Sweet and LowEddie Gomez remains among the most revered of bassists.

By Ted Panken

Photo By Richard Condé jazziz july 2012 35

36 july 2012 jazziz Photo by Steve Sussman

Thirty-five years after leaving the Bill Evans Trio to pursue new opportunities and musical adventures, Eddie Gomez, once averse to public discussion of the 11-year run that made him the most visible — and perhaps most emulated — jazz bassist of that era, is happy to dwell on the subject.

“It’s been a third of a century, there’s a body of work, and I’m more self-assured and confident in my career and art,” Gomez said in June at a café a few blocks from his Greenwich Village home. At 68, he looks a decade younger, his barrel chest and muscled fore-arms obscured by a loose black sport jacket and black button-down shirt. The skin on his fingers, which he spreads in fan-like waves when emphasizing a point, is smooth and barely calloused.

“I feel there are lots of other things to talk about, but being with Bill is huge in my heart,” Gomez continued. “It’s like getting away from a parent or father figure, recognizing what a certain time in your life really was, that it’s part of you and you are part of it. So I’m able to feel it and express it and verbalize it.”

The Evans-Gomez connection is once again a hot topic, thanks to two recent drops of first-commercial-release archival material. Few extant Bill Evans trio dates can match the creative energy generated on the two April 1968 sets with drummer Marty Morell that comprise Live at Art D’Lugoff’s Top of the Gate [Resonance]. Nor does anything in the canon more effectively represent the breathe-as-one simpatico the pianist and bassist could achieve as the five duets they play on Disc 1 of The Sesjun Radio Shows, recorded in the Netherlands in 1973.

“Eddie has the most surprising flexibility. Sometimes I wake up in the morning to The Today Show and see an Israeli folk group playing their folk music, and there’s a bass player in the back playing like he was born in Israel. It’s Eddie. Or he’ll get on that very free, expressionistic bag. Eddie is marvelous in that he has a very wide scope. As much as he fits me like a glove, you would almost think that this is the only way he can play because he does it so perfectly, but it’s not true.” —Bill Evans, Helsinki, 1970.

“Certain musicians arrived on the scene who were just complete. Paul Chambers would be one of them. Tony Williams would be one. They had everything already in place, and they were inno-vative. Maybe I was too busy being fragmented to develop that. There’s a positive side to playing in many genres, which I like to do. But to play my own devil’s advocate, maybe it took away my ability to focus on one particular way or style. In any case, that’s who I was, and still am.” —Eddie Gomez, New York City, 2012

Performed with the real-time bustle of late-’60s Bleecker Street unfolding outside the club’s glass doors, the Top of the Gate tracks are unremittingly intense, the protagonists exchanging opinions with a freewheeling, serious-as-your-life attitude akin to the South Village coffee shop and saloon culture that prevailed when Evans himself was coming of age a decade earlier. The radio broadcasts — which include a five-tune 1975 performance by Evans, Gomez and drummer Eliot Zigmund — retain only a hint of that unruly flavor; the musicians, intimate with each other’s moves after years of bandstand proximity in clubs and concert halls, finish each other’s thoughts with burnished, cosmopolitan phrases.

In both contexts, Gomez displays the gifts that placed him atop his instrument’s food chain by his early 20s. When accompanying, he gooses the flow with clear, limber lines that both anticipate and complement Evans’ train of thought. When soloing, a horn player or singer might envy the speed and dynamics of his phrasing, as he moves in the course of an idea from fortissimo bellows to mezzo piano whispers, seamlessly incorporating extended techniques more commonly associated with “outside” playing into Evans’ harmonic world, never with “because I can” intention, but always toward unfailingly musical imperatives.

In recent years, Gomez has applied his skills to several projects that denote his willingness to no longer “shy away from trio things and homages to Bill.” These include an Italian tour in 2010 with a highly stylized trio comprising pianist Mark Kramer — a frequent

partner in the ’00s — and late-period Evans drummer Joe LaBarbera, and a summer 2011 concert with LaBarbera and Sicilian pianist Salvatore Bonafede devoted to the legacy of the virtuoso bassist Scott LaFaro, who, during his 20 months with Evans and Paul Motian from 1959 to 1961, established the template of bass expression upon which Gomez would place his own unique stamp.

Gomez’s gift for melodic expression and the commanding aura of his tone, whether produced by his fingers or the bow, suffuses recent duo recordings with pianists Cesarius Alvim (Forever) and Carlos Franzetti (the 2008 Latin Grammy-winner Duets). His voice even more palpably dominates CDs of trio concerts in Mexico City and Italy with his longstanding pianist, Stefan Karlsson. That he’s fully capable of subsuming his Olympian gifts to one-for-all purposes is evident on two recent releases: Sofia’s Heart, which Gomez produced for saxophonist Marco Pignataro, and Per Sempre, a Gomez-led studio date with Pignataro, flutist Matt Marvuglio, pianist Teo Ciavarella and drummer Massimo Manzi.

But the only item in Gomez’s recent corpus that stands up to the rarefied environment of clarity and unfettered interplay that Evans facilitated is Further Explorations. A two-disc masterpiece of collec-tive improvisation on the Concord Jazz imprint, it cherry-picks from a fortnight-long engagement at the Blue Note during which Chick Corea, Gomez and Motian (it was the late drummer’s first recording with either partner) refracted Evans-associated repertoire in their own manner. Among the many highlights are Gomez’s arco solos on the second disc. (It’s hard to think of a location recording on which a bassist has bowed improvised melodies with the spot-on

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intonation that Gomez brings to his variation on Motian’s “Mode VI,” which transpires in the cello register.)

Gomez and Corea have brought out each other’s best since 1961, when the pianist, then a 20-year-old Juilliard student, and the bassist, a 17-year-old senior at the High School of Music and Art, jammed together in Corea’s loft in the Manhattan neighborhood now known as Tribeca. At the time, Gomez, a bass player for all of six years, was already a member of New York’s Local 802, and had conceptualized the bass-as-an-extension-of-the-voice approach that he follows to this day.

“We moved to New York when I was about a year old, and my deepest recollection of music is my mother singing to me at home,” he recalls. “My grandfather had an evangelist church in Puerto Rico, and when we visited, I’d sing in the church in English. Singing was my musical connection, not an instrument.”

A junior high school music teacher placed Gomez on the contrabass path. Once in high school he dual-tracked in classi-cal music and jazz, becoming ever more embroiled in the latter endeavor via such classmates as Jeremy Steig, Jimmy Owens, Billy Cobham and Richard Tee, and such fellow members of Marshall Brown’s Newport Youth Band as Eddie Daniels and Ronnie Cuber. By 15, he was studying privately with “a wonderful mentor-teacher” named Fred Zimmerman, “a crusader for broadening the scope and repertoire of the double bass.”

“I wanted to play music and sing, and although the bass seemed an unusual instrument to be a singer on, Zimmerman played expressive, gorgeous melodies that inspired me,” Gomez says. “I

listened to a lot of saxophone and trumpet, but singers — Sinatra, Nat Cole, Peggy Lee, Cheo Feliciano, Bobby Capó — were crucial. To me, it’s all singing or dancing, and if there’s no pulse, as is often the case, then it’s cerebral. But I’ll make the dance and singing work through the brain somehow. I think there’s song and dance in 12-tone music, too. Genre didn’t get in my way.”

At Zimmerman’s suggestion, Gomez enrolled at Juilliard in 1962. For the next four years, in addition to his studies, he supported his young family by playing gigs of every stripe. He worked an extended engagement at a midtown steakhouse with Marion McParland, who welcomed sit-ins by such elder icons as Buck Clayton, Edmond Hall and Bobby Hackett. He played on a Latin jazz album led by conguero Montego Joe, titled Arriba!, with Corea on piano and Milford Graves on timbales. Via Graves, Gomez began taking downtown outcat gigs, including concerts with Giuseppe Logan and Paul Bley — on whose ESP recordings he performs — as well as with John Tchicai, Roswell Rudd, and the Jazz Composers Orchestra. His future direction became more focused in 1965, when he went on the road with vibraphonist-composer Gary McFarland, then played a stint with Gerry Mulligan’s sextet.

“I could play the bass pretty well, but I wasn’t mature as a musician or as an artist,” Gomez says. “Gary and Gerry were very nurturing. Perhaps my role was defined, but traditional contexts made me dig deeper inside to find the creative part of myself.”

In the summer of 1966, Gomez was at the start of a run at the Copacabana with Bobby Darin when Evans — who, when his trio played opposite Mulligan a month earlier at the Village Vanguard,

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made a point of complimenting the young bassist — invited him on tour. About a month later, toward the end of a week at Shelly’s Manne Hole in Los Angeles, Evans told him, “This is working out very nicely. It would be great if you joined the trio on a permanent basis.”

During the ensuing 11 years, Gomez worked in other satisfying contexts. Notably, he subbed for Ron Carter on a few dozen gigs with the Miles Davis Quintet and performed in open-ended duos with flutist Steig that stimulated him “to find different ways to think about the instrument.” But Bill Evans remained his prime commitment.

“After a couple of years with Bill, I knew I was in the right direction as far as the song and dance,” Gomez says. “I liked being a soloist, which is what I was with Bill. So I made that choice. He talked to me almost as a son in this avuncular way. He’d tell me not to follow in his footsteps, to take his advice and not pick up his habits. When we played at the Gate or the Vanguard, he’d often drive me home to Queens, where I lived then, and we’d talk about how lucky we were to be making art and getting paid for it. I think the first trio formulated his idea of what the bass should do, and he saw me as extending or expanding it. I may have done some different things in using the bow, but I don’t know that I created anything really new.

“I recorded a lot with Bill, and I didn’t always like the recordings for myself. I like some moments on At Montreux from 1968 with Jack DeJohnette, and there are some nice things on Intuition (1974), but I felt I’d reached a pinnacle on You Must Believe in Spring (1977), a flow, a poetic feeling that I’m proud of. I felt I should leave on that note.”

Gomez immediately plunged into several overlapping streams of activity. In New York City, he became a first-call duo player, dialoguing with more pianists than he can remember at Bradley’s in Greenwich Village and with guitarists like Jim Hall, Tal Farlow and Chuck Wayne at The Guitar in midtown. Charles Mingus, a Bradley’s regular, befriended Gomez, and, when ALS rendered him too weak to play, tapped him to fill the bass chair on his final two recordings. At Bradley’s, Gomez also developed rapport with pianist Hank Jones, who recruited him to triangulate the collectively-billed Great Jazz Trio — among the drummers were Al Foster and Jimmy Cobb — on a series of Japan-centric projects throughout the ’80s.

Although the prospect of staying home was part of Gomez’s rationale for leaving Evans, he found himself traveling even more. He flew frequently to Japan for one-off guest-artist concerts and recordings, among them several well-regarded dates with pianist Masahiko Satoh. He spent several years touring with DeJohnette, both in the drummer-pianist’s open-ended New Directions quartet with guitarist John Abercrombie and trumpeter Lester Bowie, and on more impressionistic configurations — and ECM record-ings — with guitarists Ralph Towner and Mick Goodrick. Corea, an employer since the mid-’70s, brought him on board for his iconic Three Quartets band with Michael Brecker and Steve Gadd, both of whom Gomez would soon partner with in the post-hardbop-meets-fusion quintet Steps Ahead, with vibraphonist Mike Mainieri and pianist Don Grolnick.

While in Tokyo in 1984, and again in 1985, Gomez made two sculpted, groove-heavy recordings, produced by Gadd, in which

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the leader addressed the various genres and flavors at his command. “Everyone had been urging me to do a solo album, and I forced myself to start writing compositions,” Gomez recalls of these and a subsequent New York session for Epic. “I wanted to do something against the grain of my past. They were criticized for being eclectic, but I think the continuity is that it’s all coming from me. There’s a lot of variation; I quite like them for what they are. I wanted a sound on the double bass that in opera they call a ‘lyric tenor’ — a high, clear, very melodic sound that bass guitarists get. Listening back, it’s too twangy and trebly for me now, but in the context of the records, it’s very clear and makes the bass sound like a solo instru-ment, which it is.

“My sound has changed. My likes and dislikes have changed. I’m wanting to hear that older sound, the sound of Paul Chambers and Ray Brown. Sometimes on these straightahead tracks, the bass should sound like it’s going straight through the microphone, and not have that direct pickup sound. It should sound embedded in the rhythm section, and not stand out, a little bit like drums.”

It’s been a remarkable career, and Gomez — whose obligations increased seven years ago when he accepted the posi-tion of Artistic Director at the Conservatory of Puerto Rico, where he spends six weeks each year — has no intention of resting on his laurels. Among other things, he anticipates performing a concerto with a small string orchestra, and hopes one day to play with Sonny Rollins, a huge influ-ence during his formative years.

“Every day you wake up, it’s a chal-lenge to play the double bass in tune, because there’s so much bass to miss,” he says. “So you have to keep your energy, love and passion for whatever it is, the good things in life — good food, a good cup of coffee, going to a museum, great literature, an old movie. All of that connects to me. I tell students they need to know something about Caravaggio or Velázquez or Turner or Picasso or Vermeer. They need to know something about George Bernard Shaw. Know stuff about things other than music, so you can broaden your artistic sensibility.” s

Bass ImpressionsAsked to name and briefly discuss five personall influential bassists, Eddie Gomez thoughtfully offered the following:

“The very first bassist who came into my life was Milt Hinton. I bought a glori-ous recording where he did that slapping thing. When I was a kid, I took a lesson from him at his house. He was a sweetheart. So generous. He showed me a great way to finger the chromatic scale. Later on, I realized just how good Milt was — so supportive and also a great soloist, but in a different way than Paul Chambers, Ray Brown and Scott LaFaro.

“Paul Chambers was the second bass player who came into my life. I bought a Red Garland Trio date, A Garland of Red (1956), with Paul and Art Taylor, and the way Paul played turned me around — his sound, how he supported the band, his swing feel, his soloing, how he played with the bow. I got into him even more deeply when I started buying Miles’ quintet records and Porgy and Bess. There wasn’t a bad note; everything was perfect.

“I discovered Ray Brown a little later via the trio with Oscar Peterson, and al-though I heard him with other pianists and he always sounded great, that’s how I always think of him. Aside from being a great soloist, Ray’s propulsion, his particular swing feel and sound, was beautiful.

“Scott LaFaro would be next. I didn’t get to see the Bill Evans Trio play, and the one time I saw Scott, when I was 16 or 17, I didn’t really hear him. I was rehearsing with a big band at a place called Lynn Oliver’s, on the Upper West Side, and through the window to the other studio Stan Getz, Steve Kuhn, Pete La Roca and Scott were rehearsing. I saw Scott play a very unorthodox way of fingering. He innovated a way of playing in space that became one of the junctions in modern jazz.

“Charles Mingus is at the top of the list because he was such a great bassist and a huge composer. But I liked Sam Jones and Jymie Merritt very much. I liked Steve Swallow when he was playing the double bass, and you’ve got to include Red Mitchell. Johnny Hawksworth was a great English bassist who played with Johnny Dankworth. Today I can enjoy listening to Ron Carter and Buster Williams. I like Peter Washington, and Christian McBride is a fine bass player, too. I’m still waiting for some of these younger guys to develop a voice that says, ‘Oh, that’s him — there’s no doubt about that.’ All these guys I mentioned had a voice. Each one was a breeding ground.” —TP

Charles Mingus