Almost everyone remembers the late-'70s Saturday Night Live sketch with the killer bees. And at the center of the puns and sight gags was John Belushi, at his best stirring up mayhem in the New York TV studio “hive.” But not as many people know that at about the same time, another set of bees -The Yellowjackets- were just starting to buzz in Los Angeles. Having begun modestly as the rhythm section for guitarist Robben Ford, today the band consists of bassist Jimmy Haslip, keyboardist Russell ferrante, sax man Marc Russo and drummer William Kennedy – all formidable players who bring in the honey as sideman, as well as with the ‘Jackets.
To date, the Yellowjackets have recorded five albums, including Shades, which was awarded a 1986 Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental Performance. In addition, the band contributed to the soundtrack of Star Trek IV and backed Randy Crawford, David Sanborn and Neil Larsen on a live album called Casino Lights , plus it contributed to three cuts on Lee Ritenour's Portrait album.
At the heart of the band's music is Jimmy Haslip's perfectly timed bassmanship. a solid player with a strong rhythmic punch, Haslip co-founded the Yellowjackets and has toured or recorded with Crosby, Stills & Nash, Ron Wood, Rod Stewart, Betty Wright, Diana Ross, Gino Vannelli, Chaka Khan, Donald Fagen, Roy Ayers & Ubiquity, Al Jarreau, Tommy Bolin, Dave mason and Harvey Mandel.
Music entered Haslip's life early (he was born on December 31, 1951) with his father playing piano, guitar, ukulele and harmonica and both of his parents listening to salsa tunes in their Long Island, New York, home.
While growing up, he was also influenced by his brother's records, with heavy doses of classical and jazz leading in the way. “He was 10 years older than me.” Jimmy explains, “and listened to Beethoven, Stravinsky, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy and Dave Brubeck – All that stuff. That was coming out of one room and Titi Puente and Mongo Santamaria was coming out of another. Meanwhile, whatever I was listening to ranged from Elvis Presley to the Beatles.”
Jimmy Haslip's style is distinctive and solid and his visual impact is striking: He plays left-handed and upside down. That is, the lowest string is closest to the ground, a la Albert King. “I tried to take lessons,” he says, “but nobody would teach me. I started playing bass in eighth grade, but it wasn't my first instrument. I played trumpet for about seven years, beginning in fourth grade. Being naturally left-handed, I just flipped a right-handed bass over and started learning on my own. By the time I went to a teacher, I already knew a lot of tunes by people like James Brown and the Young Rascals. All the teachers wanted me to switch around to a conventional right-handed playing, but I thought I'd be going backwards to change at that point.”
Determined to learn “proper” techniques, Jimmy taught himself to read music and at 19 he took lessons from string bassist and tuba player Ron Smith. For a year-and-a-half, Haslip absorbed basic theory, plus he furthered his development by gigging in bar bands and practicing six to ten hours a day.
In 1971 Jimmy left New York for San Francisco and after two years in bands, he spent another two years in New Orleans, followed by brief stints in Dallas and Denver. In '75 he landed in Los Angeles, where he joined Harvey Mandel and toured as the opening act for the Jeff Beck/Jan Hammer Group. His next job was with Tommy Bolin, with whom he performed until the guitarist's death in 1976. He also got a chance to dig down to his salsa roots to accompany Airto Moreira and Flora Purim before his first record date, Crosby, Stills & Nash's 1977 CSN . “Working with top-notch people made me start to developing better habits,” he says. ‘I saw what I needed to work on and I really started getting my craft together.”
Playing with Gino Vannelli was his next big opportunity and he was allowed to stretch out on the singer's Brother to Brother . Work started now snowballing: A job with reed man Roy Ayers was followed by a year on the road with Dave Mason. In 1978 Jimmy was asked to contribute bass to Robben Ford's debut album, The Inside Story . This marked the beginning of the Yellowjackets and a friendship with Ford that exposed Haslip to music he hadn't previously explored: the blues. “Robben's one of the best musicians I've ever played with,” Jimmy states. “On top of being in the same band for two or three years, we were also neighbours. So we hung out and did a lot of woodshedding together. He has a strong background in blues and he passed on to me a strong foundation in it. Blues is one of the most important backgrounds to have if you're playing jazz or some kind of progressive music. It's very expressive and if you can't play the blues, I don't think you're going to be a good soloist.”
After completing Ford's album, the studio band, consisting of Russell Ferrante, Haslip and drummer Ricky Lawson, recorded its own demos. Funded by its manager, Gary Borman, the ensemble cut some instrumentals, but then split up to go on the road with other artists. A few months later, Haslip received a call from Borman telling him that the group had landed a contract with Warner Bros. Jimmy admits that the musicians were, somewhat skeptical regarding an instrumental band's potential for success, since non-vocal music wasn't exactly tearing up the charts in the final days of the disco era.
Although the Yellowjackets' personnel has remained virtually intact through its recordings (Ford was replaced in late 1984 by Russo on sax and William Kennedy came on board in Ricky Lawson's place), Four Corners has a far different sound and feel from earlier efforts. “It was co-produced by the band and David Hentschel, who did some of Genesis' albums,” Jimmy explains. “We were looking for more of a European approach and I think we accomplished something along those lines. We liked the way Steve Winwood and Peter Gabriel sounded and we also liked the ECM stuff with (pianist) Keith Jarrett. In fact, the trio of Jarrett, (bassist) Gary Peacock and (drummer) Jack DeJohnette is my favourite of all time. I just love their approach to music and the way it's recorded. One of the great things about David Hentschel is that he's a musician. He's a keyboard player, he writes and he's a great engineer. So with those qualities we thought, ‘What a perfect fifth guy for the band.'”
Haslip attributes Four Corners' distinctive bass sound to his instruments, which were custom-made by Mike Tobias. He plugged into the mixing console using a direct box and on most of the album he used a Roland DEP-5 digital effects processor. He explains that the unit helped to establish room sounds, plus a few kinds of delays, “just to surround the bass with a bit of air.” He felt this was important since he wasn't using an amplifier, and the bass would otherwise sound too dry.
On “Out of Town,” Jimmy teamed with Ferrante for a little sleight-of-hand, creating a jazzy synthesizer-sequenced bass line that closely mimics Jimmy's playing. “Russell and I programmed the bass sounds for the sequence,” he says, “and I used my Tobias zebrawood bass to double the part for the last 24 bars of the opening head. after that, the machine completely dropped out. I tried to match the sound as closely as possible so that you wouldn't really notice the difference in the transition, and it wouldn't be so blatant. It's hard to detect at first, but there is a difference between the human quality of what I play and the rigidness of the machine.”
Because the Yellowjackets don't have a full-time guitar player, Jimmy feels more challenged than the average bassist. “But I enjoy the pressure, “he insists. “It makes me work harder and want to grow that much more. And I do get a lot of room to play with this band, so it's an ideal situation that lets me explore my instrument more.”
Such explorations have led him to 5-string bass, which he used almost exclusively since picking up the instrument four years ago. One of his earliest influences on 5-string was Jimmy Johnson, best known for his work with the Wayne Johnson Trio, Allan Holdsworth and the Late Show . “I like the fact that I can contribute a color that's lower than normal,” he says. “And it can be compatible with synth bass. Before the 5-string bass, only the synthesizer could go down into those lower registers. So now being able to achieve that on my own opened up my ears to some lower parts. Also, working with Russell in the band helped – he's got a terrific left hand. That really gives the group a strong foundation. We sometimes experiment playing unison things together, and in some pieces he plays the bass part and I do the melodies. It gives the band more places to explore.”
On the Yellowjackets' previous outing, Shades , Haslip ventured in the opposite direction from the low tones of the 5-string, adding piccolo bass (tuned an octave higher than standard) as well as fretless. On ‘Shades' , which is only available on the compact disc, he provided the melody, as well as the solo. He also used his fretless on ‘One family': Fretless sort of takes the place of, say, a trombone. I also like having both fretless and piccolo in one song, with the piccolo greating sort of a Howard Roberts clean sound. Then it sounds kind of like ‘bone and guitar with alto sax. As a soloist, one of my major influences is the horn, especially sax by players such as Michael Brecker and John Coltrane. I really relate to their approach, and the horn is a great solo instrument. I also have several trombone books that I worked out of.
“I learned what a great instrument the horn is from a conversation I had with Jaco Pastorius when he first joined Weather Report in about 1975. It really stuck with me all these years. He told me that he mostly listened to sax and trumpet players for melodic ideas and for soloing because they were so happenining for solos. From then on, that's all I listened to, as far as getting ideas and just hearing where they take breaths. It made me realize that when you solo, it's like having conversation. It's not like rattling off a million licks as fast as you can. That would be like a run-on sentence that nobody really enjoys listening to. And that's an important lesson from the blues, too. Listen to B.B. King, Albert King, Eric Clapton – any of those guys – and Jimmy Hendrix. There's some definite phrasing going on there. It's important to get a cohesive solo that has spaces in between the actual musical notes, because the spaces mean as much as the notes.”
Playing in a manner that most other players would describe as upside-down and backwards, Haslip has to personalize his approaches to such common techniques as string popping: ‘To play thumb-style, it's like classical guitar, where I pluck with my index finger and my middle finger and pop the notes with my thumb. I've been playing my own way for 20 years, so I've learned that it is a different approach, and I should take advantage of it. Popping takes a bit of dancing around, because it's just one finger doing all the work. It's really unusual to look at, but all that matters is that it sounds correct. I always had people saying that I was playing backwards or upside down, or that I was never going to get any better. And when I saw Hendrix, I figured, ‘Man!. Somebody else does that!' Here he was playing his music and expressing himself, and he was doing it in much the same way. Just seeing someone else playing lefthanded made me think, ‘That's it; I know I can play and get better if I just work harder at it.'”
Hard work has paid off for Haslip, and his sharp ear and imaginative line facilitate getting through sessions without spending excessive amounts of time figuring out parts. For example, he overdubbed the solo on Four Corners' “Postcards,” but didn't write anything out. “I just played until I felt the solo was lyrical enough and flowed,” he says. “That's you shoul do that, unless it's a project where everybody just goes in and blows. if you have a small budget and the record has to be done in a couple of days, it's kind of selfish to say that you're going to overdub a solo and take up valuable time. So you just go for whatever – treat it like a live gig. I find that if I'm overdubbing , I get too meticulous. I start microscopically dissecting things, and I could run into problems. You walk a fine line. and I don't want it to sound like something that I practiced for a week. I want it to sound natural and live.”
Jimmy views his studio work as an enriching experience that benefits both him and the Yellowjackets. He believes that the different perspectives from outside the band translate into freshness within the group. “Both kinds of work are satisfying for me,” he states, “and as a sideman you can observe what's going on around you. It's valuable to watch how other people put a song together, sequence something, or work with a piece of equipment that you've never worked with before. So you bring this back to the band. The growing experience is the main goal in life. And all these things help contribute to that cause. I always consider myself a student. I'm always trying to learn more, trying to be a sponge.”
Although he's a follower of horn players, Jimmy has his favourite bass soloists, too. He cites Jimmy Johnson's work on Allan Holdsworth's Sand , as well as Jaco Pastorius' lines on Weather Report's Heavy Weather . I also like Gary Peacock's work with Keith Jarrett,” he adds, “and there's some Stanley Clarke solos on one of the earliest Return To Forever albums.”
Untill 1986, Jimmy had only dabbled with fretless, and only recently has he become conscientious about the instrument. “Ironically,” he says, “about three years ago – people came up to me and said, ‘I love your fretless playing. ‘But I worked out a technique where I make a fretted electric bass sound as much like a fretless as possible. I use it mainly on melodies or if I'm playing some very melodic kinds of passages. I don't slide. For instance , say that I'm holding a note with my index finger, and I want to go up a minor third. Instead of sliding that finger across the fretboard up to the next note, or lifting the finger off the string to the next note, I have my index finger on the note that I'm starting from, and I roll my middle finger, ring finger, and my pinky up in a rolling fashion to the minor third. It doesn't sound like a fretted instrument, or – to me – exactly like a fretless. so it's sort of hammer-on.”
In order to aid his intonation, Jimmy has what he calls “cheater marks,” light veneer that fills the slots from which the frets were removed. “You have to be pretty right-on with a fetless,” he advises, “but there are acceptable points of sharpness and flatness. Some of that can be camouflaged by fibrato, but's it's a very small incremant either way.”
Despite devoting himself to improving on fretless, Haslip finds that his 5-strings are his most-used instruments. When he plays on sessions, he doesn't often find parts written to take advantage of the extra-low range. However, when he adds the low notes, he provides a welcome surprise. “I think people like it, “he notes. “Obviously, for years the synthesizer bass was playing really low notes frequently, and the poor bass player wasn't able to come near those unless he detuned. It could get sort of sloppy-sounding. I mean, you could comfortably go down about a whole-step. I got a Hipshot Bass Extender Key, which makes it easier with a 4-string. I detuned to low C for ‘Claire's Song' on Mirage A Trois . Of course, you have to rethink your notes on the fingerboard. I learned the scales and melodic patterns with that kind of tuning, and I wrote a bunch of stuff with my E-string tuned down to D, such as ‘Sylvania,' on Samurai Samba .”
Ever on the lookout for new approaches, Jimmy reflects on some of the ways in which he shrives for improvement. Foremost, he feels, is listening to as many different styles as possible. He has a collection of nearly 1,000 records, cassettes and compact discs. “I'm constantly buying new stuff,“ he adds, “so I always tell people to listen a lot, because there are many people out there doing fantastic stuff. I also suggest putting in the solid hard work of rigorour hours of practicing and actually getting all your motor functions to work correctly. That's really important, because if you don't hav ethat together, it's harder to express yourself. It's just like asking someone to give a big speech who's never read a book before or studied English; it's kind of tough. You have to get all your motor functions, physical strength, and concepts right on the front burner. Work all the time. That way, when you hear something, even if you aren't able to spurt it out immediately, you can at least know what it is and figure it out. Try to find your own voice, as opposed to just emulating something that's out there. And if you follow those rules, you'll get ahead at some point. I truly believe in the old adage of whatever you put into something is what you'll get out of it. That's the honest truth.
“I always speak strongly about studying in school or privately – some form about studying where you have someone standing over you saying that you have to work on this. That gets your discipline together. I always feel somewhat guilty that I never went to school for music. But I have found that I was given a strong sense of discipline, and I know what it means. I don't take it for granted, though, and not everyone has that. So, telling somebody to just go off and do what they have to do is not the right advice. The right advice is telling someone to study and go to school. And, then if they find that it's not what they need, they'll find their own path. Studying builds a strong foundation. In the back of my mind, I have this fantasy of going back to school – maybe not necesseraly studying music or reading per se, but maybe composition and arranging that in my lifetime. I work on my own out of books, and I'm glad I have the discipline to do that. I thank God I had a great childhood and that my parents were always very supportive.”
Haslip's current goals are clear: to concentrate on creating new music with the Yellowjackets. “My main priority in playing with the ‘Jackets is that we record, tour, and write music together and hopefully get into scoring films,” he says. “There's quite a bit of down time, because the band isn't working yearround. So I try to fill that time by working with other artists on their records. I get a lot of satisfaction because I enjoy the creative process of being in the studio.”