50 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 4 ; bassmagazine.com
Avery Sharpe
where stuff is getting deeper in terms of the
slave trade and building up to the Civil War.”
Up next, “Fiddler” is a striking portrait
of the music that slaves played on the plan-
tations, beginning with Sharpe’s evocation of
a classical waltz played by two violins, with
a bass solo that explores the contours of the
melody, before it makes a transition to old-
time string-band music. Sharpe says the
piece was inspired by his longtime friend and
collaborator, the violinist John Blake Jr., who
died in 2014. “John had this thing that he did
with violin and African instruments, because
there are African instruments that are pre-
cursors to the violin,” he says. “The rhythm
[of the string-band piece] is like an old wom-
an at one of those plantation gatherings,
maybe hitting her cane on a wooden floor.”
Moving ahead into Century Three,
Sharpe begins with “Antebellum,” an a cap-
pella gospel hymn, with the Extended Family
Choir imploring us to “Get up, rise up.” The
follow-up, “A New Music,” moves past the
Civil War and toward the 20th century with
a ragtime piano piece, composed by Sharpe
and played by Zaccai Curtis, which shifts
into a New Orleans jazz–style tune with a
hard-swinging bass solo. The big-band peri-
od is evoked by “Harlem and the War to End
All Wars,” with Sharpe’s concise bass line an-
choring the rhythm section under guitar and
tenor sax solos and then moving into a potent
solo, perhaps his best on the disc, marked by
sharply punctuated phrases that build to an
emphatic conclusion.
The final century begins, appropriately
enough, with a slow blues, “Blues and World
War II.” Having played acoustic guitar on all
the preceding tunes, Kevin Eubanks moves to
electric here, playing an extended solo that’s
followed by Davis Whitfield on piano. The
two trade phrases and then — bang — we’re
into bebop, with Sharpe leading the way on
a head that showcases his arco–scat style. A
longtime admirer of Slam Stewart, Sharpe
has become his most worthy successor, and
one of the few contemporary bassists to mas-
ter this distinctive style. “Jimmy Blanton gets
the credit for bringing the bass more in front,playing horn lines,” says Sharpe, “but I con-
tend it was actually Slam, because he was do-
ing the hum-along bass a year or two before
Blanton, with Slim & Slam.”
The album’s only non-original tune fol-
lows, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me
Around,” a spiritual that was heard often
during the civil rights demonstrations of the
’60s. Sharpe states the melody on his bass be-
fore the choir takes over, and he moves to the
forefront again on a solo marked by bluesy
smears and other voice-like techniques. A
powerful recitation by Sofia Rivera, Sharpe’s
niece, caps the piece, with words that bring it
right up to the present: “Never backward, on-
ward, forward/There is no turning back now.”
The conclusion of 400 is “500,” a con-
temporary-jazz composition that looks to
the next century with feelings of both anger
and hope. After guitar, piano, and trumpet
solos, Sharpe steps forward for a final solo
marked by crisp accents and powerfully ar-
ticulated runs. The tune ends not with a con-
cluding chord but a fade, as if to say, where
is this going? “Quite honestly, I was thinking
of Obama and the nonsense we have now,”
Sharpe says. “Some of the things I had to do
30 or 40 years ago, I have to do now. I’m like,
Wait a minute, I thought we went through
that whole thing. I’m curious about the next
hundred years. I’m not going to be here for all
of that, but my kids and their kids will be. I’m
hoping for the best.”
As a composer, Sharpe has done a re-
markable job with 400 , making us see and
feel the different eras of African-American
history as expressed through musical styles.
For bassists, there is an additional layer of
meaning, as his playing on the album, es-
pecially in the Century Three and Century
Four sections, traces the evolution of jazz
bass, from Pops Foster to Jimmy Blanton
and Slam Stewart to Ray Brown and Charles
Mingus and up to the present day. “I hadn’t
thought about the bass playing aspect of it,”
he says, “but I was thinking about the histor-
ical aspect — it’s not just African-American
history but American history. I was trying to
take you on that journey.” lLISTEN
Avery Sharpe, 400:
An African American
Musical Portrait
[2019, JKNM]; Avery
Sharpe Trio Live
[2010, JKNM]; McCoy
Tyner, Infinity [1995,
Impulse!]; McCoy
Tyner, Live at Sweet
Basil [1987, Evidence]
GEAR
On 400 , Avery Sharpe
played only one bass,
a 1935 E. H. Roth 7/8
upright that he has
owned since the
1990s. It has had one
major repair, a neck
replacement by David
Gage that was done,
Sharpe says, a year or
two after he got it.
The strings are a cus-
tom La Bella 7720 set,
with unconventional
materials and con-
struction for a bright-
er tone. The bass was
recorded with a mi-
crophone and a direct
signal from either a
David Gage Realist or
Underwood pickup.
No amp was used in
the studio.
CONNECT
http://www.averysharpe.
com