Alex Henderson

Stanley Clarke:

Forever to Return

By Alex Henderson

June 30, 2011 marks the 60th birthday of Stanley Clarke, who is also celebrating another milestone this year: the 40th anniversary of Chick Corea’s fusion powerhouse Return to Forever (RTF). For those who remember Clarke as the 20-something electric bass virtuoso who rose to prominence in the jazz world as an RTF member, it might be hard to believe that Clarke is getting ready to turn 60. But time flies when you’re having fun and, true to form, Clarke is still having fun by hurling himself into a wide range of musical activities - some fusion, some straightahead acoustic jazz, some not jazz at all. Indeed, Clarke has a lot on his plate in 2011. In addition to recording with his current group, The Stanley Clarke Band, Clarke has a classical album in the works and is planning an extensive tour with a new five-member RTF lineup that will boast Clarke on electric and upright basses, founder Corea on acoustic piano and electric keyboards, Frank Gambale on guitar, Jean-Luc Ponty on violin and Lenny White on drums.

These days, Clarke is widely regarded as a major innovator on the electric bass; ask just about any fusion bassist who their main influences are and Clarke’s name comes right up along with the late Jaco Pastorius. Although Clarke wasn’t the first person to play jazz on the electric bass (Monk Montgomery, one of Wes Montgomery’s brothers, brought the electric bass to bop in the ‘50s), the way he combined the language of jazz with the influence of Sly & The Family Stone’s Larry Graham was certainly groundbreaking in the ‘70s. But as Clarke points out, being recognized as an innovator was the last thing he had on his mind back then - and he wasn’t thinking about how he would be perceived when he was close to 60 either. In those days, Clarke recalls, his goal was simply to play music that excited him.

“The whole concept of innovation is such a retrospective concept,” Clarke explains. “Somebody has to copy something you’ve done or be affected by it before people will say, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s really innovative.’ In the ‘70s, I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, gosh, by the time I’m 60, I want to have a billion albums done, score a thousand films and play with everybody.’ It isn’t something I thought about. I just kind of woke up every day and kept trekking along and kept playing with as many people as I could. I was fortunate enough to be in quite a few different bands, including Return to Forever, which was a groundbreaking kind of group and spearheaded the jazz-rock fusion movement or whatever you want to call it. But at the time, I never really thought of Return to Forever that way.”

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Clarke moved to New York City in 1971 (the year Corea formed RTF) and was employed as a sideman by Joe Farrell, Joe Henderson, Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri, Horace Silver, Stan Getz and other jazz heavyweights. Clarke played the acoustic bass before he became famous on electric and landed plenty of straightahead jazz gigs after his arrival. But even though Clarke grew up listening to straightahead jazz, he also grew up with rock and R&B. So when the fusion revolution took place, combining jazz with elements of rock and funk made perfect sense to Clarke. He never gave up straightahead jazz and never gave up the acoustic bass (which he plays exclusively on his 2009 release Jazz in the Garden), but fusion and the electric bass became an important part of his diverse contributions to jazz. And it was RTF, which broke up in 1977 and reunited in 2008, that did the most to make him a major name in jazz -- that and his early albums as a leader. But Clarke hasn’t been one to play jazz exclusively; Clarke, who now lives in Los Angeles, has appeared on many R&B albums along the way and has done plenty of film scoring. He even recorded a hiphop version of rocker Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” in 1985. And Clarke has a very different outlook from the jazz snobs who tend to see music in overly technical terms.

“To be quite frank, there are some musicians who call themselves jazz musicians but don’t have a clue about emotion and playing from that point of view,” Clarke asserts. “Some of those guys can talk about scales and chords until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t have the emotion, you don’t have it. It’s like someone putting BB King down and saying, ‘Every solo he takes, he plays probably no more than six notes.’ But it ain’t about the notes. That’s the problem with the jazz musicians who think that way: they’re too focused on the notes and the technique. What hit me with John Coltrane wasn’t how many notes he was playing; it was the emotion of what he was doing.” Clarke adds that for many years, his career has been a reflection of someone who loves rock, soul, funk and the blues as much as he loves jazz - and that perspective has been evident with RTF, both in the ‘70s and in the 21st Century.

“The jazz establishment put Return to Forever down in the ‘70s,” Clarke recalls. “But I think that we were just being honest. I listened to Jimi Hendrix with as much passion as I listened to John Coltrane. I was really into John Coltrane, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix and when you’re really into those three artists, it’s going to come out in your music. Return to Forever had the string that goes through all jazz music, which is improvisation. But it was laced and framed with sounds that people outside of jazz were used to hearing, such as electric bass and loud drums. We used to get a lot of people who were into Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer; we used to get a lot of their fans. For some reason, they thought we were like Yes without a vocalist.”

Clarke has always had eclectic tastes and he likes to encourage the same quality in his children - including a hiphop-minded son who enjoys telling his friends about Clarke’s interpretation of “Born in the U.S.A.” “My kids are all into music,” Clarke notes. “My son is a hip-hop producer, my daughter is a jazz singer and my other son is an avant garde drummer - extremely avant garde. My son who’s into hiphop likes to pull that ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ record out and show it to some of his buddies and tell them, ‘My pop was into hip-hop back in the early days.’ I actually have a really soft heart for hip-hop.”

If keeping an open mind is the most valuable thing that Clarke has learned along the way, the second most significant concept may be the importance of mentoring. Clarke was guided by Corea and other jazz greats during his youth and bordering on 60, he is doing the same thing with his Stanley Clarke Band (which has included Ukrainian keyboardist/pianist Ruslan Sirota and drummer Ronald Bruner, Jr.; pianist/keyboardist Hiromi has sometimes played with the group as a guest).

“Leadership is really important,” Clarke stresses. “You’re essentially molding musicians. I had the luck of arriving in New York when that old romantic jazz scene was still there; Miles was still there, I saw Thelonious Monk, Mingus was alive. Everybody was there and they treated me nice. I try to lead like that with my groups.”

Clarke adds that when he is playing with Sirota, Bruner or Hiromi, he wants to hear their thoughts and opinions just as Corea wanted to hear his thoughts and opinions back in the ‘70s. “Chick, who is exactly ten years older than me, is a very gracious musician,” Clarke says. “In the early ‘70s, Chick wanted me to write something for one of Return to Forever’s albums and he said, ‘Whatever you call the tune, I’ll call the album.’ What I did was come up with this tune called

‘Light As a Feather’ and Chick kept his word and called the album that. Chick gave me the spark to become a more serious composer. It’s very important what you say to young musicians and I want to give the guys in my band an opportunity to write songs and to participate in the records instead of just coming in and taking orders.”

Clarke continues: “There is a tradition in jazz music to pass something down. It’s a very African concept: passing knowledge down. It’s kind of unspoken, but it’s there. Everyone I ever played with in the old days cared about me; I could feel that something was being passed down as knowledge and so, I’m doing it now myself. I tell younger musicians stories the way that people were telling me stories. There’s this jazz lore. It’s a beautiful thing.” •••

For more information, visit stanleyclarke.com. Clarke’s 60th Birthday Celebration is at Blue Note May 24th-29th, 2011. See Calendar.

Recommended Listening:

• Chick Corea and Return to Forever - Light As A Feather (Polydor-Verve, 1972)

• Joe Farrell - Moon Germs (CTI, 1972)

• Stanley Clarke - Stanley Clarke (Nemperor-Atlantic, 1974)

• Wayne Shorter/Michel Petrucciani/Gil Goldstein/Pete Levin/Stanley Clarke/Lenny White - The Manhattan Project (Blue Note, 1989)

• McCoy Tyner - With Stanley Clarke and Al Foster (Telarc, 1999)

• Chick Corea/Stanley Clarke/Lenny White - Forever (Concord, 2009)