STANLEY CLARKEExploding into the jazz world in 1971, Stanley Clarke was a lanky teenager from the Philadelphia Academy of Music. He arrived in New York City and immediately

landed jobs with famous bandleaders such as: Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Pharaoh Saunders, Gil Evans, Stan Getz, and a budding young pianist composer named Chick Corea. 

All of these musicians recognized immediately the ferocious dexterity and complete musicality the young Clarke possessed on the acoustic bass.  Not only was he expert at crafting bass lines and functioning as a timekeeper in the bass’ traditional role, Stanley also possessed a sense of lyricism and melody gained from his bass heroes Charles Mingus, Scott LaFaro, and others, including non-bass players like John Coltrane.  Clarke recognized the opportunity to propel the bass into a viable melodic soloist role and was uniquely qualified to do just that. 

The opportunity to state melody and to propel the bass to the front of the concert stage came to fruition when Clarke and Corea formed the seminal electric jazz/fusion band Return to Forever.  RTF was a showcase for each of the quartet’s strong musical personalities, composing prowess, and instrumental voices.  Clarke surmised, “we really didn’t realize how much of an impact we were having on people at the time.  We were touring so much then, we would just make a record and go back on the road.” The band recorded eight albums, two of which were certified gold (the wildly successful Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy and the classic Romantic Warrior), won a Grammy award (No Mystery) and received numerous nominations while touring incessantly.  And this was a jazz band!

Then Stanley, his now famous Alembic bass in hand, fired the shot heard ‘round the world’.  He single-handedly started the 1970s “bass revolution,” paving the way for all bassist/soloist/bandleaders to follow.  In 1974 he released his eponymous Stanley Clarke album, which featured a hit 45rpm “single” (we’re still talking about jazz here,) titled “Lopsy Lu.” In 1976 Stanley released School Days, of which the title track is now a bona fide bass anthem. 

He acknowledges, quite unboastfully: “Anyone who seriously wants to learn to play the bass has to buy that record and learn to play that song.”  Aspiring bassists must also master the percussive slap funk technique that Stanley pioneered as well. Stanley saw Larry Graham’s technique (Sly and the Family Stone) and seized upon the idea. He built his facility to a frightening speed, and then adapted it to complex jazz harmonies.  Says Stanley, “Larry started it, but he had only one lick. I saw him do it, and I took it from there.” Stanley was the first musician to pop over chord changes. “A lot of guys could jam all day in E, but couldn’t play it over changes.” 

Stanley Clarke became the first bassist in history to headline tours, selling out shows worldwide, and have his albums certified gold.  The word “legend” was used to describe Stanley by the time he was 25 years old.  In 1997 Epic/Sony released: By this tender young age, Stanley was already a celebrated pioneer in fusion jazz music.  He was also the first bassist in history to double on acoustic and electric bass with equal virtuosity, power, and fire.  He had also invented two new instruments: the piccolo bass and the tenor bass.  The piccolo bass, built to his specifications by New York luthier Carl Thompson, is tuned one octave higher than the traditional electric bass guitar.  The tenor bass is a standard Alembic bass tuned up one fourth higher than standard.  With both of these instruments, Stanley’s melodic range is extended for playing in higher registers as he sees orchestrationally fit. 

Alembic honored Stanley by offering a signature model Stanley Clarke bass, the first time in the company’s history of making only custom built instruments to do so. Whatever the instrument: acoustic bass viol, electric bass guitar, tenor bass, piccolo bass, acoustic bass guitar, electric upright, or any of the hundreds of axes in his arsenal, Stanley’s musicality and command of these instruments clearly define him as the greatest living bass virtuoso in the world, second to none, hands down, end of discussion. 

Now king of the acoustic and electric jazz worlds, in 1981 Stanley teamed with George Duke to form the Clarke/Duke Project.  Together they scored a top-twenty pop hit with “Sweet Baby,” recorded three albums and still tour to this day.  Stanley’s involvement in additional projects as leader or active member include: Jeff Beck (tour of Japan and Europe, 1978-1979), Ronnie Wood's & Keith Richards’ New Barbarians (North American tour, 1979), Animal Logic (with Stewart Copeland, two albums and tours, 1989), The "Superband”(with Larry Carlton, Billy Cobham, Najee, and Deron Johnson, 1993-94), The Rite of Strings (with Jean Luc Ponty and Al Dimeola, 1995), Vertu’ (with Lenny White, 1999). A much more detailed listing of Stanley Clarke’s bands can be found in Discography.  Clarke has won literally every major award available to a bass player: Grammys, Emmys, every readers’ poll out there, all

the critics’ polls, gold and platinum records, walks of fame- you name it. He was Rolling Stone’s very first Jazzman of the Year, and bassist winner of Playboy’s Music Award for ten straight years.

Ever seeking new challenges, in 1985 Stanley turned his boundless creative energy to film and television scoring. Starting on the small screen with an Emmy nominated score for Pee Wee’s Playhouse, he progressed onto the silver screen as composer, orchestrator, conductor and performer of scores for such blockbuster films as: Boys N the Hood, What’s Love Got to Do With It (the Tina Turner Story), Passenger 57, Higher Learning, Poetic Justice, Panther, The Five Heartbeats, Little Big League, and Romeo Must Die. He has even scored a Michael Jackson video release directed by Jon Singleton entitled Remember the Time. Currently his scoring may be heard on the number one rated show for the Showtime Network: Soul Food.  Stanley has become one of the elite in-demand composers in Hollywood. Check out our Film Composer   section.

Stanley says that: “film has given me the opportunity to compose large orchestral scores and to compose music not normally associated with myself.  It’s given me the chance to conduct orchestras and arrange music for various types of ensembles.  It’s been a diverse experience for me musically, made me a more complete musician, and utilized my skills completely.” The 1995 release on Epic Soundtrax (Sony Music): Stanley Clarke At the Movies, bears stunning witness to this. (Stanley promises he will find the time to release an “At The Movies 2” as well as other recordings from his massive compositional library.)

His artistry has spanned classical, jazz, R&B and pop idioms.  He has already succeeded in a multitude of diverse careers, any one of which would be satisfactory to anyone else.  Yet he still pushes on, as invigorated and as passionate about music as that teenage prodigy from Philadelphia with a dream.

In 2001, Stanley returned more formally to his initial love: performing, recording, and playing the bass.  The Biography of this incredible musician, like Stanley himself, is a continuing work in process.

-Ivan BodleyNew York City

JAZZ IN THE GARDEN Bassist Stanley Clarke Records First Acoustic Jazz Trio Album Featuring Hiromi and Lenny White

In a career that spans nearly four decades and includes gigs with Return to Forever, Rite of Strings and a variety of other solo and collaborative projects along the way, bassist Stanley Clarke – one of the most prominent voices in electric jazz and fusion – had seemingly covered every possible corner of the jazz landscape. But there was one avenue he had yet to explore.

“I had never done an acoustic bass record, ever,” he says. “There’s a long list of people on whose records I’ve played acoustic bass – Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Joe Henderson and many others – but I’d never done an acoustic jazz trio record of my own. So I wanted to record one that would just feature the piano and the acoustic bass in a way that you could really hear the bass.”

This long-overdue dream project becomes a reality with the worldwide release of Jazz In The Garden (HUCD 3155) on Heads Up International, a division of Concord Music Group. For his first straightahead acoustic jazz trio recording, Clarke assembles two brilliant collaborators at the top of their respective games: pianist Hiromi Uehara and drummer Lenny White. Each represents a distinctly different generational and cultural perspective, but given the range and versatility of both, the net effect is superb. Indeed, the synergy resulting from all three of these luminaries makes for one of the most refreshing Stanley Clarke recordings in recent years.

“Lenny is like a walking encyclopedia of jazz history,” says Clarke, who first played with White in Joe Henderson’s band when both session men were barely out of their teens, and later in the fusion-oriented Return To Forever. “Lenny is the guy who will never let you forget tradition, ever. When it comes to drummers, it’s fashionable to think that the one who plays the fastest or has the most gear is the best guy. But the guy you really want is the guy who’s smart – the guy who really has a lot upstairs. That’s Lenny.”

White likens his relationship with Clarke to some of the great pairings in sports. “In football, there was Joe Montana and Jerry Rice in San Francisco,” he says. “In baseball, there was Tom Seaver and Jerry Grote with the Mets. These were some very successful combinations. And then in jazz, you have some great pairings of drummers and bass players like Tony

Williams and Ron Carter, or Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison. I rank Stanley and myself among those pairings. We’ve played together for so long, in so many different kinds of situations. We started out by playing straightahead music together, and then that morphed into the jazz-rock fusion, which became a movement in itself. Now we’re coming back full-circle with this recording.”

Clarke was less familiar with Hiromi, a Berklee-trained protégé of Ahmad Jamal and Chick Corea who made her recording debut only six years ago. Since then, she has shaken up the piano jazz scene with a riveting style that ranges from the traditional to the avant garde. “I checked her out, and I realized that she was really, really talented,” says Clarke. “To be so young, and yet have so much knowledge – about melody, about harmony, about rhythm – is very rare. It’s very unusual for a piano player under the age of thirty to have that kind of maturity. That’s what’s cool about her.”

To date, Hiromi has committed much of her compositional and performance energies toward pushing the music to the outside, but she welcomed the opportunity to do something a little more traditional. “I’ve always loved straightahead jazz,” she says. “I’d just never done it in my own projects. So I was very happy to be able to do it finally. And to do it with these two musicians was more than I could have hoped for. I didn’t feel any walls. They were very welcoming. They were very open to what I had to offer.”

In many ways, Jazz in the Garden is Stanley Clarke’s way of reconnecting with a time much earlier in his career before his plunge into electric jazz – a time when he earned his stripes playing acoustic bass with some of the most enduring names in the annals of jazz. “There are times when you want to revisit the things that really established the foundation in your life,” he says. “I spent many, many years studying acoustic bass, and many years playing in New York after I left Philadelphia in the late ‘60s. I played with everyone who was there at the time. It was a long time ago, but all that stuff from that period is what made me who I am. This record is my way of reconnecting with that time and that music.”

STANLEY CLARKEBassist Stanley Clarke was barely out of his teens when he exploded into the jazz world in 1971. Fresh out of the Philadelphia Academy of Music, he arrived in New York City and immediately landed jobs with famous bandleaders such as Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Pharaoh Saunders, Gil Evans, Stan Getz and a budding young pianist-composer named Chick Corea.

All of these musicians immediately recognized Clarke’s ferocious dexterity and complete musicality on the acoustic bass. Not only was he an expert at crafting bass lines and functioning as a timekeeper – in keeping with his instrument’s traditional role – but the young prodigy also possessed a sense of lyricism and melody distilled from his bass heroes Charles Mingus, Scott LaFaro and others, as well as non-bass players like John Coltrane. Clarke envisioned the bass as a viable, melodic solo instrument positioned at the front of the stage rather than in a background role, and he was uniquely qualified to take it there.

The vision became a reality when Clarke and Corea formed the seminal electric jazz/fusion band Return To Forever. RTF was a showcase for each of the quartet’s strong musical personalities, composing prowess and instrumental voices. “We really didn’t realize how much of an impact we were having on people at the time,” Clarke recalls. “We were touring so

much then, we would just make a record and then go back on the road.” The band recorded eight albums, two of which were certified gold (Return To Forever and the classic Romantic Warrior). They also w o n a G R A M M Y ( N o M y s t e r y ) a n d r e c e i v e d numerous nominations while touring incessantly.

Then Clarke fired the “shot heard round the world,” the one that started the ‘70s bass revolution and paved the way for all bassists/soloists/bandleaders to follow. In 1 9 7 4 , h e r e l e a s e d h i s eponymous Stanley Clarke album, which featured the hit single, “Lopsy Lu.” Two years later, he released School

Days, an album whose title track is now a bona fide bass anthem.

“School Days” has since become a must-learn for nearly every up-and-coming bassist, regardless of genre. Aspiring bassists must also master the percussive slap funk technique that Clarke pioneered as well. While Sly and the Family Stone’s Larry Graham had already developed a rudimentary slap technique, Clarke took the idea and ran with it, adapting the technique to complex jazz harmonies. “Larry started it, but he had only one lick,” says Clarke. “I took it from there. A lot of guys could jam all day in E, but couldn’t play it over changes.”

Clarke became the first bassist in history to headline tours, sell out shows worldwide, and craft albums that achieved gold status. At 25, he was already regarded as a pioneer in the jazz fusion movement. He was also the first bassist in history to double on acoustic and electric bass with equal virtuosity, power and fire. In his ongoing efforts to push the bass to new limits, he invented two new instruments, the piccolo bass and the tenor bass. The piccolo bass is tuned one octave higher than the traditional electric bass. The tenor bass is tuned one fourth higher than standard. Both of these instruments have enabled Clarke to extend his melodic range to higher and more expressive registers.

Clarke teamed up with keyboardist George Duke in 1981 to form the Clarke/Duke Project. Together they scored a top 20 pop hit with “Sweet Baby,” recorded three albums and continue to tour together to this day. Clarke’s involvement in additional projects as leader or active member include: Jeff Beck (world tours, 1979), Keith Richards’ New Barbarians (world tour, 1980), Animal Logic (with Stuart Copeland, two albums and tours, 1989), the “Superband” (with Larry Carlton, Billy Cobham, Najee and Deron Johnson, 1993-1994), The Rite of Strings (with Jean-Luc Ponty and Al Di Meola, 1995 and 2004) Vertu’ (with Lenny White, 1999) and “Trio!” with Bela Fleck and Jean Luc Ponty, 2005.) Clarke’s creativity has been recognized and rewarded in every way imaginable: gold and platinum records, GRAMMY Awards, Emmy Awards, virtually every readers and critics poll in existence, and more. He was Rolling Stone’s very first Jazzman of the Year, and bassist winner of Playboy’s Music Award for ten straight years.Always in search of new challenges, Clarke turned his boundless creative energy to film and television scoring in the mid-1980s. Starting on the small screen with an Emmy-nominated score for Pee Wee’s Playhouse, he transitioned to the silver screen as composer, orchestrator, conductor and performer of scores for such blockbuster films as Boyz ‘N the Hood, What’s Love Got To Do With It?, Little Big League, Passenger 57, Poetic Justice, The Five Heartbeats, Romeo Must Die and The Transporter. He even scored the Michael Jackson video Remember the Time, directed by Jon Singleton. His latest TV project was recently scoring and writing the theme for the ABC Family Network series Lincoln Heights.

“Film has given me the opportunity to write large orchestral scores and to compose music not normally associated with myself,” says Clarke. “It’s given me the chance to conduct orchestras and arrange music for various types of ensembles. It’s been a diverse experience for me musically, made me a more complete musician, and focused my skills completely.” His 1995 release, Stanley Clarke at the Movies, is a testament to this heightened level of musicianship.

Aside from his various pursuits as a composer, performer and recording artist, Clarke also heads Roxboro Entertainment Group, a business venture that includes music publishing for his own and other musicians’ work, as well as the development of various projects aimed at music education.

In October 2007, Clarke released The Toys of Men, a 13-track CD that featured the rising jazz star, vocalist/bassist Esperanza Spalding. The Toys of Men also included acoustic bass interludes that provide a stirring counterpoint to Clarke’s more well known fiery electric bass attack.

In the summer of 2008, Clarke reunited with pianist Chick Corea, drummer Lenny White and guitarist Al Di Meola for the highly-anticipated Return To Forever world tour. In August of that same year, Clarke teamed up with fellow bass titans Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten – collectively known as S.M.V. – and released Thunder, their earth shaking debut collaboration. The impact of both supergroups has resonated throughout every corner of the jazz world.

Clarke’s latest recording, Jazz in the Garden, is the bassist’s first acoustic jazz trio album, and features Japanese pianist Hiromi Uehara and drummer Lenny White.

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