Is this the GREATEST bass line of all time?

hey everybody welcome to a special episode of professional musicians react today we are going to dive into one instrument and one musician that changed the game this is james jamerson's bass performance in marvin gaye's what's going on [Music] it's their time [Music] brother brother brother there's far too many of you died [Music] we don't need to escalate [Music] someone's playing racquetball yeah [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [ __ ] dude sick i mean i have so much yeah i mean that's like this is like one of the this song is like one of the most important electric bass performances of the history of the instrument oh yeah yeah this is like i um there's like this incredible story about this tune where apparently like they were trying to find him to play bass on this and he was like passed out drunk and recorded the whole thing in one take on his like on his back yeah that's what that's what is on this track that's what's on the record yeah is that true i i i saw it in a documentary it's as true as anything else we've said yeah yeah here this isn't find out yeah this is the read below to find out if anything we said it was true but yeah i mean there's so much i could say even before about the song just about like james jamerson as an instrumentalist i mean it's crazy like because i have a transcription of this of this tune like there's this great book called standing in the shadows of motown which is all about the life of james jameson for people who don't know like about the history of like the motown session band and stuff like that it was like the same group of guys who played on like every hit motown song and james jameson was the bassist most of the time and the way he played he always he played everything with one finger so most people play bass with two fingers like this and he he was an upright like an upright bass player a jazz guy so he played every and if you watch upright bass players because the instruments had a little bit of an angle they always play like that so he always played with one finger pointing down that way and if you listen to like the the bass line baseline because there are a lot of 16th note subdivisions [Music] there's like this little shortness in the some of the articulations as he's changing strings that you literally can't get any other way two things like if you're playing with two fingers you hit it right on and you're saying there's a little bit of a pause because he's using the same exactly so if you play like oh right you can hear it put my plate with two fingers now you're on the [ __ ] grid now you're a metronome it's really legato legato is a term that refers to um the length of a note being played or sung by a musician so legato notes are sung or played with a long release time as opposed to staccato notes which are short the thing that's so cool about him is like i almost consider him like the bach of electric bass in some sense because like everything he came up with and he was improvising like you know a large portion of what he was playing there there are some composed parts but most of what he was doing was kind of spontaneously composing off the top of his head and he always came up with these bass lines that were like perfect counterpoint to the melody perfect perfect yeah jack stratton makes these videos where he visualizes james jamerson bass lines [Music] yeah they're amazing they're perfect i mean can you can you uh just real quick some other tracks i might know i i've never heard of him but he played he played at bernadette he played on ain't no mountain high enough [Applause] [Music] like every famous motown song pretty much it was jameson he played on um jackson five no i don't think he well which one i don't know he plays the jackson five one i know who room is that tuned darling dear the [Music] it's like the baddest jameson [ __ ] ever uh he played on um [Music] for once in my life for once in my life i have someone who needs me someone i've needed so long uh all that kind of stuff that's all that's all jamerson was there like the party sound in the background the entire track pretty much yeah it sounds like he finished the track he's like all right we need more vibe and he called he called his friends over he's like can you guys just kind of hang out keyboards we could do keyboards or we could have a low-key ranger yeah we got one track left should we do party or keyboards let's do the party the changes yeah just that so classic go into that the minor four minor four where it just feels like and then it hangs there for for yeah for eight bars or something right yeah and then and then b sus right that's the one yeah and the string writing is perfect it's so good one of my favorite things in the in like the horn the string part and horn parts at the end is there's like this little figure they're like [Music] then it waits a long time to hit the g and it sort of implies like a g major sound over that a minor chord interesting and i love when people voice things like that and you hear it a lot in 70's soul music where they're they'll write different yeah kind of thing but you still hear the third in it so it's like you kind of like make whatever part you're writing like some of the counter lines are often made out of different triads that work over the chord you're doing and it's like such a beautiful simple way to make complex sounds out of simple yeah i had pears triad pairs bro i love triad pairs i knew it i knew it i feel like this is one of the first times i've heard the signature like marvin thing of there's two marvin's singing [Music] the clav and superstition we're like [Music] you don't process when you just hear it on one speaker like which guy is singing the part that you think of as the melody normally but he like did a pass and then just did another pass and he was just like all right leave put them both in yeah kind of what it sounds funny i did that exactly i i made antoine stanley not made but antoine stanley forced forced antoine stanley to sing the liner notes on my the last song of my album is liner notes and antoine sang it and he did that he sent me two tracks and i was like oh it's just good they're both there hard panned yeah the the other thing that's always so crazy is the racquetball [Music] which sounds like they did a conga pass and then there's a drum pass and then it just sounds like there's a single like conga that's doubling the scene yep yeah and not all of the time but yeah it just sounds like some guys are playing racquetball in the next room it's also cool too like speaking of the percussion on this one like a lot of al green tunes are like this too where if you remove the percussion the groove is not the same like you lose all the forward momentum like if you play people play this tune a lot at gig at cover gigs and stuff um and it never really sounds like a wreck the record and i think part of the reason it has to do with the fact that there's almost never a percussion when people playing it people are trying to cop it all on the drum kit and the vibe is totally different did we did you hear i want to do one more pass i heard the bass cut out for a bar did you hear that it does not [Music] right there now that he's just holding onto a note so what he's playing is [Music] so yeah the thing about it is it the fender basses at that time had mutes on the bridge so the decay of the note isn't as long as the basses that don't have so he's just not playing in those couple beats he's just holding out a note [Music] the other thing that's cool to think about that i feel like people don't realize a lot of the time is how new the instrument was yeah i mean like yeah this this instrument like this didn't exist so like now there's people that have been playing bass their whole lives you know like 20 years 30 40 years but like at the end like all these people were innovating like these were brand new instruments exactly like they were just figuring out how to yeah and james jamerson was just like the first guy to like invent this whole style of yeah bass playing that's the thing too it's like when you listen to this you're like oh this is r b bass playing but it wasn't it didn't exist it didn't exist before jameson yeah that's the thing it's like every bass player in the world copies this guy like he was paul mccartney's favorite bass player i think it's what i heard but it makes sense he's in let us know in the comments let us know in the comments paul mccartney does write um one of the forewords in the transcription book about jamerson though and if you listen to paul mccartney bass lines it's like the non-improvised version yeah yeah his style of bass playing for motown was one of my major influences when i was learning electric bass and i know that a lot of the people who playing and demonstrating his technique on this tape i've also been influenced by him all right draco pistorius like if you listen to all of draco's like the [Music] it's like jamerson with two fingers um yeah i mean it's like every this is just like the dna of the bass guitar [Music] and like you see them playing them early on like and they're all holding them like real slanted because they're they're used to playing upright bases yeah wow it's so sick we just we take it for granted that like yeah that's a base it's always existed but can you imagine like growing up and then when you're 15 or something this thing just appears it's just like this new you know it's like an op1 or you know what i mean it's just like whoa upright bass that's i mean electric bass that's cool sick as [ __ ] dude [Laughter] we're gonna wrap it up there thank you everybody for tuning in to musicians react uh we're coming out with weekly videos so if you like this subscribe and you'll see more let us know what we should talk about next in the comments below if there's a song that you like or if there's music or an artist or whatever it is and you'd like us to talk about it or pick it apart or analyze it let us know in the comments below and we will see you next week adios [Music]

Channel: Dead Wax

Views: 540,270

Keywords: bass guitar, marvin gaye, james jamerson, funk, bass lines, bass, bass riffs, react, iconic bass lines, bass cover, bass line, top bass lines, bass lines every bassist should know, what's going on, professional musicians react, musicians react, bass tabs, funk bass, music, bass guitars, patreon, ryan lerman, nick campbell, primus bass, reaction video, bassline, reaction, bass player, marvin, gaye, soul, marvin gaye greatest hits, whats going on marvin gaye, motown, soul music

Id: NqwNsvJxshc

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021