Based on today's aesthetics, Leo Fender would probably rate as one of the un-hippest looking guys around; and yet he gave the music world three of its most important electric instruments: the Fender Telecaster, Stratocaster, and the Precision Bass, the first mass-produced bass guitar. Leo Fender's name is so synonymous with that last instrument that to this day, many simply refer to the electric bass as the Fender Bass, even though many manufacturers now produce an electric bass guitar.
Leo Fender didn't actually invent the electric bass, but he was the first to build the instrument in quantity, beginning with the P-Bass in late 1951. This was only about a year and a half after the first Telecaster solidbody electric guitars started rolling off his Fullerton California assembly line. And while Fender's guitars certainly led to the birth of rock and roll, as Jim Roberts explains in his terrific book, How The Fender Bass Changed The World, the P-Bass (as it eventually became popularly known as) influenced all sorts of music besides rock: Motown, R&B, and especially funk would all be virtually unthinkable without the instrument.
While Fender's instruments were born in the early 1950s, it took the following decade for their true virtuosos to appear. The first electric bassists played the instrument like the acoustic bass, whose four-to-the-bar style derives from the instrument that it replaced in the rhythm section, the tuba.
The First Electric Bass Virtuoso
To get out of that rut, all it took was one man to really use the new instrument's flexibility.
Just as Jimi Hendrix invented a whole new vocabulary for guitarists with his Fender Stratocaster, James Jamerson, Motown's chief session bassist in the 1960s invented a new way of playing that was tailored to the P-Bass. As Alan Slutsky, the author of Standing In The Shadows Of Motown, and the producer of its 2002 film version told me:
Jamerson comes out of nowhere, and then starts do [hums fast staccato pulsing Motown lick] do ba doopa doopa doopa do ba doopa da do do do. He completely invented the vocabulary of this new instrument, and made it a virtuoso position, instead of just a foundation position, with all those syncopations, and all this incredible feel that none of these other converted upright bassists had. He opened up the possibility of what the instrument could do to the rest of the world, and then all of a sudden, everybody's copying his lines, making hits, and they have no idea who this guy is.British rock owes quite a debt to Jamerson: the melodic bass lines of Paul McCartney, the metallic twang lead bass style of John Entwistle, and the chromatic style of John Paul Jones all trace their roots to Jamerson--as each man has said in numerous interviews--many unfortunately after Jamerson died in 1983.
Article comments
1 - Johno
Speaking as a working bassist, your kung fu is the best. Thanks Ed, for a fantastic article and reverent homage to the Low End.
2 - Jim Carruthers
What a great article. I'd often wondered why so many women played bass in rock bands, and asked one who was replaced in a studio session by Will Lee, and she said it was because there were fewer strings than a guitar.
Drums and bass are the two sections most replaced by machines, but I think that really opens up the field for awesome players, since machines can't do awesome yet.
3 - Eric Olsen
Really exceptional Ed: informative, interesting, enduring. Thanks as always!
4 - Casper
Great post; very informative.
Just a small quibble, though. I'd point to Anthony Jackson for the revolution of creating the contrabass (5 strings and more).
5 - Ed Driscoll
Casper,
That's a great point--Jackson is featured in both Jim Roberts' and Alan Slutsky's books, though. I also sort of kicked myself after writing this for not including Carol Kaye. But there are so many great players, it's tough to know when to stop.
Ed
6 - Ed Driscoll
Guys,
Thanks for the kind words--most appreciated!
Ed
7 - SFC SKi
As a bass player whio really wishes he'd deployed with at least one guitar to play, this clumn made me really eager to get back home and rebuild my calussed fingers. I am going to be buying a few of those books as well, thanks for the tip!
You should have mentioned the advent of affordable acoustic guitar-bodied 4 strings. I have a Sonata acoustic, only $275. but full sounding with great action, with the portability that many of us long-envied acoustic guitarists for haiving at beach parties or just sittin out back woodshedding.
once again, great column!