighth-notes on the downbeat of one as the main pulse; pivoting between the root, 5th, and octave; adding arpeggio movement and color tones like the 6th and 2nd/9th for variety; utilizing chromatic approach and passing tones, as well as open strings; and adding his trademark sense of syncopation.

“With a lot of space between the two chord changes, Jamerson is thinking linearly and constantly developing the part, with one interesting exception being the 16th-note run at 00:47, which he restates throughout the track.”

For the song's B section, Jamerson changes his approach. “Because you basically have two chords per measure, he uses shorter phrases as he navigates through the changes. But that doesn't stop him from laying down a deadly cool, highly syncopated figure at 01:27.”

Following the final A section in the AABA form, the track makes its way back to the bridge, or B section, at 01:54, before a return to the final A section at 02:15, which includes the original extended V-chord ending at 02:30 (featuring Jamerson's signature use of above and below approach notes).

Strap in for the outro, at 02:35, which pivots between C and Bb9 chords. Jamerson – likely on his 1962 Fender P-Bass – plays a flurry of ascending and descending arpeggiated figures connected by chromatic movement.

At 02:45, Jamerson grabs the ear with a rising and falling one-and-three-quarter-octave arpeggio figure reminiscent a similarly treacherous span in the chorus of the Gladys Knight version of I Heard It Through the Grapevine – and dig his use of a D on the ‘and’ of two, instead of the anticipated E.

Sums up Slutsky, who also worked on a feature-film-length documentary about Philadelphia's famed Sigma Sound Studios, “To think that Jamerson could compose this entire bassline spontaneously and still be locked into the groove and sound so relaxed is pretty astounding. That's his genius.”

For Vulfpeck's Joe Dart, Flea was (and still is), undisputedly, his bass hero. “When I think of bass vocabulary, for me, when I was in my teens, I was listening to a lot of Flea,” Dart divulges on Scott's Bass Lessons.

“It's him taking from Parliament-Funkadelic, so it'd be a lot of Bootsy [Collins] in there, and then a lot of horn players [like] Mayceo [Parker], Fred Wesley... My hero, Flea, was actually copying a lot of stuff from bass players that I wasn't hip to because they weren't as visible as he was. Flea was such a visible bass player, and he was the guy.”

Turns out, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bass player didn't just inspire him from afar, but rather, a keen young Dart decided to take matters into his own hands, and find a way to get in touch with Flea.

“I wrote Flea a fan mail letter when I was, like, 12 or 13 years old, and I was just like, ‘I want to do what you're doing. And do you have any advice?’” And while many fan letters go unanswered, Flea took the time to craft a reply for the young bassist, who would eventually become central to Vulfpeck’s sound.

“He wrote me back – it's unbelievable. He's the sweetest guy ever,” he continues. “He wrote me back a handwritten letter, and his advice to me was like, ‘Remember that the bass is a supportive instrument. You're there to play a supportive role. You're part of a rhythm section.’

“And he said, ‘If there's one thing I can tell you, it's listen to James Jamerson on Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, and learn it. And that'll sort of set you up.’ And, because you don't listen to Flea and immediately think, like, ‘Oh, there's a James Jamerson guy.’ You don't just immediately hear that.

“He's not copying James Jamerson. But that's just essential, because it's supportive bass playing, but it's also so melodic – and then I started listening to what James was playing on some of that Stevie Wonder stuff: it's almost like a bass solo, but it's hitting all the right marks.”

Earlier this year, Dart continued to cement his own bass legacy through his ongoing collaboration with Sterling by Music Man, completing the trilogy of Joe Dart signature models priced under $500.

Bootsy Collins' larger-than-life persona and driving funk basslines have graced many a record, including most of the early Funkadelic and Parliament albums, a plethora of James Brown hits – including Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine and Super Bad – and of course, his own Bootsy's Rubber Band repertoire.

However, as Collins himself admits, his far-reaching influence wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for James Jamerson, the game-changing Motown bass player who went largely uncredited at the time, despite making an immense contribution to the musical landscape the ’60s and ’70s.

“James Jamerson was the cat that really changed my mind about bass playing,” Collins tells Justin Richmond on the Broken Record Podcast. “Because he played with one finger – all of that stuff he was playing, he used one finger.

“He played upright bass. He got introduced to the Fender P-Bass, and he wanted to play the P-Bass. Motown said, ‘Nah, you can't play that. You ain't [making] no money playing that.’ So they didn't want to change. But he said, ‘If you want me, I'm playing the P-bass.’

“All the stuff after that, he made much more money for them. And you know, he was a perfect example to accept and embrace that change.”

Aside from his transition from upright to electric bass, something that was highly uncommon at the time since the instrument was not yet well-established, another innovation was his off-kilter technique.

His one-finger plucking style – dubbed “the Hook” – carried over from his upright playing, and he managed to play very intricate parts by using his right index finger to pluck the strings, while simultaneously anchoring his third and fourth fingers on the pickup cover, and letting his thumb hang freely.

Taking a page from his jazz background, he also used a lot of open strings, which helped facilitate shifts in flat keys – a quirk that eventually became a trademark of his sound.

Perhaps fellow Motown bassist Bob Babbitt summed up Jamerson's style best in a 2007 interview with Bass Player: “I learned three important lessons from Jamerson. First, feel is the most important thing. You can play two notes or 22 notes, but it has to feel good.

“Second is freedom of expression; James went a step beyond what bassists normally do. At first he took chances and let himself go, and then it just became natural for him, and in the process he changed the course of bass playing. That was very inspirational for me.

“Third, he told me to always make your bass sing like a voice. He felt the bass should have its own voice.”

As for Collins, the funkateer recently reflected on his stints with James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic, why he stepped away from touring in 2019, and the story behind his now-iconic Space Bass.

When it comes to James Jamerson aficionados and experts, few rival Ron Brown. A top Los Angeles session bassist from the mid '60s to the late '70s, Brown befriended the Motown genius and became an authority on his style, often transcribing Jamerson’s basslines.

Not that Brown didn't have it going on himself. His 1958 Fender Precision can be heard on such hit singles as the Jackson 5's Never Can Say Goodbye, Marvin Gaye's I Want You, Barry White's I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby, and the Beach Boys' Here Comes the Night.

In 1969, while on a tour with the Fifth Dimension in Detroit, Brown was brought by producer Frank Wilson to Hitsville Studio to meet James Jamerson for the first time. “I was beside myself,” Brown told Bass Player. “But James was just as nice as he could be, letting me try his bass and read the chart for the session.”

When asked to pick a Jamerson bassline to transcribe and analyze, Brown chose the Temptations' 1969 No. 1 hit I Can't Get Next to You, which finds Jamerson at his peak powers, issuing a brilliant, propulsive part.

“It's a prime example of how he drove a track from the bottom while the vocalists drove it from the top. The presence of those two melodies is what made Motown unique and special.

“And that move from F to Ab (at 02:17) is either a clever allusion to both the tonic and the inversion of the chord, or it's an accident! I think I hear a similar incident in Marvin Gaye’s Ain't That Peculiar.”

After Earl Van Dyke's bluesy rubato piano intro, the groove kicks off. For the first verse, Jamerson – likely on his famed Funk Machine, a stock, sunburst '62 P-Bass – grabs a unison line with the guitars and keyboard. He plucked, as always, with only his index finger, aka “the Hook.”

According to Brown, the subtle swing feel present in everything Jamerson and the Funk Brothers played is an important element of his style. That's especially true in straight feels like this one; you can really hear the swing in the pickups to beats one and four, which feel more like triplets than 16ths.

Jamerson stays with this figure until bar 12, where he introduces one of his trademark fills leading into the first chorus – a key shape that he develops as the song goes along. “The drop-down from C to the open E in beats two and four is a classic Jamerson move, probably rooted in his jazz upright background.

“His use of open strings as passing tones to get around is well documented, but dynamics were another key part to his sound – accenting and emphasizing different notes and varying his touch within a measure.”

The chorus finds Jamerson slyly spelling out the F and Fm chords, before adding a chromatic-laden fill at 00:44, similar to the shape he introduced at 00:40.

“In bar 14, the B on beat four's downbeat might seem odd, but he's able to get away with it. It works in the context of the overall phrase and with James' deep, staccato sound – thanks to his touch, old flatwound strings, and the foam rubber under his P-Bass's bridge cover.”

At the second verse, Jamerson really digs in with a syncopated figure and a fill at 01:00, a sequence that repeats throughout the verse. Check out the subtle differences – both rhythmic and pitch-wise.

“James had an uncanny sense of time that allowed him to trick the ear; he'd make you think he was going to do something out of time, but he'd always make it back.”

As the second chorus arrives, Jamerson shakes things up a bit in his fill by playing four 16th-notes on the downbeat. He also adds more motion, leading to the two-bar drum break at 01:26. Listen for the jangly guitar riff in the breakdown, with its top notes E, D, and C – which Jamerson coolly answers with the more bluesy F, Eb, and C.

Chorus three holds some more pearls. Jamerson moves upward in motion and pitch for the first time, setting the stage for one of his trademark arpeggio drops on the measure's last four notes: G, E, C, and E.

For the out chorus, Jamerson does one of his typical builds, starting simply and adding motion, and pitched ghost-notes. “His so-called ghost-notes could vary from a dead thump to a dampened pitch: he would lightly fret a note with his left hand and also stop it with his right hand.”

Right before the fade, Jamerson reaches a rhythmic climax, playing 16ths on the last two beats.

“James was in a class entirely by himself. He set the tone and foundation for the electric bass guitar and brought it to the forefront of contemporary music.”

Ask any bass-playing great of the last 50 years who their heroes are, and you can bet that James Jamerson will feature high up the list. A bass-playing pioneer, some might say a visionary.

“The first time I met James Jamerson was in 1974 at the Record Plant in L.A.,” recalled Jack Bruce in a Sept/Oct '01 Bass Player interview. “He was there to do a Stevie Wonder session, and I was next door, coincidentally doing a tribute-to-Stevie track called Keep On Wondering for my album Out of the Storm.

“I was overdubbing my bass part in the control room, and suddenly the door burst open. It was James, who was late and had come into the wrong room. He started listening and said to me, ’No, no, that's not the way you do it,’ and he grabbed my EB-3 and started playing to show me how it should be done!”

“I was there for months doing my record, so I saw him a lot. We had some good talks, and he eventually asked if I wanted to do some of his session load. He was a really nice guy, but he was a little bitter because he felt exiled from Motown.”

“Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder… he’s on all those great tracks, but they tried to muddy the waters a bit sometimes and say it was another bass player. He played on 30 number ones, which is not a bad record.”

Bruce hit a milestone of his own back in April 2010 with the release of his authorised biography, Composing Himself. The highlights are numerous, with stories from his days with Alexis Korner's Blues Inc., the Graham Bond Organisation – an incarnation of which featured the young John McLaughlin – John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and, of course, Cream, in which he created a mesmerising rock spectacle alongside Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton.

As a bassist, Bruce reached creative maturity with Cream. If you listen to his early work on records like the Graham Bond Organization's The Sound of '65 (with Bruce on Fender Bass VI, an instrument he continued to play through the making of Fresh Cream) you can hear his innovative style beginning to emerge.

Bruce explained it this way in a 1993 Bass Player interview: “I was trying to find different sounds and different approaches. I was trying to play it like a guitar.”

This wasn't just a matter of cranking his amp, flinging out lots of notes, and bending strings – although he certainly did those things. Bruce fervently believed that basslines should be melodic as well as supportive, and in asserting this concept in Cream he elevated the role of the rock bass player to new heights.

That tone's evolution is easy to follow thanks to a 1997 Cream boxset, Those Were the Days, on which the bass moves from the polite studio sound of Fresh Cream to the power of such 1968 live tracks as Spoonful and Sweet Wine.

The latter has one of the most striking examples of Bruce's “like a guitar” concept. About eight minutes into the jam, Bruce and Clapton reverse roles, with Bruce playing high on the bass neck as Clapton lays down bass figures on guitar.

We had to ask about the offer he received in 1965 from none other than Marvin Gaye to join his band. Does Bruce ever wish he'd said yes? “Around that time, I was suffering a lot of criticism for playing too many notes, or playing in a certain way. He loved my playing, though, so I must have been doing something right.”

“Yes, it would have been amazing to see a white guy go there and be a part of that scene: it could have changed a lot of things and would have been wonderful. But I was too young and you wouldn't have had Cream. What happens happens, and I'm not too sorry in the long run.”

The setting is Studio A at Universal Mastering Studios East, in midtown Manhattan. Sitting at opposite ends of the board are Anthony Jackson and James Jamerson Jr., the world's foremost authorities on the style and substance of Motown master James Jamerson.

We were on site to hear tracks that for the most part were B-sides, but are seminal within the Jamerson lexicon. Harry Weinger, VP of A&R for Universal Music's catalog division, with a menu of original session tapes at his fingertips, starts the Supremes' 1968 single, Reflections.

With several instruments turned off in our custom mix, and the bass boosted, Jamerson's bassline is more than just ghost-in-the-machine groove. Standing in the Shadows of Motown author Allan Slutsky described the isolated bass tone as “reeking of bad breath, cheap booze, and body odor.”

Our noses twitch at that very accurate notion while our ears marvel at the warm, round, slightly overdriven sound of the '62 P-Bass captured direct to console.

It was at the suggestion of Slutsky, and with the aid of Weinger and his crack staff, that we decided to visit “the vault” to commemorate the label that launched the legendary career of the father of the bass guitar.

As Jamerson Jr. told Bass Player, “When you say, the Motown sound; you might as well say my dad. Take his bass off all of those tracks and then see what you have.”

Indeed, for countless bassists, whether they knew his name or not, James Jamerson forged the rudimentary template for the instrument. One teen disciple was Anthony Jackson. “He was my greatest teacher. In my formative years on the bass guitar it's astounding to think of how prolific he was; there was a new masterful performance hitting the airwaves every week.”

Over the next four hours we would experience some of Jamerson’s basslines up close, enhanced with the secrets contained in the masters. The following interview from the Bass Player archives took place in 2009.

1. Reflections, Diana Ross & The Supremes, 1968

Suitably trippy for the time, this brooding classic rides Jamerson's bouncing groove rife with his singular brand of syncopation and chromaticism.

Anthony Jackson: “This is a class-one, outstanding Jamerson performance. His use of open strings work more as a melodic line than notes that strictly follow the harmony. He knew taking a consonant set of changes and using chromatics for a melody creates great contrast; it moves by quickly and doesn't linger, so there's no sense of wrong-sounding notes.”

James Jamerson Jr: “Given the limited amount of tracks Hitsville had, it's fascinating to hear what instruments they would bounce to one track, like say, bongo, tambourine, and vibes. But they always kept Dad alone on his own track.”

2. The Happening, Diana Ross & The Supremes, 1967

What is essentially a show tune with a near-corny ‘two feel’ co-written by L.A. film composer Frank De Vol becomes a laboratory for Jamerson. His between-the-beat ghost-notes, drops, and climbs single-handedly provide the feel.

Anthony Jackson: “This track really shows Jamerson's first-rank musicianship. The chord changes move around, alluding to different key centers, and there's even some doubling of the melody in what was no doubt a written part. You can hear the effect of the passing tones he uses.

“Most remarkable is that when the tune goes up a half step, from G to Ab, most players would change their part, or at least where they play it. Jamerson doesn't. He uses the same open strings to preserve the integrity of his bassline.”

James Jamerson Jr: “The key here is this track was cut in Los Angeles with another bass player, but then they sent it back to Detroit to re-record the track; they felt it needed my Dad.

“The same thing happened later with the Temptations' Papa Was a Rolling Stone. The producers at Motown in L.A. began to think that way: ‘What would this song sound like if we put Jamerson on it?’”

3. Mutiny, Junior Walker & The All-Stars, 1966

A swinging blues jam, with solos by Walker on alto sax, Victor Thomas on organ, and Jamerson. His intense, upright-founded walking lines build to a breathtaking crescendo by the track's end and his solo is melodic and well paced.

James Jamerson Jr: “When I first put this on the record player at home I was completely blown away. Dad came down the steps with a little smirk and was like, ‘Uh-huh; okay, let's see you play this.’

“Although he rarely talked about or wanted to hear Motown music at home, he would occasionally let me know when he liked something he played on, like What's Going On, Shorty Long's Here Comes the Judge and Houston Person's The Real Thing. He came home with Houston's album one night and said, ‘Your daddy did the thing on here.’”

4. I'm Wondering, Stevie Wonder, 1968

A feel-good track packed with textbook Jamerson licks. Note the numerous open-string and fretted passing tones and the delay in getting to the Ab root in bar 4 (with the Db on the downbeat, momentarily reharmonizing the chord).

Anthony Jackson: “This is a very bold, busy, improvised part loaded with notes outside the chord that are as important as the consonant notes; as such it almost functions as percussion accompaniment – it even sounds more heavily-muted, like he might have had more foam onboard that day.

“Because all the inside and outside notes are played in a repeated pattern the part sounds well thought out and not random. Still, by itself it doesn't really suggest a lot. But in the context of the track it works splendidly.”

James Jamerson Jr: “Just incredible; my Dad is dancing on the bass right there. I had to record that part verbatim for guitarist Al McKay; he wanted it exact – it kicked my butt around the room!”

5. My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me), David Ruffin, 1969

A medium pop tune with a bouncy, double time undercurrent that rides a (Four Tops) Bernadette-like ostinato. A key to the line is the ghosted note on the second 16th of beat two, which Jamerson lays back on. While he repeats this figure through the C-B-F-C chord pattern, dig his in-between fills and climbs.

James Jamerson Jr: “This is one of my favorite tracks for the syncopation Dad has going on and the way he's digging in. He rarely finessed the bass, he would pull on the strings like he was playing his upright. As a result, he could make one note sound like a thousand.

“A lot of the younger bassists think he's playing more notes than he is, and they overcompensate. They haven't learned yet how to come with the power – how to make one note sing.”

6. Too Many Fish In The Sea, The Marvelettes, 1966

Jamerson anchors this classic early-'60s groove with just two notes, waiting patiently to make it his own. Think Marvin Gaye's Ain't That Peculiar with a simpler bassline. The second ending contains a typical pickup he adds, starting at 1:58 and continuing in subtly varied forms through the fade.

Note the C on the last eighth-note of the second ending, an anticipation of the C coming on the downbeat of the next measure, without being tied to it, and held over the bar line.

Anthony Jackson: “I first heard this in someone's car when I was 15 and it really made me sit up and take notice. Everyone plays their same parts throughout, until the end, where only Jamerson stretches out. Although under the radar, the impact of his musical decision, whether dictated to him or not, is as powerful and important as his more standout tracks.”

7. How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone, Diana Ross & The Supremes, 1966

A laid-back, ultra-funky 16th-note feel that brings to mind the kind of New York City grooves Chuck Rainey and Jerry Jemmott were playing at the time (with Jaco on the horizon).

Anthony Jackson: “l’d been listening to Jamerson for some time, but this was staggering. It became the song I'd work on first and last every day. All the key Jamerson elements are here, dissonance as an effect, use of open strings as both a rhythmic and melodic device, powerful groove, and great sound.

“It has been said that Chopin had a touch of the influence of two other pianists of his time, but for the most part he came out of nowhere, much of his music was not as easily digested and was technically demanding. The same can be said of James Jamerson. His genius is just impossible to trace.”

James Jamerson Jr: “Man, this is one funky track. If he could have kept playing like this I often wonder where else he could have taken it to. There might have been a whole other level after that!”

8. Honey Bee, Diana Ross & The Supremes, 1968

A bright, eighth-note-driven track that's deeper than it seems.

Anthony Jackson: “On the surface it sounds almost like a throwaway track that the Funk Brothers just went in and ran down. But it's classic Jamerson: heavily muted, aggressive, not that many notes, and strong.

“The second chorus opens with James playing a rake so powerful it stands as a peak example of him using that particular technique; it's the E on the D string, down to the B on the A string, to the open E – real fast and twice in a row.”

James Jamerson Jr: “It's one of my favorite Motown tracks; it really moves.”

9. It's Wonderful (To Be Loved By You), Jimmy Ruffin, 1969

A well-written, eighth-note-based pop song that cleverly pivots between C major and C minor.

Anthony Jackson: “I first came across this track many years later on the BBC; the single was only released in the U.K. It's just a great song with a terrific, active Jamerson performance.”

James Jamerson Jr: “This is my first time hearing this song and it is wonderful! I probably haven't heard half of my dad's work, they did so much recording. And there are songs I remember listening to while they were being cut that I've never heard on record or radio. Often, after the take I'd ask Dad who it was for he'd say, 'I don't know, whoever.’”

10. Shoe Leather Expressway, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, 1969

A funky bass riff and open-voiced chords on acoustic piano make for an offbeat but compelling track. The two-bar phrase is always the same in bar 1, with bar 2 serving as an improvised or fill measure.

Anthony Jackson: “This is a stellar example of Jamerson's use of dynamics, which is the key to making his repetitive bass part breathe. The highly original track also reminds that Motown was a collection of people who knew just how far to push, from Berry Gordy on down.

“Especially the Funk Brothers, who always seemed to find a niche – even if their parts were written – and do their own thing, while maintaining the wishes of the composer, producer, arranger, and artist.”

Born in Detroit in 1950, fame first came calling for Suzi Quatro when she moved to the UK in 1971, having been spotted by producer Mickie Most on a night off from recording Jeff Beck at Motown. 

Hit singles followed and Quatro's bass skills evolved fast. “First I played using my thumb like a pick,” Quatro told Bass Player. “And then a bass player from a local band came over and showed me fingers on the song Money.

“That was great because my thumb was bleeding! I could read and write piano and percussion already, so I knew my chords and scales, and it wasn't a huge jump to another instrument. I didn't find it too difficult.”

Assisted by the songwriting team of Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, who had composed songs for The Sweet and other glam-rockers of the day, Quatro scored 10 hit singles before the 1970s were out and became a major star in her adopted country.

Check YouTube for footage on Top Of The Pops in 1974, when she played Devil Gate Drive assisted by a Fender P-Bass. “I used Mickie Most's white Precision for Top of the Pops, because it contrasted against the black suit I was wearing.”

Quatro cites James Jamerson as her primary bass influence. “My party trick is to say to any bass player, ‘I'm going to put on How Sweet It Is by Marvin Gaye for 10 seconds and then I want you to hum me the bassline.’

“What they hum will be completely wrong. They hear 10 times the notes that Jamerson plays. He leaves big gaps. You think it's walking all the way through, but he isn't. It’s hard to improve on what he did, because you’re talking perfection.

“I actually met him in the Motown studio when I was 16. I was showing off on the bass guitar while they took a break, and Jamerson pushed down the intercom button and said, ‘Not bad for a white chick!’ Then he said, ‘It's not what you play, it's what you don't play,’ and I never forgot that.”

So what is Quatro best known for these days? In America, it's quite possibly her stint on Happy Days from 1977 to 1979, where she appeared toting a bunch of basses that would fetch a huge price nowadays, even if their sound quality wasn't exactly hi-fi.

“I played a Hagstrom and my Gibson EB-O on Happy Days, because it was authentic to the period. Live, though, it didn't quite have the balls. It's OK if you're doing an unplugged thing.”

Asked about the role, she told Bass Player: “They’d had the part in mind for a long time, but couldn’t cast it: they needed somebody who could act and sing, and was vulnerable but tough: all together. Then the casting director went into her daughter’s bedroom, and my picture on the cover of Rolling Stone was on the wall. And she said, ‘Who is that? That’s who we’re looking for.’”

“Doing the show was fantastic – absolutely great. I did 15 episodes and figured that was enough, because I didn’t want to be forever typecast as Leather Tuscadero. It was a wonderful role: I was the female Fonz.

“I got told by the secretary years later – and of course Paramount didn’t tell me this at the time, because I would have raised my price – that aside from Henry Winkler I got the most fan mail. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Quatro still looks back fondly on the ’70s. “That decade was one of the last great eras for individual bands. It was an interesting time for music because every band had a different image. Musicians knew that you had to go out and do eight million shows. It showed in the music. That’s why it’s still a popular era. It wasn’t created in the studio, it was created by the musicians.

“Listen to Can The Can. I screamed. I sang. You hear it. It’s exciting – you can’t create that in a studio!”

There’s a scene in the 2002 film Standing in the Shadows of Motown where Nathan Watts and Ralphe Armstrong take turns lying on their backs in Hitsville's Studio A while playing the bassline from Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, trying to recreate how James Jamerson reportedly recorded his part. It's a fitting image, because Jamerson has been flooring bassists for years. 

Unfortunately, mass recognition for the pioneering bass genius didn't come until after his 1983 death at age 47. Six years later, Allan “Dr.Licks” Slutsky's Hal Leonard book/tape package, Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson, brought on the first wave of props, culminating in Jamerson's election to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. 

A street in his hometown of Edisto Island in South Carolina has since been renamed in his honor. You also voted him number one in our poll to find the 100 greatest bass players of all time.

Born on January 29, 1936, James Lee Jamerson was raised on the sounds of gospel, jazz, and blues radio stations. Following his parents' divorce, his mother relocated from Charleston to Detroit to find work in 1953, sending for James a year later. While attending Northwestern High School, he picked up an acoustic bass in the school's music room and discovered his voice. 

He quickly sharpened his skills at jam sessions with Detroit's top jazz musicians and came under the influence of bass heroes like Paul Chambers and Ray Brown. Jamerson got club work in jazz, blues, and R&B nightspots, and before long he was recording for Detroit's labels, including Motown – where he met his future soulmates, the Funk Brothers, in 1959.

In 1961, at the urging of friend and fellow bassist Horace ‘Chili’ Ruth, Jamerson strapped on a Fender Precision. The planets must have been aligned over Detroit that day, as Jamerson quickly took to an instrument he didn't particularly care for at first. Gradually he began applying melodic fills, string-raked walking lines, chromatic passing tones, dizzying syncopations, and other innovations that forged the template for modern electric bass playing. 

Unfortunately, as with Jaco Pastorius, James Jamerson's tale has a sad ending. When Motown moved to Los Angeles in 1972, Jamerson followed, but he never quite fit in without his Funk Brothers surrounding him.

Beset with personal problems and plagued by alcoholism, his performance suffered and work slowed. At the time of his death, from a combination of cirrhosis of the liver, heart failure, and pneumonia, he was said to be broke and bitter about his lack of recognition. Had he survived just a few more years, he would have heard the accolades he was due.

Originally published in Bass Player's February 2007 issue, we asked five top low-enders with links to the Motown master to dissect the Jamerson style.

1. Chuck Rainey

“Two ingredients are key to James Jamerson's style. One, he usually played off a root-5th-octave pattern; second, most of the Motown grooves had a hidden baion type of feel. James built many of his lines from the root-5th-octave shape, and then he'd add other scale tones, as well as non-scale chromatic passing tones, to create motion and melodic lines.

“A classic example is what he played on Bernadette by the Four Tops. That was his major influence on my style.”

“Like all great musicians, James heard other things in his head while he played – such as polyrhythms from the drum patterns – and when he added those ideas they came through loud and clear, but they always supported the song.

“Coming from his upright background, James plucked mainly with one finger, using all upstrokes. I remember showing him my back-and-forth index-finger plucking technique, and he laughed and said, ‘that's sissy stuff right there.’”

2. Phil Chen 

“The ingredients that made up Jamerson's style were unique. He had Caribbean bloodlines and Deep South roots, and he was influenced by all the musical styles played in Detroit as well as Charlie Parker and other bebop musicians. 

“As a result he used half-steps as passing or leading tones, just like a jazz soloist, with the root or chord tone on the strong beat and the chromatic passing note on the weak beat – or as an ear-catching anticipation on the downbeat. It also enabled him to create smooth lines in flat keys. 

“Often, he would play two completely different parts in the same song, amazingly creating both out of nowhere. Couple that with the pulsating rhythms of the rest of the Funk Brothers, and the dance floor never stood a chance!

“His stock sunburst '62 P-Bass had a high action and foam under the bridge cover. He used La Bella flat-wounds, gauges .052-110, that he rarely changed. You can still buy the same-gauge set; they have blue silk windings on the ends.”

3. Ralphe Armstrong 

“James Jamerson was the consummate blend of intellectual, trained musician and street-smart player. His concept was to play music with feeling and tone, and he was harmonically aware of every note he played. 

“A key to his sound was his use of an upright technique that dates back to Domenico Dragonetti and was used by Charles Mingus and Ray Brown: Instead of laying his fingers across the string, which is a more legato approach, he would anchor his left thumb behind the neck and curve his fingers so only the tips were touching the target notes. 

“This violin-like technique, still common with European double bassists, enables you to get a pure note. He stayed fairly faithful to upright fingering by using his 3rd finger on top of his 4th to help hold down a note, or sometimes just squeezing the two together. 

“He played mostly in 1st position and used a lot of open strings to help him facilitate shifts in flat keys, which became a trademark part of his sound. He also loved to drop down from the root to the 3rd, which you can hear on the Gladys Knight version of Grapevine, among many others.”

4. Bob Babbitt 

“I learned three important lessons from Jamerson. First, feel is the most important thing. You can play two notes or 22 notes, but it has to feel good. Listen to what James plays on Smokey Robinson's My Girl – it's only three notes, but he plays them with such feel that it's a major hook. Stevie Wonder's I Was Made to Love Her has a lot of notes, but the feel is just as prominent. 

“Second is freedom of expression; James went a step beyond what bassists normally do. At first he took chances and let himself go, and then it just became natural for him, and in the process he changed the course of bass playing. That was very inspirational for me. 

“Third, he told me to always make your bass sing like a voice. He felt the bass should have its own voice. That led him to play melodically on even the most fundamental 1st-position parts.”

“A lot of Jamerson's syncopation came from his magical relationship with Benny Benjamin; they'd play off each other and do call-and-answer stuff. He'd hit the one with Benny and then wait until Benny played his next kick beat, and then James would answer that with a figure. Or he'd play counter to the drums, like on Martha & the Vandellas' Heat Wave. Everyone is playing the dotted-quarter-to-an-eighth-note, Charleston-type of feel, and he plays a walking line against it. 

“James always played with authority and conviction, but he had a lighter, more-relaxed touch than people think. That's how he was able to play with such grace. Ultimately, Jamerson gave his total being to a track. That's why he's the master.”

5. James Jamerson Jr. 

“A lot of my dad's style came from his personality, and he had a different personality and approach for each Motown artist. He had the ballad style with Smokey Robinson; with Marvin Gaye he was more melodic; with Stevie Wonder he was able to stretch more; with the Temptations it was a low, resonant kind of sound – but all of it was still his style. And what amazed me was that early on there were only chord charts with no arrangements of notation, so he’d just go, ‘Who is this for?’ and play accordingly. 

“He played a lot of ghost-notes, but back then the term didn't mean dead notes – it referred to notes that would hang in the air after the chord moved to the next change. Usually, it would be an open E or A phrased a certain way in a flat key. And because it was on the bottom, it would really throw people and trick the ear, because you couldn't distinguish what had just happened.

“As for his sense of syncopation, that was his God-given gift. I couldn't even explain that one. I put it like this: My dad liked to dance, so he just danced on the bass. He was a staunch acoustic bassist, and he made me learn the upright before I was allowed to play electric bass, but he grew to like both instruments.” 

“He would occasionally polish his P-Bass, but he'd never touch the gunk that had built up on the fingerboard. He told me, ‘The dirt keeps the funk.’

“One thing I'm grateful for, both personally and for my dad, was a recording date I did in L.A. for Robert Goulet. It was my first major session, and I was filling in for my dad, who was ill. Afterward, the arranger, Bruce Miller, sent my father a letter saying what a good job I had done and how I had lived up to my name. I came home and saw my dad reading the letter and crying. 

“He gave me a big hug and said, ‘You've done your daddy justice.’ It made him so proud that someone was carrying on his legacy, and that it was one of his own.”

By 1971, Bob Babbitt was one weary Funk Brother. Motown sessions were running at 7am, 11am and 3pm, while the production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland held 7pm, 11pm and 3am calls. Little did Babbitt know, however, that his finger fatigue would play a key role in one of the classic sub hooks of the ‘70s.

But first, the backstory: in January 1971, Marvin Gaye began recording his masterpiece, What's Going On. Politically charged and groundbreaking both musically and socially, the work has since been hailed as arguably the finest soul LP side ever made, and it's even been listed as one of the top five all-time albums in any genre.

The disc's nine songs were recorded in chronological order, with James Jamerson playing bass guitar on the first five cuts (including his legendary title track performance, purported to have been overdubbed while he was flat on his back on the studio floor). Sadly, Jamerson's demons had started to affect his consistency, so Babbitt was summoned for the final four tracks, including Mercy Mercy Me, (The Ecology), and Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler).

Inner City Blues, a brooding, bluesy meditation bemoaning the bleakness of inner-city living, was the album's final single, reaching number one on the R&B singles chart, and number nine on the pop chart. The backbone of the tune is a two bar call-and-response bass phrase that Babbitt more than made his own.

“When I got to the session, I saw that it was out of the ordinary,” he told BP back in February 2008. “Marvin was playing piano, and there were some outside musicians, like jazz drummer Chet Forrest, and Donny Hathaway's percussionist, Bobbye Hall. Over the next few days, as we ran down the music, you could sense Marvin was going someplace new: there were tempo changes, transitions, and exciting chord progressions unlike anything we had ever played. He was reaching and experimenting, but he knew what he wanted.” 

On the ‘Inner City’ session in Hitsville Studio A, Gaye played piano without providing a scratch vocal. Babbitt sat on a stool in the curve of the Grand Piano, plucking his 1965 Fender P Bass, which had Labella medium flatwounds and a dampened household sponge placed under the strings by the bridge. He recorded direct only, with the sound coming out of the studio's big monitor speaker. Babbitt recalled the bass part being notated to some extent, with a few run-throughs occurring before the take, and no punches or fixes afterward. 

“Hearing it again after all these years took me right back to the session, but my overall feeling is how fortunate I was to have played on an album that had such a huge impact on both musicians and society at large.”

As it turned out, the line he cut that day was only a portion of the final bass picture. Babbitt was called in to record a repeated one-bar phrase throughout all of the song's A sections. “The main part went pretty high up the fingerboard, and Marvin was used to hearing James Jamerson, who generally played on the lower part of the bass, rarely venturing above high C or D. I think he had me overdub the second part to fill out the bottom.”

Additionally, there were some sonic problems with the original bass track, leading Babbitt to be brought back to re-cut the original part, with an important twist. “It was late at night and I was really tired, so instead of reaching up for the high third on the G string, as I had on the original version, I slid up to it, and Marvin went, ‘Yeah!’ That led me to gliss into the note every time.” 

The track begins with 12 bars of piano and percussion, with a bass pickup to the two bar sub-hook. Already comfortable with his gliss up to Gb, Babbitt embellishes with a quick slide up to Ab, a device he used tastefully throughout.

In the first verse, Babbit continues his sub-hook with some notable additions. First is his tendency to fill in the back half of the two-bar phrase. Second is his drop to low Gb instead of Eb, leading into beat three in bar 18.

“That's something that just happened: it’s a note in the chord and it worked nicely. The pickup fills, that occasional Gb, and the slides are my main contributions to the written two-bar bassline. And remember, I didn't have a scratch vocal going. If I did, I might not have filled as often.”

For the song's first B section, Babbitt was given the chord changes and the freedom to come up with his own part. “I recall wanting to play the section differently each time, to contrast the repetitive A section figure. For the first one, I stayed mainly on the root and varied the rhythms. This was something I was doing a lot at that point: you can hear the same approach on Mercy Mercy Me.” 

For the second B section, Babbitt moves away from his root-only approach to play a melodic figure on the downbeat before returning to the third verse. “Really, most of those note choices came from my left-hand fingering of index and pinkie. As for the slides, as I said, I was tired, so I definitely fudged some throughout, which is where you’ll hear no sustain.” At the following bridge, Babbitt returns to his one-note-with-varied-rhythms concept, adding some cool octave drops in the last three measures.

As the final verse flows into the final bridge section, Babbitt returns to his melodic downbeat bridge figure, extending it dramatically to all four beats. Four bars of the main lick then give way to a modulation a whole-step down, keyed by a cool Babbitt pickup. “I knew the key change was coming, so you could look at it as me staying in Eb minor for the first two notes, while the last two are a chromatic lead in to the Db on the downbeat.” 

Realising the track is ending, Babbitt gets loose in Db minor. After playing the first half of the two-bar phrase the same way he had been in Eb minor, he improvises in the second half. Remember that the one-bar overdubbed loop part is also present in the new key. This section transitions to a reprise of What's Going On, without bass, to close the album. 

Babbit, who plucked the part using mostly his middle finger (supported by his index finger behind it), with the occasional index pluck, offered this advice: “Play it with a metronome slowly at first, to get the notes. Then gradually increase the tempo, even past the track pace; then return to the track tempo. You would think with the swing feel, the part sits behind, but it's pretty much square on the beat. Listen to the song to get the flow of the band, then dive in.”

Acknowledged as James Jamerson’s understudy and eventual successor at Motown, the late Bob Babbitt appeared on over 200 Top 40 hits, including The Capitols’ Cool Jerk, Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours, and Marvin Gaye’s Mercy, Mercy, Me (the Ecology). New York can also claim Babbitt as one of its own thanks to session work for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Robert Palmer, The Spinners and Frank Sinatra.

In fact, New York (actually New Jersey) was home to one of Babbitt’s favourite studio dates: his broad-shouldered bassline on Midnight Train to Georgia, a 1974 Grammy-winning hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips.

“That bassline came out of the James Jamerson tradition,” said Babbitt when he was interviewed for the November ’98 issue of BP. “Gladys is from Detroit, so that’s what she wanted. Me and the rest of the studio bassists all had to come up with parts in Jamerson’s style, and rightly so; he was the original.”

“We had recorded the song twice already, with a full eight-piece rhythm section, at Tony Camillo’s studio in Somerville, New Jersey. The following Sunday morning he called to say the track wasn’t happening groove-wise. He wanted to re-cut it with just myself, Andrew Smith on drums, and Jeff Mironov on guitar, and overdub the other instruments later.”

Babbitt recorded his sunburst ’66 Fender Precision bass guitar (with LaBella flatwounds) direct, and he recalled helping the engineer with the bass sound. He also aided in the tunes overall composition. 

The bassline begins with Babbitt’s descending diatonic line in the intro. “Tony had written a busy bass part – as well as guitar and drum parts – which we basically abandoned or simplified. After we worked it all out, Tony played chords on a scratch piano part, and we recorded a few live passes, one of which we kept. I don’t remember doing any punches or fixes.”

Babbitt goes on to establish a two-bar melodic and rhythmic motif that he reworks in each verse, giving the bassline forward motion beneath the sparse vocal. “Something I learned in Detroit is that a verse line can be more important than a chorus line. In the chorus a song is usually at its high point vocally and compositionally, but the verse can often use the help of a busier bass part.”

For the chorus, Babbitt introduces a new two-bar phrase, which he again develops. “The chord progression changed for the chorus, which helped me come up with something fresh. I like to find little phrases I can develop throughout a bassline to give it substance.” 

For the outro, Babbitt returns to the intro bassline, before establishing an alternating pattern that borrows from both the intro and the chorus. Note that the piano plays the same four chords throughout the outro, with Babbitt changing their qualities with his root notes. 

As the golden era of the studio bassist came to an unceremonious end in the early ‘80s, Babbitt opted to head for the last safe haven of real bass recording: Nashville.

“If you’re a musician coming to Nashville, everybody asks for credits and reels of your work. So when I moved I tried to recall everything I’d played on and put a list together. One producer took a look at my resume and said, ‘Shoot, you played on Midnight Train to Georgia? You don’t need no other credits!’”

Considering the length and diversity of Chuck Rainey’s resume as one of the bass world’s most prolific studio musicians, a bassline would have to be pretty special to rank among the best of his career. Such is the case with Kid Charlemagne, from Steely Dan’s 1976 album The Royal Scam. “Kid Charlemagne is one of my most prized accomplishments as a recording bassist making up bass guitar patterns,” Rainey told BP, while also citing Allen Toussaint’s Just A Kiss Away from 1978’s Motion, as another personal highpoint. 

The overwhelming influence on Rainey's bassline is that of Motown legend James Jamerson, with its plentiful root-5-octave shapes, drop-down moves to the 3rd, chromatic approach notes, and funky use of ‘wrong’ open notes as harmonic stepping stones. “I credit at least half of that bassline to Jamerson,” said Rainey, who recorded direct with his prized 1957 Fender Precision – long since retired from duty. “I’ve always been extremely proud of knowing him. We met around 1958, when we were both just starting to play the electric bass.”

Kid Charlemagne is full of syncopations, slides, double-stops and ghost-notes. “On that session I remember playing everything that I knew – everything I had ever come across! I felt very good about it, especially because we did it so quickly. I think the best sessions are the ones that happen quick, and I remember that The Royal Scam, as well as the earlier Steely Dan records Katy Lied and Pretzel Logic, were made very quickly. We probably did Kid Charlemagne in one or two takes.”

You can revisit Rainey’s isolated bassline below.

With its super-tight groove and careful balance of low and high registers, Rainey’s percolating bassline is a testament to his ability to translate a chord chart into a brilliant bassline. “I had worked with the producer Gary Katz previously in New York; I always like to work with someone who has faith and confidence in the rhythm section and who doesn’t feel the need to hire an arranger to write out parts. That, of course, was the case with Jamerson at Motown – after all, if someone had written out those parts of his, they never would have been played! It’s always a pleasure to work with someone who gives me a chord chart and just lets me be Chuck Rainey.”

Rainey was quick to point out that harmonically, much of his line on Kid Charlemagne is simpler than it might seem. "I don’t mind saying that with the exception of passing tones, everything I played was mostly 1-5-1. I’m pretty much set in the key with the position of my hands; there aren’t a lot of accidentals. It’s all within the chord.” 

You can watch YouTuber Rick Beato's assessment of the track below.

Having spent the 1960s as a first-call bassist in New York City, Rainey played with everyone from Louis Armstrong to Aretha Franklin. Along with Jamerson at Motown, he virtually defined the role of the electric bass in popular music. 

“Jamerson, having started as an upright player, tended to throw in a lot of open strings – not to land on them, but to use them to get from one place to another,” said Rainey. “The ear is sympathetic to that, so if you play a quick open E, even if it’s not in the key, the ear might hear Eb. If a note goes by fast, the ear will always make it sound correct – especially if you place it at the right time.”

The most striking examples of Rainey’s open-string passing tones can be heard beneath the Bb13 chords in the verse. Other ear-catching moments include the trademark Rainey double-stop slides midway through the verses, the slap ‘solo’ after the first verse, and the thundering low E as Rainey hits bottom halfway through the instrumental bridge.

Speaking to Bass Guitar Magazine in 2008, the late Walter Becker, who co-founded  Steely Dan with Donald Fagen in 1971, recalled his time working with Rainey. “I worked for many years with Chuck Rainey who played on most of the Steely Dan records. His style is rooted in a very unusual technique and so he has a very complicated way of playing bass, which is very different from most other players. I think I learned some things in general from him regarding my own bass playing, but there were other players whose styles I also imitated. One in particular was James Jamerson who was my hero.”

The Royal Scam is available to buy and stream.

Halestorm saw their international profile receive a shot in the arm back in 2012, when they scored a Best Hard Rock/Metal Grammy for their song Love Bites (So Do I). On the strength of the group’s latest album, Back From The Dead, the Pennsylvania rock quartet were also well-positioned to score a 2023 Heavy Music Award for Best International Artist.

Their success is at least partly due to the range of influences that go into their sound. In Smith’s case, his music education included all the greats: “You’ll notice a pattern in this list, because all my favorite bass players are composers and play melodic bass parts,” he told BP. “If you ever find yourself humming along to a tasty bassline, there’s a chance that it’s by one of these guys.”

Far from being just another headbanger, Smith could never be called an ego-fuelled rock star. He’s pretty much the opposite – ever-friendly and in awe of his heroes. We asked him to reveal his bass guitar influences in a fistful of albums.

1. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991)

“I was only eight years old when this album came out. It was three years before I even picked up a bass, and I didn’t care to explain why I loved Blood Sugar Sex Magik, I just did. Flea was clearly put on this earth to speak the language of music. His attention to groove and melody is something I fell in love with when I was a kid, and since then I have enjoyed his style and tone in every single song he has gone on to create.”

2. Tower of Power – Tower Of Power (1973)

“My dad introduced me to Tower Of Power at a young age. As I became more involved in jazz through lessons and school, my appreciation of them continued to grow. Every year they would play at a local theatre near to where I lived, and my dad would take my brothers and I. Rocco Prestia and the band never disappointed me. Listen to the opening track, What is Hip? – it’s airtight. Rocco could probably have held that 16-note pattern in his sleep.”

3. Parliament – Up For The Downstroke (1974)

“Bootsy’s attack is so punchy and aggressive. It doesn’t sound like he plucked the strings with his fingers, but more like he grabbed and pulled each note equally and deliberately. His tone has a sharp set of teeth. The entire P-Funk catalog is a music lesson, but the first song that was introduced to me, and still an all-time favourite, is Parliament’s Up For The Down Stroke.”

4. Jackson 5 – Third Album (1970)

“James Jamerson was a critical player when it came to creating the Motown sound. I don’t know if he played every song on Third Album, but he did perform on the last song, Darling Dear, and this track has always stood out for me. James lays down a constant, cascading flow of melody, and what’s more, he does it with one finger, the hook.”

5. The Beatles – Abbey Road (1969)

“Just as so many people before me did, I grew up listening to, and loving, The Beatles. Paul McCartney wrote and performed some of my all time favourite songs on Abbey Road. He created beautiful melodies to accompany some of the most influential, and well-known songs of all time. Let’s not forget his voice, which is a unique and wonderful instrument in its own right.”

Back From the Dead is available to buy and stream.

It’s been 40 years since the bass pioneer, James Jamerson, died at the age of only 47. Virtually unknown at the time of his passing, but a star at the peak of his creativity, he created a legacy that is unparalleled in the bass guitar world. So much so that you voted him number one in our poll to find the 100 greatest bass players of all time.

As part of Motown’s house band, Jamerson was the bass player behind hundreds of hit records from Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Four Tops, and The Temptations – resulting in such masterworks as Bernadette, I Was Made to Love Her, You Can’t Hurry Love, and My Girl. 

Now, two years after his gravesite in Detroit was upgraded with a new headstone, a street in his hometown of Edisto Island in South Carolina is being renamed in his honor. 

On August 19 at 4.30pm, Steamboat Landing Road will be renamed James Lee Jamerson Memorial Highway. A musical tribute to Jamerson will take place at Edisto Beach Civic Center immediately afterwards.

Over the years countless bass guitar stars have paid tribute to the indelible impact the South Carolina-born, Detroit-raised James Jamerson has had on the music world. Here’s a look back at 10 of our top picks.

Paul McCartney

“Jamerson was where I picked up a lot of my bass style. Because bass players normally have to follow: we follow the chords, follow the drummer, follow the vocalist, we have a following role. Suddenly the bass had power! We could dictate the direction of the music and add excitement. James Jamerson became just my hero, really.” 

Jack Bruce

“James Jamerson did everything, didn’t he? Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder…he’s on all those great tracks. They tried to muddy the waters a bit sometimes and say it was another bass player, but he played on 30 number ones, which is not a bad record. It’s said that he never changed his strings, which is one of two approaches to strings. I like to change mine a lot – if I’m on tour, it’s for every gig – because I like the sound and the feel of brand-new strings. But Jamerson would leave them on forever.”

Wilton Felder

“Jamerson’s style was unique, from the heart, and earthy. He had an innate sense of the bass’s role, but at the same time, he knew how to play freely while keeping the groove going. He could hear a song and instantly know where it was going, where he was able to stretch, and where playing less would mean more. And his basslines always went with the vocalist and melody. Whatever he played, he meant it and you felt it, yet he was able to add the nuances that gave his parts so much expression. He’s the godfather of the electric bass.” 

Chuck Rainey

“Like all great musicians, James heard other things in his head while he played – such as polyrhythms from the drum patterns – and when he added those ideas they came through loud and clear, but they always locked with the groove and supported the song. Coming from his upright background, he plucked mainly with one finger, using all upstrokes. His heavy touch, high P-Bass action, and 'real man' attitude resulted in strong, singing notes. I remember showing him my back-and-forth index-finger plucking technique, and he laughed and said, 'that’s sissy stuff right there.' On Motown tracks his bass is the most audible element other than the singer.”  

Suzi Quatro

“I grew up in Detroit, so I was weaned on James Jamerson and Motown music. It’s in my DNA. He’s still the best. I took my style from him. I’m a cross between his style and boogie. He did his fancy licks, but he didn’t overplay. It’s hard to improve on what he did, because you’re talking perfection. The drums, the bass and the tambourine were what made the Motown sound. That’s hard to beat.” 

James Jamerson Jr.

“As for his sense of syncopation, that was his God-given gift. I couldn’t even explain that one. I put it like this: My dad liked to dance, so he just danced on the bass. He was a staunch acoustic bassist, and he made me learn the upright before I was allowed to play electric bass, but he grew to like both instruments. When he first got to the electric he told me he felt a bit more regimented and restricted by the frets, so he purposely didn’t apply the exact same approach he used with the upright, and that probably helped him develop his own electric voice. He would occasionally polish his P-Bass, but he’d never touch the gunk that had built up on the fingerboard. He told me the dirt keeps the funk.” 

Ralphe Armstrong

“Jamerson’s high action prevented string buzz and gave him a louder fundamental tone – just as it does on the upright. The foam mute under the bridge cover warmed up his sound, and he’d vary his tone knob between off and full on; sometimes you can hear some bite in his tone. Everything he played was pure and strong. He didn’t believe in tricks; I mean, I saw him slap once kidding around, but everything he played you could write down on paper. He always wanted the instrument to sound like a bass. He used to tease Michael Henderson about playing up high and sounding like a flute.” 

Phil Chen

“In Hitsville’s Studio A he recorded direct by plugging into one of five inputs in the wall. Each had a volume control, and he would boost the signal so the VU meter was slightly in the red, giving him a bit of warm overdrive from the tube console. His bass then went through a Fairchild limiter and a Pultec EQ, and he’d hear it through a Bozak monitor in the studio. In later sessions he would occasionally use his miked Ampeg B-15.” 

Michael Henderson

“Jamerson had a way of getting notes that weren’t on the bass. Like on the E string, he’d go between the G and F, but he wouldn’t get an F# – it was something else! He’d fret it just enough to get a ghosted note with some pitch to it. Live, he’d use his Ampeg B-15 or blue Kustom 200 with two 15s, and he would turn the amp almost all the way up, so he could control the volume and dynamics from his P-Bass and with his fingers. I think Jamerson had perfect pitch; at a club one night I saw him play a bass that had serious intonation problems, and he bent and pulled the strings so every note was in tune.” 

Pino Palladino

“James Jamerson always found a way to be so creative within the framework of a song, constantly reacting to the vocal and offering surprising note choices to support the melody, while locking in with the drums and grooving like no-one else can.” 

To learn more about one of the all-time greats of bass, check out Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson.

Duran Duran bassist John Taylor has said he thinks that the average listener is becoming “more attuned” to simplicity in pop music.

The British musician, famed for his complex yet hooky bass parts hits on hits like Rio, was recently interviewed on YouTube channel Scott’s Bass Lessons and, in an advance clip titled Is Modern Music TOO Simple?, makes his case.

"I think the average listeners ears are becoming more attuned to ever-greater simplicity and every-greater economy in music," says Taylor, who it must be said, is not necessarily criticizing the modern bassist. 

However, he does appear to lament what he appears to regard as the somewhat reduced role of the modern (presumably pop) player.

"If you listen to Motown basslines, that incredible musicality that James Jamerson would bring to his parts. Nobody wants to hear that today,” insists Taylor. “They just don't want to hear that.”

The cause of the change in tastes, reflects the bassist, is much less about how we feel about music itself and more about how we feel about everything else that bombards us in 2023.

“I understand that,” says Taylor. “Because, in a way, we've got a lot going on, all of us. So to let a piece of music into our seriously overcrowded minds, it's got to cut to the chase.”

It’s an interesting point, though you could also argue that the aforementioned Jamerson and the session greats of the ’60s would have prided themselves on their economy at the time.

The studios were famously full of former jazz players (among them the likes of Carol Kaye), who played for the song – and their pay check – rather than to showcase their formidable chops.

However, it’s also worth pointing out that Taylor is not talking about pure technique here; it’s more about its application in a song scenario. 

“Obviously technique is super-important, and when you’re alone and you’re not working, you can work on your technique all day long,” Taylor told Bass Player in 2022.

“But if you find yourself in a creative ensemble situation, and you’ve got to come up with a part that works with a bunch of other musicians’ parts, the conversation is about what we’re trying to do here... Stage two is starting to curate those ideas, and at each stage we get a little bit more under the microscope.”

Keep an eye on the Scott’s Bass Lessons channel for more from his conversation with Taylor.

In the meantime, you can check out Bass Player's full John Taylor interview, in which he discusses his Aria and Dingwall basses, moving to fanned frets and more on his writing and bass technique.

“There are plenty of correlations between James Jamerson and Tommy Cogbill,” said Nashville session bassist Michael Rhodes, who was interviewed for the February 2006 issue of Bass Player. “Like James, Tommy was a take-charge guy in the studio; he would stand up and count off the songs, and basically run the session. He had such a strong presence in the music he played that there was a sort of natural deference by the rest of the band. There’s probably no better example of that than Son of a Preacher Man.” 

The 1969 Top Ten hit came from British pop/soul singer Dusty Springfield’s album Dusty in Memphis. It’s considered her masterpiece, although it was her last major hit. Rhodes, who sadly died back in March 2023, had gathered some background info on the late-1968 date at American Sound.

“There weren’t a lot of takes done, because the producer (Jerry Wexler), the engineer (Tom Dowd), and the songwriter (John Hurley) were all present, so there was a better degree of direction," said Rhodes. “The rhythm section recorded live to a scratch vocal by Dusty, who – being somewhat out of her element – was reportedly as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

The two-and-half-minute hit song begins with interplay between Reggie Young’s guitar lick on the downbeat and Cogbill’s instantly funky response in the back half of each bar. “What strikes me is how sparse and laid back the first verse is, except for Tommy,” said Rhodes. “He takes up the bulk of real estate and gives the song a sense of urgency and excitement. You can hear drummer Gene Chrisman and everyone else starting to follow him because he’s really in the zone, right in the middle of the pocket.” 

As the track moves to the first chorus, Cogbill continues his syncopated bassline. At times he adds the dominant 7 (D) to the E triad chord change, as well as some expressive hammer-ons and slurs. “The fact that Tommy is playing around the E up at the 7th fret tells me these guys had heard themselves on the radio and knew what translated,” said Rhodes. “If he had played open E it might not have reproduced as well in a car or on a transistor radio. And given that Tommy also played bebop-style guitar, navigating around the upper frets was no sweat.”

Following a re-intro (in which the horns enter and cop Young’s guitar lick), Cogbill continues his percolating bass part – adding subtle variations – through the second verse and chorus. As the bridge begins, in what is a clever setup for a modulation to the key of A, Cogbill keeps driving forward, issuing an ear-catching 5th on the downbeat, followed by a jazzy passing tone. 

The third chorus establishes the new key of A, with Cogbill maintaining forward motion. Every time he arrives at the IV chord (D), he outlines a D triad (D-F#-A). He then plays an inspired, bluesy fill as a precursor to the final chorus. 

“Tommy felt the final chorus needed to go into another gear,” said Rhodes. “His playing was always headed toward something – the next chord change or the next section, and he knew he had to get right to it before the quick fade. Moving up to a more vocal, conversational register, he plays a linear fill across the bar line without worrying about nailing the roots.” 

Gear-wise, Tommy used a 1959 P-Bass, which had a rosewood neck and flatwound strings. “It was the American Studios bass guitar,” said Rhodes. “Mike Leech said that Tommy also kept a jar of Vaseline on hand, and he would stick his right fingers into it to help facilitate his technique.”

Guitarist Reggie Young remembers there being a bass amp at the session, and with Dowd present there was probably a direct as well as a miked amp signal. “Interestingly enough, Mike Leech had said that on the earlier sessions, Tommy’s bass was recorded through an old Fender Twin Reverb that had one of its two 12-inch speakers busted,” said Rhodes. “They would place a mic, probably a Shure SM57, off axis of the single speaker and keep the amp at a low volume.”

Born on April 8, 1932, in Johnson Grove, Tennessee, Cogbill’s trademark busy-yet-unimposing basslines also graced Wilson Pickett’s Funky Broadway, Elvis Presley’s Kentucky Rain and In the Ghetto, the Box Tops’ Cry Like a Baby, and Aretha Franklin’s  (You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman and Chain of Fools.

“Tommy's profile has always been subdued – as he wanted it to be,” the late Mike Leech once told BP. “However, from a historical perspective, he should be listed among the top-five most important bassists of the last century.”

Dusty In Memphis is available to buy or stream.

Ever since Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On hit the airwaves back in 1971, James Jamerson has remained one of the most revered bass players in the instrument's history. So much so that you voted him the third greatest bass player of all time in our poll to find the 100 greatest bass players of all time.

A first-call studio bassist for Detroit’s Motown Records, Jamerson remained largely anonymous until later in his career. He was finally credited on a major release for Marvin Gaye's What’s Going On and acknowledged as "the incomparable James Jamerson” on the album's sleeve notes.

“What’s Going On is a masterclass in how the bass can support the song, but still keep things interesting,” says LA bassist Nick Campbell. “It opened up the whole Motown catalog for me, which is filled with basslines like that.”

During the build up to the release of his own debut album, we asked Nick to pick his favourite bass line from another of our polls: the 40 best basslines of all time, as judged by Bass Player editors. He chose Jamerson’s What’s Going On, which ranked number 20 in our list, and proceeded to serve up some insight in this video.

We asked Nick why he thinks Jamerson is still so admired among today’s bass players, and check in about the challenges of releasing his own debut album…

Why do you think Jamerson is still so relevant today?

“Jamerson had such a unique voice that you can still hear his influence in most bass players. His chromatic voice leading and the 16th note syncopations in his playing became the DNA of so much bass vocabulary. I think it’s hard to have a complete understanding of the electric bass without spending some time studying his playing.”

How has he inspired your bass sound?

“I play a P-Bass primarily and Jamerson played a big part in that decision. I love how warm and supportive his bass tone is. I think his touch on the bass is also a big part of why his playing seems to elevate everyone around him. He was so good at playing really dense musical information while never getting in the way of anyone else in the band."

What would you say to bass players who are yet to discover Jamerson?

“If you’ve never listened to James Jamerson before then you’re in for a huge treat. He played on so many incredible songs that it seems like there’s an endless amount of music to explore. It’s particularly amazing to hear how he interacts with vocal melodies. I often feel as though I could listen to just the bass line and the lead vocal by themselves and that would be enough.”

Can you tell us about your new album?

“It’s called Art, and it’s a synthesis of all the modern jazz, soul and rock music that I love. It kind of goes into Zappa territory sometimes and at other times sounds like nihilist funk music. A few of the guys from Vulfpeck are on the record, and some other close friends from the Los Angeles music community."

We noticed song titles like Your Kisses Taste Like Jazz and Tribal Violence Is My Love Language. Do the titles typically come before the music?

“I usually write all of the music first and then come up with a title that makes me laugh, which I’ll keep as a placeholder. There might be something in that placeholder that inspires the actual lyric, so I often end up keeping it once the song is finished.”

Some might argue that the album format is no longer relevant. What would you say to that?

“That may be true for a lot of pop music, but I think listeners are still checking out albums in the independent music world. Vulfpeck pretty much release albums exclusively and they sell tons of vinyl, so I think there’s definitely still a place for records. I also felt like this collection of songs needed to be presented in this way. The songs were arranged with the album format in mind.”

Art by Nick Campbell is available now on Bandcamp.

From 1958 through to 1972 the studio musicians at Motown Records, who later became known as The Funk Brothers, cranked out hit after hit. In fact, they played on more number 1 records than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elvis and the Beach Boys put together, all while remaining mostly anonymous.

One thing evident on every recording was the signature, mid-range bass tone that carried all of Motown’s hits, which from 1962 to 1968 was almost entirely down to James Jamerson. “Jamerson became my hero,” Paul McCartney once said. “Although I didn’t actually know his name at the time.”

Below are the reasons why: the 10 essential James Jamerson basslines that every bassist has to hear.

My Girl - The Temptations (1965)

Written by Smokey Robinson and Ronnie White from The Miracles, 'My Girl' became an all-time classic thanks to Jamerson's instantly recognisable bassline. “I can be in a country where people don’t speak English and the audience will start cheering before I even start singing ‘My Girl’, said Smokey Robinson. “They know what’s coming as soon as they hear the opening bassline.”

Going to a Go-Go - The Miracles (1965)

This next bassline doesn't necessarily indicate the work of a future revolutionary, but listen carefully to the rhythmic counterpoint between the bass and the toms of drummer Benny Benjamin. At times they meet up note-for-note, while at others they intuitively weave in and out of each other's space. A second drummer plays snare and tambourine on beats two and four.

You Can't Hurry Love - The Supremes (1966)

This is a prime example of how Jamerson would drive a track from the bottom while the vocalist drove it from the top. It’s what made his bass playing so unique. His old flatwound strings and the foam rubber under the bridge cover of his Fender P-Bass allowed him to play with a deep, staccato sound that worked perfectly with the subtle swing feel of this iconic track. 

Road Runner - Jr. Walker & The All Stars (1966)

A hit song for Junior Walker & the Allstars in 1966, 'Road Runner' opens with a classic drum fill followed by eight bars of James Jamerson at his very best. Using only his plucking hand index finger, Jamerson exploits the cool medium-paced swing of the rhythm before catapulting you into the chorus.

I Was Made To Love Her - Stevie Wonder (1967)

Jamerson's bass playing on 'I Was Made to Love Her' is a perfect example of a classic Motown formula: drummer Benny Benjamin playing constant quarter-notes on the snare while Jamerson lets loose with a rhythmic and melodic bassline. Check out Jack Stratton's visualization of Jamerson’s bassline.

Bernadette - The Four Tops (1967)

Written by the legendary Motown team of Holland–Dozier–Holland, 'Bernadette' functions as a vehicle for some of Jamerson’s most inventive bass playing on record. He built many of his basslines on root-fifth-octave shapes like this one, before adding other scale tones or chromatic passing tones.

I Heard it Through the Grapevine - Gladys Knight and the Pips (1967)

Although Marvin Gaye's version of this tune is far more famous, the bassline on this earlier recording by Gladys Knight is a masterpiece. It serves as a brilliant lesson in how Jamerson would lay down a simple part, and then gradually embellish the line to really drive the song towards the chorus. 

In this next clip bassist Will Lee demonstrates how Jamerson approached this version of the song compared to his later recording with Marvin Gaye.

I Can't Get Next To You - The Temptations (1969)

'I Can't Get Next To You' was the second single from the Temptations’ Puzzle People album. The groove begins after Earl Van Dyke’s bluesy piano intro when Jamerson digs in with a unison line played with the guitars and keys. Listen out for his trademark bass fill that leads into the first chorus.

Darling Dear - The Jackson 5 (1970)

Often cited as one of his greatest of all-time, Jamerson's free-flowing bassline on 'Darling Dear' defines the bass as an instrument worthy of status alongside the featured artist. With a decade of service to Motown under his belt, Jamerson had now completely transformed the role of his instrument.

Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On (1971)

What’s Going On would serve as the benchmark for The Funk Brothers time at Motown during its Detroit era. The album was also the first time Jamerson was credited by name for his work on the sleeve notes of a major Motown release. The intro groove is based around the root, fifth and major sixth of an Emaj7 chord and is packed full of Jamerson’s signature ties and syncopations.

To learn more about one of the all-time greats of bass, check out Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson

We like to think we’re a fairly rock ’n’ roll bunch here at Bass Player: after all, the bass guitar is the coolest instrument on the planet, and it deserves to be played loud. 

That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a spot of academic rigor when the moment calls for it, though, and indeed, we were fascinated back in 2019 by an article called Reconstructing the History of Motown Session Musicians: The Carol Kaye/James Jamerson Controversy, published in the learned Journal of the Society for American Music, and available for your perusal online. 

This extensive analysis of a particular longstanding debate over who played what at certain Motown sessions in the '60s was authored by bassist Brian F. Wright, an acclaimed academic who holds the post of Assistant Professor of Popular Music at the University of North Texas in Dallas. 

He’s also the recent recipient of the Charles ‘Father of Stu’ Hamm Fellowship from the Society for American Music. An expert on '50s and '60s popular music, Professor Wright dug deep into primary sources to  try to resolve claims made by the noted session bassist Carol Kaye, now 86, that some of her hit basslines had been wrongly attributed to the late James Jamerson.

For the full list of alleged misattributions, consult Kaye’s website or her autobiography, Studio Musician (2016), and for background on Jamerson and his membership of Motown’s famed Funk Brothers session crew, see historian Allan Slutsky’s essential Standing in The Shadows of Motown book (1989) and documentary film (2002). 

All three documents are worth investigation if you’re interested in this confused period in music history, when Motown – like many other labels – didn’t bother to credit their session musicians. Half a century and more later, that lack of credit has led to a constant debate about whether Jamerson or Kaye recorded certain bass parts, a debate which may be resolved – at least in part – by Wright’s excellent analysis.

Why did you write your article about the Jamerson versus Kaye debate, Professor Wright? 

“Well, this is a story that all bass players know, right? Regular people on the street don’t know this story. Some of them may have heard of James Jamerson because they saw the Motown documentary that Allan Slutsky put together, and maybe they’ve heard about Carol Kaye, but this is really a sort of Inside Baseball kind of debate. There are great books by Jim Roberts and Tony Bacon and others that are for a broad audience of bass players, but in terms of really detailed historical work that goes back to the sources, there isn’t much.”  

What were your objectives in writing it? 

“I asked myself, ‘Is there anything new to add?’ and ‘Can we solve this thing, or is there only pure speculation?’ Most of the time, these discussions happen in echo chambers, where people either love Jamerson or they love Kaye, and they speculate on what really happened, but nobody’s really trying to go back and dig into the historical record.”   

How did you get started? 

“The question that started me on this journey was, ‘What’s the history of this debate?’ I thought the controversy itself was so interesting that it was worth asking how we got to this point. By the time I got to it in the '90s, it was a long-standing controversy, so the first thing I wanted to do was to trace the history of that controversy. After all, Jamerson had been dead since 1983, so I wanted to find out who was still fighting this battle.”  

What were the key moments in your research? 

“I got two very lucky breaks. While digging into the record, finding out as much as I could, I got ahold of two key documents. The first break was that I was able to get all of Motown’s West Coast session musician contracts from the '60s. I think other people had tried to do this before me, but their efforts had been denied, or they weren’t successful for whatever reason. So suddenly, I now had hundreds of session musician contracts – a huge amount of material.  

“Then, around that same time, Kaye published her autobiography, and one of the things she included in that book was a day-by-day account of her sessions. So now I had two really interesting pieces of new information that people before me didn’t have. 

“I also knew people who could help me decipher those contracts, because the contracts can be a little misleading – you can’t take them exactly at face value. You have to decipher them a little bit.”  

You’ve been sensitive to all the parties involved. 

“Yes. I don’t want to diminish either of their reputations or legacies. My goals were not to bring Jamerson down a peg, or to say that Kaye was making it all up. It’s not their fault. I want to emphasize here that the problem doesn’t come from Kaye or Jamerson. It comes from the lack of information.”   

So what new findings did you come up with? 

“I can tell you that Kaye is definitely playing on I’m Ready For Love by Martha & The Vandellas, Love Is Here And Now You’re Gone by the Supremes, In And Out Of Love by the Supremes, and Brenda Holloway’s You’ve Made Me So Very Happy. I can back those up 100 percent, and all of those were hits.  

“I also attribute Someday We’ll Be Together, the Diana Ross & The Supremes version, to Kaye. Although I don’t have a contract for that one, there’s enough historical evidence to make me pretty sure. I think all of those are very reasonable, and yet, if you look  at the list of Motown hits that she claims, there’s dozens more.”   

Why is there so much uncertainty about this? 

“Well, first, we don’t know much about Motown’s West Coast operations in the '60s. Second, Motown was constantly re-recording material. If you look at Motown albums from this era, you have the Supremes and Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson doing each other’s songs, and everybody doing everybody else’s hits. 

“The singers were often not in the room when the session musicians were recording these songs – so if you’re the bass player, and you’re playing on what you think is Get Ready, for example, how do you know if it’s the hit version? Is it a re-recorded version? Is it an album version? Is it for a movie or for TV? And Motown also recorded lots of stuff that was never released. So you can’t really blame any of the bass players for not knowing if it’s them or not.” 

What’s the bigger picture here? 

“I think, in general, what we really need is a clearer, more empathetic understanding of what it meant to be a session musician back then. We need to have a sense of what this job was like. This was a complicated job, where they were playing in a studio, three or four sessions a day, Monday through Friday. 

“They were probably recording hundreds, if not thousands of songs per year, right? They were busy, and it was complicated. And the music industry treated them solely as hired guns, so they weren’t involved in what happened to a recording after they left the studio.” 

We always assume that Kaye and Jamerson had completely different bass tones, but you explain that they’re way more similar than we think.  

“You can’t trust your ears as much as you think you can. You have to realize that the Motown arrangements sometimes featured a 30-piece band. Sure, the bass is still prominent in the mix, but hearing whether it’s being played with a pick or not is tricky. And if you listen to any of those isolated Jamerson basslines, they don’t sound like they sound in the context of the band, because he’s overdriving the board and they’re a little bit distorted, especially in the low register. 

“They sound crunchy in a way that they don’t at all in the full band context, and that’s a really good indicator that we can’t just trust our ears. And then people say, ‘Oh, but Kaye played with a pick, and you can hear it clicking.’ Sure, sometimes you do hear that, but other times you don’t, because her job was to be a chameleon. She was supposed to make any bass sound you can imagine. I think that’s a really hard thing for people to accept.” 

Presumably the sad ending of Jamerson’s life makes people more emotional about him. 

“Yes, because he died relatively young and unloved. That amplifies people’s emotions, and understandably so, because we all really admire what he did. Even towards the end of his life, they made the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever TV special (1983), which didn’t even mention the Funk Brothers. 

“I tell people that I couldn’t possibly diminish Jamerson’s legacy, even if that was what I wanted to do. It’s such an amazing body of work – but one of the things that’s different about what I do, as an academic and a historian, is that I try to avoid mythologizing people. There’s a strong urge when we talk about James Jamerson to say, ‘He’s the god of the bass!’ But this makes for bad history and it can diminish the work of other bassists. 

“My article has been posted on various bass forums, where it was largely well-received, but some people there do not believe my conclusions. Even when they’re confronted with direct evidence, they reject it because it doesn’t match the story that they want to hear.”

It’s so important that you’re doing this research. 

“I hope it resonates. We have to ask, ‘What’s the best way that we can look at these things? What are the facts here?’ There are times when I am very clearly going against the way we normally tell bass history – but I think it’s important to go back and look at these things with fresh eyes.”

• Reconstructing the History of Motown Session Musicians: The Carol Kaye/James Jamerson Controversy by Brian F. Wright is available to read online.

During the prenatal development of the electric bass guitar, there undoubtedly came a moment when Leo Fender realized a string would also need to be invented. There were electric guitar strings, and gut upright bass strings, but the new instrument needed a hybrid of the two.

Truly the MacGyver of his era, Fender took gut upright bass strings and covered the portion that ran over the magnetic pickup with a steel wrap. While they allowed further development of the electric bass, Leo knew these 'Franken-strings' would not suffice in the long run.

So, he contracted string manufacturers V.C. Squier to make a steel string that would fit the 34"-scale instrument with the proper gauges.

It wasn’t until 1962 that Rotosound developed the first round-wound strings for electric bass - the famed Swing Bass 66 set. Volumes can be written on how this new technology changed bass tone, and hence the shape of modern music. But during the formative decade prior, the electric bass was equipped with what we now call flatwound strings - a flat ribbon of steel wound over a steel core, which works best with magnetic electric-bass pickups. (Before Rotosounds, these were simply called 'strings'.)

In the 1970s, use of flatwound strings began to dwindle as the crisp bite and increased sustain of roundwounds became the new standard for bass tone. Their extended frequency response pushed technological development from one end of the signal chain to the other, also inspiring new musical approaches like slapping and harmonics.

Roundwound strings were a key element in the trend toward louder, more aggressive music, and they dominated the market through the late ’80s. Flats always retained a small foothold with blues and roots-oriented players, but when artists such as Beck and Smash Mouth re-popularized a vintage sonic palette, they rekindled the love for thick, warm, punchy bass tone.

Furthermore, within the bass world, the publication of Alan “Dr. Licks” Slutsky’s great book/audio package Standing in the Shadows of Motown brought the work of flatwound-strung Motown session bassist James Jamerson to light, and a new generation of players discovered what it was like when the world was flat.

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While flats are generally described as sounding darker and warmer than roundwounds, there is still a considerable range of variation between brands, and knowing these differences will help you spend your money wisely, as flats tend to cost a bit more than your average roundwound set.

The extra cost is typically offset by their longevity - it is not uncommon to leave a set of flats on a bass for years. For example, my ’73 P-Bass has a set of La Bella 760FMs on it from 1998, and if a string ever broke, I’d have to give the bass a fiery Viking funeral down the Cumberland River.

Bob Archigian of La Bella once told me that James Jamerson sent back a broken string, hoping it could be welded back together - some players get very attached to their flats.

For the sake of comparison, I’ll divide flatwound strings into two categories: 'old school', and 'new breed'. In general, old-school sets tend to be darker, have a more-taut feel, and perhaps a bit of 'clunk' to the E string. This characteristic is partially a result of the fairly thick core and the amount of wrap needed for a .105" (or thicker) string.

In some cases, it can affect intonation on the lowest notes, giving the E string a drastically different tone compared to the rest of the set. If you listen to older recordings done with flatwounds, you can often hear intonation issues on the E string, but for those seeking the ultimate in old-school tone, it is simply part of the charm.

The new breed of flats can be characterized by a looser feel, pronounced midrange, greater sustain, and clear fundamental.

The best flatwound bass strings: buying advice

When choosing a flatwound set, first consider your tone goal - do you want thump, or growl? Also, examine the construction of your instrument: string tension can affect the way your bass sounds and feels, and heavier strings require more tension to be brought up to the same pitches.

For example, a 24-fret neck-through-body instrument may not respond well to high string tension unless it has a graphite neck. Assess the stability of your neck before buying a heavy-gauge set, and be prepared to make truss rod and string-height adjustments whether you install 'bridge cable' or 'wet noodles' on your axe.

As flatwounds are often used to capture the classic tone of yesteryear, they are also popular with players of short-and medium-scale basses. In the earlier years of electric bass, scale lengths of 30, 30.5, 31, and 32 inches were more common, and nothing can evoke groovy ’60s bass tone like a short-scale hollowbody with flatwound strings.

Hollowbodies and other short-scale basses can vary greatly, both in terms of scale length and the actual string length needed, so it’s important to know the specifics of your instrument.

For most manufacturers, short scale is 30", medium scale is 32", long scale is 34", and extra-long scale is 35" and above; however, there are design elements that can influence what scale length your bass requires.

On my 30"-scale Eastwood Classic IV, a short-scale set of Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Flats proved to be too short - the silk at the tuning end extended onto the fingerboard. As it turned out, the Eastwood’s tailpiece/floating bridge design added several inches of non-vibrating string length behind the bridge, making the standard long scale set the proper choice.

If you want to 'flatten' a shorty, make sure you know the scale length, the total string length required, and the distance from 'silk-to-silk' on the string itself.

For this article, I drew largely from my own experience: out of a collection of roughly 30 basses, I have six brands of flatwounds strung on approximately half of them, representing a considerable amount of trial and error, not to mention expense.

Rather than rate the strings and impose my preferences on the reader, I’ll do my best to describe the essential characteristics of each set objectively.

The best flatwound bass strings available today

La Bella flatwounds are the epitome of old-school tone, and rightfully so - the Original 1954 Vintage set was the go-to string for top session players like Jamerson, Chuck Rainey, Jerry Jemmott, Duck Dunn, and a host of others.

If you were to list all the ingredients of classic bass tone, it would read: (1) Fender Bass, (2) Ampeg B-15 amp, (3) La Bella flatwound strings. Sold as part of its Deep Talkin’ Bass series, La Bella now makes flatwounds in gauges ranging from extra-light (.039"–.096") to the stout set that Jamerson used (.052" through .110".)

The La Bella 760-series flats can be generally described as full and punchy, with a taut feel. They start out remarkably bright, which may turn off those not willing to go through the break-in period.

Body chemistry, environment, and amount of use will affect how long this phase lasts, but it is said that famed Philadelphia International session man Ronnie Baker marinated his strings in mayonnaise to speed up the process (as well as using duct tape and paper towels to mute the strings at the bridge!).

As the strings settle in, the high frequencies dull and leave behind a warm thump that is both pleasing and highly functional. La Bellas are definitely on the stiffer end of the spectrum, although lighter-gauge sets can mitigate that issue. But for many players, higher tension is part of the recipe - a stiff string has less sustain, and encourages digging in.

La Bella Deep Talkin’ Bass flats are offered in 4, 5, and 6-string sets, as well as short, medium, and extra-long scale lengths. La Bella also makes strings with an extended silk wrap from the ball end, specifically designed for stringing through the body, as well as short-scale sets for the Höfner Beatle bass.

D’Addario Chromes straddle the line between old and new, due to their remarkable clarity and long-lasting bright tone. If you’re looking for dirty thump, they may not be your best choice, but what they do provide is a strong fundamental with sparkling high end that seemingly never fades.

This creates a perceived mid-scoop that makes them work great for slapping - a technique not typically associated with flatwounds - and stellar for super-clicky pickstyle. They can lean toward the stiff side, particularly sets with a .050" G string, but the lighter-gauge sets are more pliable. They are highly polished, giving them a silky feel under the hand.

I played a set of Chromes on one bass for over three years with no loss in brightness, or intonation problems. The E string avoids clunkiness, providing reliable pitch on the lowest notes, and for 5-stringers, D’Addario makes one of the few truly usable flatwound low B strings on the market (albeit a mighty stiff one). D’Addario XL Chromes are available in short-, medium-, long-, and Super Long-scale sets.

Firmly in the old school camp, GHS Precision Flats have that much-craved creamy warmth right out of the box. They have a more supple feel than some flats, and exhibit a good balance of tension across the board, but they are by no means low tension.

The outer wrap is less polished than on Chromes, but if you dig a more 'organic' feel, they may be just what you’re looking for. The set has a very musical midrange voicing, and good balance between attack and sustain.

The Precision Flats E string definitely leans toward the clunky side of things, but if you’re trying to nail the classic ’60s tone, that’s part of the deal. GHS Precision Flats are available in short-, medium-, and long-scale sets, as well as light or medium gauges for 4-or 5-string bass.

Ernie Ball distinguishes its flats as Group I, II, III, and IV, ranging from heavier to lighter gauges. They bear a strong resemblance to D’Addario Chromes, although they present a slightly greater mid scoop - a quality that serves them well when installed on a Music Man StingRay.

They have a clean, clear tone, with great intonation on the lower strings, and a smooth finish that feels slick and sexy in your hands. The lighter-gauge sets are a good choice for a low-tension setup, but the Group I set (with a hearty .055" G string) rivals the mighty La Bellas for stiffness.

While the Group Flats exhibit no clunk factor, I’m including them in the old-school category, because Ernie Ball’s newest flatwound set, the Slinky Flatwounds, definitely sit in the New Breed category.

One issue that I’ve experienced multiple times with Ernie Ball flats is string slippage around the tuner post, particularly on the G string. An easy remedy is to double back on the first wrap around the post to create a snug fit. Ernie Ball also offers a 5-string set in Group III gauges. At this time, Ernie Ball does not make flats in shorter scale lengths.

While it took DR Strings several years to get around to offering a set of flats, the company took the time to get it right. The Legends are definitively old-school in character, but they manage to strike the perfect balance between clunk and intonation on the E string.

Their tone favorably compares to a well-cured set of La Bellas. The Legends produce a dark, chocolatey thump, with a clear low-midrange presence that gives the note a rounded detail. Pickstyle is crisp, but not overly clicky, and the feel is taut, but not stiff.

Recently, DR Strings developed a new method for polishing the stainless-steel outer wrap, making them feel smoother than before. The Legend B string delivers the goods with a heavy thump, better-than-expected note definition, and reasonable tautness. They are available in short-and long-scale sets.

Although the British company is best known for inventing the roundwound electric bass string, its flatwound sets have always had a loyal following, including Phil Lynott, Roger Waters, and the company’s signature artist, Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris.

Roto flats have a pronounced high end, which gives them great clarity for high-volume rock, without the clankiness that roundwounds can produce. Jazz Bass 77 Flats use a diagonally wound flat ribbon of Monel 400, a corrosion-resistant nickel/copper alloy that is more expensive to use than stainless steel.

Monel is a tough alloy, making it harder to machine, but the resulting brightness is what sells this set. Roto flats have a stiff feel, particularly the Steve Harris Signature set with its beastly .110 E string, but they are a perfect match to the big, fat neck profile found on his signature-model Fender Precision.

The Rotosound Jazz 77 set is available in short-, medium-, long-, and extra-long scale lengths, and the Roto website has a very handy scale and string-length chart to help you choose the correct set.

Considering the company’s long history manufacturing strings for bowed instruments, it’s not surprising that TI Jazz Flats define what I consider 'orchestral quality' in an electric bass string. Jazz Flats are wound around a supple core that creates a low-tension feel, a less-choked response, and better intonation than their stiffer competition.

The decreased strain on the neck will likely require minor truss rod adjustment, as well as a lighter touch with both hands. A low-stress setup can permit the string and instrument to vibrate more freely, decreasing choked overtones that can cloud the note.

Sustain is considerably improved over old-school sets, making TIs an excellent choice for fretless players looking for a more upright bass-like tone. While their attack is relatively mellow, a strong midrange voice keeps the Jazz Flats from fading into the background, and gives pickstyle playing a pleasing roundness.

For the 6-string crowd, the Jazz Flats low B has great note definition and a buttery feel, while the high C string has a creamy edge that makes it great for melody. Being imported, the price is higher than others, but longevity is good - I have multiple basses strung with sets well over five years old. Thomastik offers Jazz Flats sets in short scale (32"), long scale (34"), and Super Long scale (36").

Perhaps the original 'New Breed' set, Pyramid flats were developed in 1956 for use with the first Hofner 500/1 bass. Like Thomastik, Pyramid was another old European company (founded in 1850) focused on strings for the violin family, which expanded into electric guitar and bass strings as demand grew.

As the string of choice for Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna bass legend Jack Casady and the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh during the heyday of the ’60s, Pyramid Golds were part of the psychedelic San Francisco sound. Pyramid Golds use a pure nickel flat ribbon for the outer wraps, and have a supple feel and richness of tone that some have described as 'luxurious'.

When you hear the sound of Paul McCartney’s Hofner bass, that’s the sound of Pyramids - thick, rich, and chunky. The string tension is slightly higher than that of Thomastik Jazz Flats, but they are relaxed and pliable. The E string has some clunk to it, but just the right amount to keep it punchy. Pyramid Golds are available in shortand long-scale sets.

La Bella’s response to the new breed trend is a great hybrid between old and new tone concepts. String tension is considerably lower than on its Deep Talkin’ Bass flats, but not quite as low as Thomastik.

La Bella chose a thinner core wire for the Flexible Flats, and uses silk along the core to create more grip for the outer wraps, which use a narrower ribbon than the 760-series.

Flexible Flats have a warm tone profile, but with an icing of high-end that sticks around for a while - just like their more uptight, old-school relatives. The highly polished stainless steel wrap gives the string a slick feel that plays fast, and makes for silent position shifting on the neck.

The E string exhibits just enough clunk factor to make them great for old-school applications, but their improved sustain and intonation place them high among the new breed of flats.

Dunlop has been making waves in Bass String Land ever since it introduced its excellent Super Bright set of roundwounds a few years back. Followed by the success of the new Marcus Miller signature set, it seems the folks at Dunlop have now set their sights on flatter pastures.

Dunlop’s flatwound set is the newest addition to the field in this roundup, and while they exhibit several characteristics of the new breed, the tone is decidedly old school. The string tension is well-balanced across the set, falling on the lighter side of medium, but they exhibit none of the roll-under-the-fingers that some lighter-tension strings have.

The outer wrap is not highly polished, giving the string an earthier feel that says, “go ahead, dig in.” The Dunlop Flats produce a clear fundamental with great intonation on the lower strings, with a punchy attack that makes them perfect for old-school tone. At this time, 5-string sets are available, but no offerings yet in shorter scale lengths.