INTERVIEW, part 2

That's what I was trying to get at when I noted your similarity to Jimmy Jones, that you seemed to really think a few changes ahead and try to pick a note that will sound good going right through.

Yes, thinking at least two bars ahead, and more often than that, maybe four. A phrase is often four bars, and you have to thing in terms of phrasing, not just clump-clump-clump from one chord to another, just going from a root to a fifth to a root to a fifth. You have to find the most graceful way you can get from one chord to the next and make it sound logical. I had an interesting experience when i joined Frank Sinatra. When I first joined him I was advised by a couple of people, "Play it the way it says on the music, and play it that way all the time." And the red light went on, I said Uh-oh, I may be out of here in record time! "Cause I won't do that.

Well, they don't need you if they want that!

Yeah. And maybe there's a little bit of the rebel in me, but I immediately started taking "out". I don't mean really getting "outside" with with, but doing it a way other than the way it was written. most of the parts, the way it was written, they were written out by Nelson Riddle and Billy May, who wrote uninspired bass parts. In both cases, they didn't write chord changes. They just wrote notes that they heard the bass playing. So, I mean, my hands are tied. Luckily, I was familiar enough with those charts from having heard them for years that I kind of knew them, and it only took a few playings before I knew them well enough to just put the part away. And I put parts away as quick as I could on that gig to the point where I didn't even bother bringing my book out. And I consistently got the ultimate compliment from Sinatra, which was that would look over at me out of the corner of his eye, with a half smile on his face, and do a quick nod.

It's strange, anybody with as good taste as Frank Sinatra obviously wants good jazz bass playing, but people get all scared of these guys.

Yeah, well I was determined not to let it happen. I was not going to be intimidated by that. And as it turned out my decision was the right one, because he got very comfortable with me to the point where he even put my name in the lyrics of "mack The Knife" several times! That was during my last tour of duty with him, from 1986 through 1991. I was also with him way before that, years earlier.

A lot of the TV themes you played on, such as Barnaby Jones, people think of them as TV themes, but if you put them on the CD player, they really sound like the solid, more experimental pop music of the time.

Yeah. A lot of the better music that was being done in those days was exactly that, TV and film music-- end even some of the jingles were really good, too. Patrick Williams, I was his first call, and there was an album we did called Threshold that won a Grammy and everything, and you know, The Streets Of san Francisco theme could have been out of Threshold-- it was the same sort of fusion thing. With pat Williams, it's like with Bill Holman: I know how Pat writes, and I kind of know how he thinks, as much as people can do that with each other, and the same in the other direction. So most of the part would be chord changes, and we'd have to have some information about the show, what kind of a show it is, and of course the information that you get from hearing it the first time it's played down-- you know, you play a pretty perfunctory part the first time, and then when you really realize what it is, then you start personalizing it. And like in the case of the Mart Tyler Moore Show, that was sort of a classy comedy, so you play something that's light, but pretty intelligent. Bob Newhart was kind of a sly thing with sort of a more jazzy feel. So taking those things into consideration, you make up something that is appropriate for that.

In the case of the Bob Newhart theme, would you be thinking of him personally, like his sense of humor [ which was already well-known through his stage act ] ?