Home | Back Issues | Other Mel Bay Sites | Purchase Bass Products
I'm Your Pal | Making a Case for Covers | Extreme Solo Bassist Jeff Schmidt
A View from the Dark Side of 40: Thoughts for Newer Players | Back to Old School

Back to Old School

by Kenn Smith
Chicago Area bassist/teacher/clinician

After playing bass for more than 20 years and playing almost every type of bass there is. It seems that I always come back to a Fender. I'm not a Fender endorser, just a child of the 70's. You see back then, that was the bass of choice. All my idols played them. Larry Graham, Louis Johnson, James Jamerson, Duck Dunn, Jaco, Geddy Lee. Every great bass player back in the day started out on a Fender. And like them, I tried the others. The high end $2000 up ones, all shapes and sizes. But in the end, Fender won out over all of them. Even some of my high ends where Fender copies. I just love the way they sound and feel.

So what is so special about a Fender bass? For me it simply fits me personally, physically and mentally. There is nothing like the sound of a great Jazz or Precision bass. Whatever style you play, the sound is just there. I guess the other reason is that Fender basses were there first when the real electrified music began. Helping to lay down the foundation for what we call Rock and Roll, R&B, Soul and Funk. It was the only tool for the job. Think about it, what else back then worked as well as a Fender bass? Just think what the world would be like if that wonderful genius Leo Fender had never been born. All those great bass lines, GONE! What dull place this world would be. Sure, there were other basses and great players who used them. I mean no disrespect to them, but there is nothing like an old Fender!

Remember back in the day when you knew a song by the bass line? You had no clue who was playing but you knew the song, the album (I still have a hard time saying "CD") and the group. When James Jamerson and other bass greats were known as just "the dude on bass". When playing in the pocket was the name of the game and the bass line was the solo. Then bass greats like Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius showed us how to make a bass talk! Well, Stanley Clarke didn't play a Fender, but who cares, he is still the man.

So with all this history, how can one not play a Fender? Every time you pick up a Fender you can feel the spirit of it's past. Fender basses, the sound that shock the world.