The Jamaaladeen Tacuma Interview

There were guys who thinking of the bass as a first voice. You had cats like Eberhardt Weber on upright, Stanley (Clarke), Jaco (Pastorious), they were definitely trailblazers at that time on the electric bass. Then you had cats like Monk Montgomery whose credited with being the first to play the electric bassist. When fender gave the bass to Lionel Hampton who gave it on to Monk. We're talking 1951, the first precision bass. Monk was still chomping at it, still laying a foundational sound. Then you had all the guys like Kenny Baker who played bass on all The Gamble and Huff (SOP). You had Val Burke who was the bass player with "Willie And The Mighty Magnificence who was the backup band out of New Jersey that did all the RnB groups like "The Moments" and "The Whatnots." Then you had Robbie "Kool" Bell from Kool And The Gang. He was using the bass guitar as a first voice. What I'm doing is just a continuation of that, those guys really led the way. Musical ideas bear freshness. When you think of an arrangement where everyone is just playing a role. We never thought about the instruments as being the instruments that they were. They were always vehicles for moving out of the realm of whatever that instrument was. I never thought of the bass and being the bass. I knew it was an instrument that had a certain tone quality but when it came to the composition and melodies we were always all free and all equal. Ornette never thought of himself as being the leader of the band, of course he was, but in the musical sense he always felt as though he was inside of the music and not standing out in front. It was all participation, moving in the same direction.