Don began his musical career during his early teen years as a vocalist. He started later on rhythm guitar, and later moved into lead and bass guitar. He played in Canada with several groups. After moving to the Upper Peninsula, he played lead guitar with bands such as 100 Proof, the Persuaders Blues Band, the Double E Blues Band, and bass with several others. His musical influences include the Beatles, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Sonny Landreth, Buddy Holly, Keb Mo, Stanley Clarke, Stevie Ray, Tal Wickenfield, and of course Led Zeppelin. The complex ryhthms of Zydeco music have always interested Don, and the opportunity to play with Zydecology's musicians is now a welcome, refreshing opportunity.
A History of the Electric Bass
Written by Don Peterson
Considering the lengthy history of the guitar, it is surprising that it took until the 1950s for the bass guitar to reach its full potential. The upright bass was what bands had to work with for the first half of the twentieth century. While this acoustic instrument worked well in jazz, it was unsatisfactory for modern pop music due to its low amplification, the fact that it is an instrument that requires extensive technique to play properly, and due to its large size as simply getting it to the gig was problematic. It became evident to guitar makers that new type of bass guitar was necessary if the bass was to be a prominent instrument in modern bands.
By the 1940s, Rickenbacker began making the first electric double basses, which had neck issues and electronic problems. Guitarist Smiley Burnette, the bassist with Gene Autry's band was one of the first players to use it, and it continues to be used by bassists playing salsa and Latin-jazz. It was Leo Fender however, who can truly lay claim as inventor of the electric bass. In 1950, he designed his first electric bass guitar, The Precision Bass, which was introduced commercially a year later, rendering the upright bass obsolete in pop music.
Even more impressive, this first rendition of the electric bass was so near perfection that it is produced to date with very little change. The fact that the design of the instrument has changed so little since its initial appearance makes it easy to overlook just how innovative Fender was. This was the first electric guitar with two cutaways, and many six-string electric guitars of the day didn't even feature one cutaway. Fender had the insight to use two and also to extend the upper horn over the neck of the bass in order to achieve better balance and make his new instrument more playable. Fender also chose to use a 34" scale length as was dictated by the physics of the instrument, which is tuned to E, A, D, and G, like the bottom four strings of a guitar, but one octave lower.
The Precision model was so-named due to its fretted fingerboard, which allowed the player to play in tune "with precision." This design revolutionized bass playing, as well as making the singing bassist possible as playing the double bass while singing was almost impossible, particularly with the microphones of the time. The electric bass allowed mobility and a virtuosity that was new to bass players, and a whole new school of bass guitarist began to evolve. John Entwistle, Stanley Clark, Marcus Miller, and Jaco Pastorius have been just a few of the hundreds of key players to make early electic bass history.
Fender's History
For most collectors, pre-CBS (pre-1966) Fender vintage guitars and amps are the desirable ones. Leo Fender has contracted an illness which was misdiagnosed, and Leo lost interest in his company selling it for thirteen million dollars to CBS. Although CBS purchased Fender (officially) on January 3rd 1965, it took some time till the guitars changed (though by mid 1964, six months before CBS bought Fender, things were already "on the way down"). By the end of 1965, the general look and feel of the Fender guitars had changed significantly. All collectors feel the quality of their instruments and amps suffered as CBS employed more "mass production" manufacturing processes to the Fender guitars. The "large peghead" (starting in late 1965) as used on the Fender Stratocaster was one example of the (bad) changes to come. The "custom contoured" bodies Fender was famous for no longer were as sculped and sleek. Newer (and less attractive) plastics were used for the pickguards. Pearl fingerboard inlays replaced the original "clay" dots. Indian rosewood replaced the beautifully figured Brazilian rosewood on the fingerboards. And by 1968, polyurathane replaced the original nitrocellulose lacquer clearcoat that was used from Fender's conception. By early 1971 the party was truely over. Fender now employed the infamous "3 bolt neck" and one piece die cast bridge on the Strat, ruining it's tone and feel. Many other models suffered the same miserable fate of being over mass-produced and cheapened by corporate zellots.
Because of this, Fender's most innocent era of the 1950's is their most collectible. This decade produced guitars with one-piece maple necks, single layer pickguards, thin "spaghetti" logos, and tweed cases that seem to capture collectors the most. Oddly enough, Leo Fender was cured of his illness in the early 70's and went on first as a consultant to Fender, then own his own producing Musicman and G & L Guitars until his death in 1991.
The early 1960's Fenders with "slab" rosewood fingerboards are also collectible, but not to the extent of the earlier 1950's maple-neck era. Of the rosewood fingerboard models, the "slab" fingerboard (1958/mid-1959 to July 1962) variants are more desirable than the "veener" fingerboard (August 1962 and later) pre-CBS models. The "transistion" era (late summer 1964 to December 1965) are the least collectible of the pre-CBS models. This era is known as a "transition" because later summer 1964 to December 1965 was the time when there was a transition from the Leo Fender management to CBS management, and mass-production manufacturing techniques were starting to take a firm hold. Of all pre-CBS Fender instruments, the period from summer 1964 to December 1965 was amoung Fender's high production periods. They made a lot of guitars during this time, so these instruments are the most common (and least desirable) of the "pre-CBS" era.
By 1966 (a year after CBS bought Fender), CBS management had really taken hold of Fender's production facilities and incorporated many changes. The sum of of all these changes had a serious effect on Fender guitars as a whole. 1966 brought an era of "large" pegheads, less contoured bodies, and even higher production numbers. CBS looked for ways to cut production time and costs, which generally led to much lower quality. Because of this, 1966 and later Fender instruments are considered far less collectible than vintage pre-CBS Fender guitars.
Fender hit another home run with the Precision Bass, the first fretted electric bass. Still today, it's the standard by which all basses are judged. Early P-basses (late 1951 to mid 1957) are collectable, but not as much as the models from mid-1957 to mid-1959 with split coil pickups, aluminum pickguards, and maple necks.
My favorite bassist, Paul McCartney, in my opinion changed the face of the electric bass concept in the USA. In fact to take this a step further, the Beatles solidified my interest in rock music. When the 45 rpm record of "She Loves You" hit that little Ontario town we lived in, my brother and I bought a copy and listened to it until it was worn out. The later recording of "Come Together", and "Rain" gave me the musical message that bass could actually BE the driving force in a song. Although a few years of six string would follow for me, bass became my first love after hearing "Come Together." After seeing the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show in about l964 I knew my interest in rock music would be a life long, and bass would be the biggest part of that interest.
From the start, Paul had enough skill to "get the job done." Like Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney was a master at composing great bass lines. But Paul McCartney also had a talent for improvisation ; a skill he would apply to his compositions. Paul was/is at home with the live performance. The Beatles had been performing together, in one form or another, since 1958 (even though Paul wasn't playing bass until 1961). Playing LIVE is where they learned their craft. Paul came to the electric bass from a "guitar player" background, and like most guitar players who switch over to bass, Paul played with a pick, developing a style that would influence more than a few notable American musicians to adopt similar technique (see Studio Life). His guitar (and piano) background would set him apart from many of his contemporaries. It gave him a better understanding of some of the many less obvious choices that were available to him as a bass player. From Paul, we have learned of the benefits of taking on secondary "chord-based" instruments like the piano or guitar in order to better understand the function of the bass guitar in a band setting, and navigating through chord changes, etc. Lastly, Paul McCartney was an evolving musician/bassist lifetime musician. He was never satisfied or complacent about his abilities. Listen to and compare a song like "Love Me Do" (1962) with "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite"(1967), compare that with "Something" (1969). By doing so you'll hear the growth of a lifetime artist. Paul played a Hofner Bass, and later a Rickenbacker. In concert today, he still prefers the Hofner: still rumored to be his original V Model Hofner pictured below, and a Rickenbacker Paul played infrequently. Paul also played a Fender Jazz Bass and well as upright bass.
The success of The Beatles opened the floodgates for other English bands and their bass players to gain notoriety. Other significant 1st wave (1964 "Mod"-Style) British Invasion bands (and bassists) include: The Rolling Stones (Bill Wyman), The Kinks (Peter Quaif), The Animals (Chaz Chandler), The Yardbirds (Paul Samwell-Smith), and The Who (John Entwistle). A few years later, a 2nd wave of British rockers (the "non-mods") would redefine Rock and Rock & Roll once again. Bands like Cream (Jack Bruce), The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Noel Redding), Fleetwood Mac (John McVie), The Jeff Beck Group (Ronnie Wood), Led Zeppelin (John Paul Jones), and Black Sabbath (Geezer Butler).
One of my other bass heroes of the Motown vintage was James Jamerson. James was described by Motown founder Berry Gordy as "a genius on the bass...and incredible improviser in the studio and somebody I always wanted on my sessions." He was the anchor of the in-house group at Motown dubbed the Funk Brothers. Personally I always admire the smoothness and consistency of Jame's tone quality wherever he was playing on the neck. Though few among the record-buying public ever never knew Jamerson by name, they were well-acquainted with his work, which included the bass lines on such Motown classics as "Reach Out I'll Be There," by the Four Tops; "Dancing in the Street," by Martha and the Vandellas; "I Was Made to Love Her," by Stevie Wonder; and "You Can't Hurry Love," by the Supremes. His groove-oriented melodicism brought about a broader awareness of the role and possibilities of the bass guitar, and no less an authority than Paul McCartney rates him as an influence on his own playing. In a 1995 interview with Bass Guitar magazine, McCartney recalled his training on the instrument: "I started listening to other bass players -- mainly Motown. As time went on, James Jamerson became my hero...because he was so precise and melodic."
James, born in 1938 in Charleston, South Carolina, Jamerson moved to Detroit in the early 50's. He took up the bass in high school and joined Jackie Wilson's band later in the decade. In 1959, Jamerson became a founding member of Motown studio band, and his inventive work on the Fender Precision bass proved a defining element of the Motown sound. In 1964, he stopped touring to devote himself exclusively to studio work at Motown's "Hitsville" headquarters, on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. One of the guarded secrets of the Motown sound was the interaction between bass and drums. According to Motown keyboardist and bandleader Earl Van Dyke, "We were sworn to secrecy, and one of the secrets was between James and [drummers] Benny Benjamin and Uriel Jones." Jamerson followed the company west when Berry moved Motown's headquarters to Los Angeles, but the association between Motown and Jamerson ended in 1973. Jamerson, who'd been battling alcoholism, died of pneumonia in 1983 at the age of 45.
As basses go, I would be totally remiss not to mention Alembic. Alembic would be the first company to market an instrument with active pickup circuitry. Their first prototypes hit the streets in 1971. The company was founded on the experimentations made by notable bass players from the San Francisco music scene--Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane) and Phil Lesh (Grateful Dead). Around 1971, the improvements they had been working on for these two notable players were put to use on their own instrument (a bass made for Jack Casady, which cost $4000 to build). Stanley Clarke purchased his first Alembic in 1972 ("It was like a new bass player had been born."). Many other players played Alembics as well: John Paul Jones, and John Entwistle. An average Alembic bass guitar these days costs an average of $7000.00 depending on model. I owned a Alembic Elan 2 for a time, and was not very impressed actually: very little frequency response on the G string higher up the neck.
My Own Basses
My present Precision Bass (left bottom pic) is a 1969 maple neck model with many alterations, which include a split coil Seymore Duncan ' 62 reissue pickup to emulate the early split coil pre CBS sound I have always loved, and James Jamerson put out so well. this bass has parts from three Precisions. It's got high end snap, a close action with very little string rattle in the higher neck: it's low end is very full with little difference in gain between the low E and high G string.
One might think I'm a little obsessive with the Precision Bass, but I came by it honestly. My first bass guitar was a Silvertone (Sears) six string altered by myself and some guys in the group into a bass -------- I lived in a isolated own in Canada called Atikokan, and you had trouble buying ANY guitar parts in town, let alone a bass guitar strings, which I could not have afforded anyhow.
So, starting with the Silvertone modification, we drilled a hole through the whole guitar neck and all lengthways and used a electrical threaded rod about three feet long 3/8 inch dia. and installed the truss rod right through the body and the end of the neck. Then, we confiscated a set of strings from a stand up bass at the local high school for it. When you tightened the top string up towards the E range, the whole guitar would bend: so we compromised, and tuned the top string to B, then E, A and G, the same way the top string of a 5 string bass are tuned today. To make it in some way "presentable" after all this we covered the face/sides in white kitchen floor tile. This was played through a Sears Silvertone amplifier with the cones on the speakers varnished with old marine varnish so they would not blow. (easily)
We had a band called I believe the "Hi Tones" at this time, and we played for a local organization called "Teen Town" quite often. Impressing the love of my life, Judi Georgeson, was difficult as she often arrived at "Teen Town" dances just a little late with her friends about the time the neck, along with it's truss rod, began to slowly bend making the whole "instrument" go flat. It would just about make one set before the whole guitar had to be retuned. Sorry Judi --- hard to be cool when you have to bend each note up to keep some semblance of a tuned guitar.
The first Precision Bass I every laid eyes on was when Neil Young and the Squires, from Blind River Ontario played at our Spring Prom. That HUGE SOUND !!!!! The contours and sound of that bass will remain forever burned into my brain !!!! Sexual contours. So began a three year process of saving money for a Fender Precision. I have owned several P. Basses but this below (right) is my favorite and I'll never part with it, although for Zydeco music my working guitar is a Jazz Bass which has more funky snap.
