In this transcription of our Contrabass Conversations interview, renowned jazz bassist Larry Grenadier offers a wealth of insights into his musical journey. Grenadier discusses his experiences with various double basses, reflecting on how different instruments have shaped his playing.
He also delves into his formative years in the Bay Area’s vibrant jazz scene, sharing how early exposure to world-class musicians influenced his development. Larry also provides valuable perspectives on his teaching philosophy and the importance of developing technique and a distinctive sound on the double bass.
The interview begins with a discussion of an Eastman double bass that Larry had recently used for recording. The interview has been edited for clarity.
Discovering a Double Bass for Recording
Larry: The funny thing for me with these Chinese basses—any factory bass, really—is that they’re all different. You never know, so you need to try a bunch of them, and you might just get lucky.
Do you know the bass luthier Arnold Schnitzer?
Jason: Oh yeah!
Larry: I had worked with him when looking for a bass like that.
He called me one day and said, “you know, I think I have this bass that you’re going to really like.”
I went down there and couldn’t believe the sound coming out of it. I even use it for record dates sometimes because, in a way, sometimes you want less information. It’s a real clear sound with not a lot of other information.
It can be really beautiful by itself, but sometimes it doesn’t translate on the recording. It makes it a little bit harder to mix and find its place in the mix. This bass is really centered and clear, so I kind of like recording with it sometimes, too.
Jason: I’ve never heard it described like that in terms of having a little less information. I thought about that with old Italian basses.
You take eight or ten of them and put them in an orchestra section, and it’s this nice padding. It’s like a beautifully messy sound, but it makes total sense to me.
Larry: It’s been really interesting.
This bass has a pretty thin neck. That’s been kind of fun because most of the basses I’ve played have been a little wider. This bass is easy to get around, and I kind of find it hard to play the other basses because it’s so easy. I’m finding, as I get older, it’s like, why make it harder?
An Unexpected Discovery in Australia
Jason: I just chatted last week with Ben Puglisi (Australian double bass luthier). He was telling me that Christian McBride and you both have almost the same bass from him, right? Do you have the flat back?
Larry: yes.
Jason: How did you get hooked up with that bass? Were you over in Australia?
Larry: Exactly. That was one of the gigs that I’d done recently where I didn’t bring my bass. I was in Australia, and somebody from the venue got in touch with Ben.
So I borrowed that bass, and I was like, “Wow, this is a really nice instrument.”
It was fun to play. I asked him if I could buy it. I think at first he said no, and then he wrote back like a week later and said that he would do it. He’s a great guy. I like that bass a lot. I’ve used it quite a bit. It’s kind of a big instrument. Not scale-wise, but like the shoulder is pretty high, and it’s this very deep bass. It’s not super easy to play, but the sound comes out really quick, and it’s a much brighter bass than my old German bass, which I still have and use, but that’s a real dark instrument. This one, the sound just kind of pops right out. It’s really fun, different.
Comparing Flatback and Roundback Basses
Jason: It was so cool to hear about how similar your bass from Ben is with Christian McBride’s bass from Ben (one is a roundback and one is a flatback). It’s like the closest A/B test in terms of flatback versus roundback you could do. I don’t remember how he did the sound test exactly, but looking at the waveform of bass number one and bass number two, when you think of a flatback, it has just like a little bit more punch, maybe, and the roundback has a little more roundness or something. That’s the perennial debate in the bass world: flatback versus roundback.
Larry: Right, and I think the old bass that I’ve had since ’94, that’s a roundback, and I kind of say I like roundbacks better. But you just never know until you try another bass that you really like. I’m not sure about those specific differences, but either you like a bass or you don’t—it comes down to just the aesthetic.
Jason: You were doing some teaching out here in Stanford, a couple of years back, what were you doing out here?
Larry: I do it whenever I can. I usually do the first week of August, but I didn’t do it this year. I couldn’t do it last year either, but a jazz workshop has been going on since I was a kid at Stanford run by Jim Nadel, an old friend of mine.
He’s been doing it since maybe 1980. When it started out, it was small, but he always had Stan Getz, and whoever Stan Getz’s band was would be the faculty. It was great.
Dizzy was there when I was a kid, and it was George Mraz, Mark Johnson, and Rufus Reid. It’s grown a lot since then.
So now it’s quite a big faculty and a lot more students. They do two weeks of kids and then an adult week. I do it whenever I can. It’s a mix of great musicians. They usually have two bass players, two on each instrument.
Jason: There’s a bass player named Danny Zeimann, who’s taken some lessons with you at some point.
He asked me to ask you about meeting Stan Getz. How did that happen?
Larry: It’s tied into this workshop. When I was 16, in high school, Jim Nadel, who runs the workshop, needed more bass players for the ensembles. So I went down there and played in some of the ensembles. I got to know that group of people. And then I would do some gigs down at Stanford around that time.
Somehow Stan had heard me at some point. Then, when it was time to go to college, I wasn’t even thinking of going to Stanford, but they were trying to get their jazz program happening. They had a bunch of donors who got together and hired Stan Getz as their artist-in-residence.
Stan moved down to Palo Alto or Menlo Park. They wanted to have this influx of jazz students, but they didn’t have anybody to fill the department. So Jim Nadel, who was connected with the university, just asked one night, “Are your grades OK? Would you possibly be able to go to Stanford?”
I didn’t know really what it would take. So I applied and got in because of the jazz thing. I mean, nowadays, it’s even much more like this—you have to have good grades, but you have to have something else because everybody’s got good grades now.
The bass thing really helped. It was like I was trying out for the football team or something. They really helped me to get in. Once I was there, I got to be around Stan more and hang out with him and play with him. It was the right timing. I wanted to stay in the area because I was playing so much.
I was learning how to play jazz through the gigs I was doing. I wanted to move to New York, but I wasn’t quite ready to leave what I was doing at the moment. So I thought, “Oh, I’ll stay out in the Bay Area and go to school there, continue the gigs, and then go to New York,” which is what I did.
Larry’s Musical Background
Jason: I know you’re from a fairly musical family. Talk me through that.
Larry: I was fortunate. My dad played the trumpet and was a jazz musician before I was born. I have two older brothers. One plays trumpet, and one plays guitar. When I was in fourth grade, my dad said, “Play trumpet.” So, I started on the trumpet.
I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t in love with it. In fifth grade, my dad thought if I played bass, we could play together, the three of us. I mean, he could have said drums or piano too, I guess. But for some reason he thought electric bass. So he went and got me an electric bass.
I started taking lessons, and it’s that same old story. I started taking lessons and the next week, I was in a band, before I knew where all the notes were. This band, when I was in fifth grade. We played like a cover band, and we’d play around the fairs and high school dances and stuff, just playing rock and roll cover tunes.
But around that time, my older brother, Phil, was starting to listen to jazz. Miles, you know, since he was a trumpet player. He was listening to all the great trumpet players. And I was starting to hear this other instrument that was working like a bass but didn’t sound like an electric bass, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, it’s an upright bass.”
I started to dig that sound. At that age you’re not thinking, you’re just reacting, and I enjoyed that sound.
I was able to borrow an upright bass when I was in seventh grade from the high school.
I started taking lessons with a jazz bass player, but we just did classical, we just did some Simandl just to learn where the notes are. You know, basic stuff. So from seventh grade, I started those lessons.
Within the next couple of years, the electric bass wasn’t so interesting to me anymore. And I really wanted to play upright.
I became, you know, kind of a jazz snob. I stopped listening to rock and roll and dove into the history of the music, and continued to take classical lessons. By the time I was 15 or 16, I was starting to play around San Francisco.
I was just super fortunate. There weren’t that many bass players, but there were a lot of gigs. There were a lot of people at that time coming through town without a band, and they’d pick up a band in the city. So I started to play a lot at Kimball’s, a jazz club in the city: Yoshi’s, and Keystone Corner. I played the last week of that club. It closed down the day we finished. I learned very quickly through playing with really amazing musicians.
At that time, I had no idea how fortunate I was. I mean, I wouldn’t have had the same situation if I had grew up in New York because there would have been dozens of bass players. That turned me on to these international or mostly New York musicians who would be coming through town, and I would play a week with or a couple of weeks with them, and that’s completely how I learned how to play jazz.
Just through that process. It’s very lucky.
Getting Bandstand Time in the Bay Area
Jason: And it’s like that perfect mix of opportunity, and there are some bass players, but maybe not like New York, just like there’s so much going on. But the number of players is just astronomical.
Larry: You kind of have to sit on the sidelines in New York and just watch, but in San Francisco, I was able to actually get on the bandstand and play.
It was way before I was ready. It was sink or swim. I didn’t know that many tunes, was still learning the instrument physically, and didn’t have that much historical perspective yet. I was just getting into it. It really helped me to move through all that stuff faster.
I still tell students, “You have your instructor who shows you things, but the gigs are telling you every night what you need to go home and practice.”
It was clear enough to me, even at that young age, that after a gig, I’ve got to learn that tune better, or play that tempo better, or that key better, or—if somebody were coming through town—I’d have to listen to their records to learn their repertoire.
Jason: I remember coming back from gigs. It’s like 1 am. And I’ve got to be at high school at 8 am. What was that like? Were you into high school? Were you just trying to like, endure it and get out of there and get back on the bandstand?
Larry: I liked high school, and it wasn’t that hard. It got harder in college, I think, for me to balance it out.
During my last couple of years at Stanford, I was so ready to just be a musician and move to New York. I was always trying to stay in the moment and not look ahead.
I don’t even remember thinking about “Oh, this is really hard. How am I going to do it?” You just kind of do it. I tried to find the time to practice and learn how to practice in a way where, if I only had an hour, I could use that hour in a really productive way instead of knowing that I might have four hours to practice. It was all that stuff—kind of looking back.
It helped in a way to focus my attention to learn how to practice in a really productive way. With practicing, it’s always the balance. If you’re in a room by yourself for four hours, that could be cool, but it may not really be pragmatic towards what you need in order to do well on the gig.
Doing a lot of gigs kept my practice focused on what the other musicians expected from me as a bass player. What do they want from the bass? What is really the important material that I need to get to?
I think that having a really active musical life early on, mixed with really great teachers, was the perfect balance for filling out that whole spectrum of what I needed to know to become a professional bass player.
Working with Students
Jason: When you work with students, what are some of the common things that you address?
Larry: There are many things, but the number one issue I find is people don’t know where all the notes are, which is funny. Have you ever met a piano player doing gigs who doesn’t know where all the notes are? You would hope not.
But on bass, you see cats doing gigs who may not feel comfortable in certain parts of the instrument. And they just play where they can.
It kind of works. If you’re playing with your peers, they may not even notice it. What I really learned quickly playing with Stan and Joe Henderson was that they’re listening to what I play.
When you’re playing with your friends, everybody’s so self-involved because they’re trying to learn their own instrument, and their ears are really focused inward rather than outward. So bass players especially can get away with it.
They can get very sloppy with things, not putting out the best information, and nobody’s saying anything because they don’t notice or their ears aren’t trained to hear down that low. They’re not focused on the bass. But once I started playing with Joe and Stan, right away, it was like, there’s no question that every note I played was affecting what they played.
That’s what I find with some bass players, or quite a few—just the fundamental thing. I mean, we’re all continuing to get more comfortable with the fingerboard, but we have to find a way through it so that then we have more options of how we play a phrase: the sound of it, the fingering of it, the simplicity of it.
A lot of times, people make it harder than it is just because they’re not playing across the bass or playing vertically and because they don’t really feel comfortable with that middle part of the bass. They don’t feel comfortable with the upper register, whatever it is, so that is a really common handicap for younger bass players.
I find it’s just to be able to move through the instrument without care and to get the sound out of the bass that you want—there are many ways to work on that, and then it frees them up to make the music they want to make.
I find that I don’t really end up teaching that much jazz when I teach lessons. I’m not really teaching harmony in the sense of what to play over this chord or what mode; I want people to find that themselves, in their language, and in their vocabulary.
The physical aspects of playing the bass are so hard. These are the things that can get in the way of somebody having their voice on the instrument.
Developing Technique
Jason: With vertical playing or lateral playing, or however you want to think of it, how did you develop that? Was it conscious? Shedding scales every day, or was it something you just focused on?
Larry: I had one teacher who told me to improvise my fingerings through scales. Play up one direction, go back down another direction, and go back up another way.
Continually changing the fingering, not saying, you know, once you go through Simandl, you learn what his idea of a great fingering for C major scale is, you know, but obviously we’re not typically playing scales when we play music, we’re playing music.
The fingerings that he shows help you learn where the notes are, but they don’t really help you when you’re starting to play. Especially with jazz, where it’s not written out, you don’t know what will come next. You have to have a lot more fluidity or just a lot more independence. You have many more options available at any moment because you’re not sure what will happen next with written music.
You can write out your fingerings, and that’s how you will do it. But even then, there are many, many options. And then it becomes a sonic thing. What fingering helps the music come out the way you want it to come out? Just that initial idea of improvising your fingerings made me think, “Oh my God, there are so many possible ways to make my way up and down.”
Some are much harder because there are a lot more shifts. Some are much easier because I’m playing across the instrument and using open strings. The ease of play helps the phrase sound better because there is a lot less energy expended. So, I guess that really opened my mind up to the possibilities.
When I was in New York, many years later, I took some lessons with Ron Carter, and he continued that idea for me of playing across the bass, not going up and down the bass all night. At that point in my development, I was able to go to a deeper place with it, rethink it, and continue the idea, but to take it further.
Getting a Big Sound
Jason: I remember reading somewhere, something you mentioned at some point, or maybe watching some video, thinking about getting that big sound without expending a ton of energy. How do you get a sound like that and not just destroy yourself physically? Was that something you consciously worked on?
Larry: I used to destroy myself for a while because I had the popular misconception that you have to really pull the strings to get a sound.
When I moved to New York in the early nineties, quite a few bass players played with the strings quite high, really trying to play without an amp, trying to get a sound like the recordings that we heard in the fifties and sixties.
They were working so hard. I remember just watching people bleed and destroy themselves, and I realized that this is not the way.
Once I started seeing older videos of cats playing in the fifties and sixties, I realized that remarkably, these guys aren’t pulling that hard for the most part.
If you look at Ron with Miles in the sixties, Paul Chambers in the sixties, the videos that exist, they’re not playing that hard with their right hand, but they’re getting this beautiful, big sound. At a certain point, I was tired of getting blisters. I was tired of not being able to get the music out I wanted to get out because physically, my hands were getting tight, and all the consequences of overplaying the instrument.
It’s much better now, but for a long time I had to kind of have it at the forefront of my brain to check in while I was playing. “Am I overplaying? Am I realizing that the sound is coming from both hands and that the left hand is helping to get the big sound out too, and the right hand at a certain point?”
It felt like as you overplay the string, it does not get louder. At a certain point, it chokes up the bass, and you have the opposite effect. There’s this perfect point on each instrument where you can play with the least amount of energy needed to get the sound.
That’s your medium, your 55, 60 miles an hour. And sometimes, you go above it. Sometimes, you go below it. I want to mostly play the night at that level of energy expenditure. The more I’ve played and watched older bass players, the more I think it’s true.
These guys, who are really respected sonically, they’re not playing that hard. I really think half the sound is coming from the left hand. Like how you shift, the more you play in tune, fingering, shifting, all the things we do with.
Pull-offs, not articulating every note with the right hand, and what we do with the left hand to get the phrase out all affect the sonic and tonal quality, too. It’s really been a long process. I went through the whole thing: overplaying, realizing I was overplaying, and then trying to figure out how to not overplay but still get the sound I want.
Jason: It’s very similar with the bow, like if you put a certain amount of weight that you put in that gets that sort of optimal resonance, and then you put more, and you think you’re getting more sound, but I think it’s actually diminishing returns,
Larry: Because what is volume at a certain point? It’s not like you’re turning up the amp from four to five. I think of it more like water volume, like how much space you’re taking up.
And I want to fill up that space. I also read a great interview when I was in college. This book of interviews by Arthur Taylor, the jazz drummer, interviewed a bunch of musicians. And there was a great one with Ron from, I think, the late sixties, maybe early seventies.
He’s talking about that exact thing, you know, that at a certain point, he relates it, I think, to explosives. You know, at a certain point, it cancels itself out, and you think you’re doubling your power, but in a way, it’s starting to cut back, and you get less than you think.
I really find that to be true. And then also for the longevity of playing. Over the years, you can’t be putting out that much energy and not have some negative consequences at some point. If you’re putting out that much energy, I think there’s going to be some tension in your body that will evolve into some sort of malady.
You’ve got to stay relaxed, and overplaying will not help with that.
Listen to this interview on our podcast, Contrabass Conversations.
