Forever: Stanley Clarke Previews N•4EVER’s Performance at the 2024 Newport Jazz Festival (Part One)

After first being mass-produced by Fender in the 1950s, the electric bass, for many years, found a home in only the rhythm section. Its full power, to some extent, was obfuscated from view. Then came Stanley Clarke. Across his work with Return to Forever, the seminal fusion band he co-founded with Chick Corea, and records under his own name – particularly the groundbreaking School Days (Nemperor/Epic, 1976) – Clarke was the pioneer who revealed the true improvisatory capacity of the bass guitar. He effectively freed the instrument to be a lead solo instrument. As a result, musicians from Marcus Miller to Thundercat are artistically indebted to him. Clarke’s electric contributions are so culturally significant that he is one of the few to have his instrument on permanent display at the Smithsonian.

But Clarke’s plugged-in works are only half of the story. He started on the upright and played with such heavyweights as Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Horace Silver, and Art Blakey. Even with great success with the bass guitar, the rich wood of the double bass was never outside Clarke’s arms for long. As Christian McBride, himself a gifted doubler, noted, “[I]f there was a Bible of the history of doubling with both the double bass and the electric bass, Stanley would be its Genesis. It all starts with him.” That is certainly true, at least in terms of treating both as a lead solo instrument. Such doubling on the basses is now, decades later, standard.

Given this backdrop – Clarke is even an NEA Jazz Master – it would have been all too easy for him to rest on his laurels. Instead, like many greats before him, he has focused on the future of the music he loves. Since his teenage years, he has taught others. And, over the last two decades, he has economically provided students opportunities through The Stanley Clarke Foundation. Outside the educational sphere, he also shows an appreciation for musicians generations removed from him by regularly playing with them. Clarke’s newest group, N•4EVER, is a quintet in which the four younger members – pianist Beka Gochiashvili, drummer Jeremiah Collier, saxophonist Emilio Modeste, and guitarist Colin Cook – work with him to breathe new life into older Return to Forever tunes while also forging trails all their own. Lucky listeners can catch them at the Newport Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 3, 2024. It was an honor to sit down with Clarke to discuss his new group and their forthcoming record, the Newport Jazz Festival, and his relationship with his instrument.

PostGenre: Do you remember when you first learned about the Newport Jazz Festival? 

Stanley Clarke: I think I first became aware of Newport when I was playing with Stan Getz around 1972. I think I met George Wein somewhere right around that time as well. 

PG: So, do you remember the first time you played at Newport?

SC: Well, the first time I played there, I think it was… I know Return to Forever played at Newport [Ed. Note: This was likely during the period the Jazz Festival was in New York; Return to Forever played there in 1973 and 1974]. I know I played at Newport in 1995 with Al DiMeola and Jean-Luc Ponty in the group we called Rite of Strings. And I also played with my own band there in 2003. 

PG: What do you enjoy most about playing at Newport? 

SC: When I think of jazz festivals, I usually think of the European festivals and how, with those, the community plays a big part in them. There are many festivals that aren’t like that. There is a festival at the Hollywood Bowl in [Los Angeles] where it is less about the community. Newport is more like the European festivals. Number one, Newport is a beautiful place. And, number two, people come in from the neighborhood. It feels like the town is in some ways set up for the festival. 

PG: One of the sets at Newport this summer is a tribute to Wayne Shorter. You had a band with Wayne and Herbie Hancock in 1991.

SC: Yeah, yeah. I don’t think we played at Newport, but I was in a band with Wayne, Herbie, and Omar Hakim. That was very nice. That was a great experience. Tremendous. 

PG: At Newport, you will present your band, N•4EVER. What do you enjoy most about that group? 

SC: Well, you know, the group kind of happened. I won’t say it happened by accident, but it almost was. I put it together after Chick [Corea] passed. I was playing with some young players and decided it would be great to revisit some of the old Return to Forever music. Just because someone passes does not mean their music also passes. People will always play Chick’s stuff. He’s got classic tunes, and I was fortunate enough to be on many of those records. “Spain” being on Light as a Feather (Polydor, 1973) is one example. 

So, I got together with these younger guys and pulled out some of Chick’s stuff. Because I played on many of those records, I have written copies of a lot of his music. And I decided we should put something together using his music. I’m not generally a big fan of tribute bands, though I understand why people create them. But N•4EVER kind of started as a Chick tribute band. We took maybe one or two pieces at first and then added some other things. We also wrote some new things. My original plan was for the band to be together for only a summer, but we’ve been working together so well that we have been together for a few years now. 

PG: You mentioned how the rest of the band consists of younger musicians. You have done significant work in music education. Has working with younger musicians given you a different perspective on your educational work?

SC: Well, yes. I’m very specific as to why I do this. When I was younger, around eighteen or nineteen, I started with Horace Silver. Then I played with Art Blakey and then Stan Getz. For some reason, those guys were all incredibly nice to me. 

Particularly Horace Silver. He was the first real bandleader I played with, and his charts were also perfect. He wrote them out by hand, but they looked like the charts that come out of these programs they have right now. His handwriting was perfect. And the way he handed his music to me was very special. Art Blakey was special. Stan Getz was very nice. 

From working with those guys and seeing how they treated me, I know how important it is to give young people a path. If they are on a good path they can usually create something great. So, I’ve had many young musicians play with me who went on to do very well. It’s not that I don’t play with older musicians. I do. But it’s nice to play with the younger musicians.

The education part is very important to me. I’ve always been into teaching. I’ve been teaching bass since I was sixteen or seventeen [years old], and I have taught many famous bass players out there. You’d be surprised who some of my students are. I greatly enjoy teaching. As a matter of fact, I have this residency at Santa Monica College. I just finished the first year and am going into the second year of a three-year program. I also curate their jazz festival. I’ve always liked teaching. 

PG: You mentioned your work with Silver, Blakey, and Getz. When Return to Forever started making jazz-rock fusion, did you get any resistance from these elders of the music who focused primarily on acoustic work?

SC: Well, I guess Stan was partly responsible for Return to Forever. He once said that he thought he might have invented the band because when I was Stan, Chick was there too. Chick was just starting to write some tunes, especially some of the stuff that we did on Light as a Feather, like “Captain Marvel”, “Spain”, and “500 Miles High.” And we played a lot of those songs with Stan. He was fine with that. I think by the time we got to the electric band, it was a shock. But I will give credit to Stan for being very open. Whatever the younger guys were doing, he embraced it. 

PG: Going back to your newest band, N•4EVER, you will be releasing an album later this year. What can you share about it?

SC: The record’s almost done. I think it will probably come out at the beginning of September. Possibly the end of August. I’m putting the finishing touches on it right now. It’s a double album with about sixteen or seventeen tunes. It is a great record and has a lot of the feeling of Return to Forever. There are other things on it, too. The record has a lot of bass-in-your-face music. It also has acoustic duets. I’m not the kinda guy who says, “Well, it’s my best album” about anything I’ve made. But it’s unquestionably one of the better ones I’ve done. I’m very happy with it. 

PG: Will the album feature all new compositions or a mixture of new and old?

SC: There are some new things. There are also some older things that I redid. One tune Chick wrote that I always liked and wanted to put my own spin on is “Medieval Overture” off of Romantic Warrior (Columbia, 1976). It is an incredibly difficult tune, and we put our spin on it on the record. It’s great. 

PG: As far as your own compositions, probably your best-known one is “School Days.”  But is there a composition you are most proud of? 

SC: Well, you know, I like “School Days” because it was kind of a funny story with that one. It was the shortest amount of time I ever spent writing a song. But that song was so popular there’s not a place in the world where somebody didn’t have a copy of School Days. At one point, I was in the deepest parts of the African continent, and some guy there had a copy of School Days. It has always been just one of those kinds of songs. 

As far as where “School Days” came from, I wrote it while I was at home watching television. The Grammys were on TV. I didn’t know much about the Grammys, but I watched because I had heard we might get an award. And we did win one. [Ed. Note: Return to Forever won the Grammy Award for  “Best Jazz Performance by a Group” for No Mystery (Polydor, 1975).] This just shows my age, but I remember that Ella Fitzgerald and, I think, Mel Torme were presenting the award. They announced we won but called Chick “Chuck Corea.” Man, I thought that was messed up. But I was also very happy because even in those days, it was very rare to even see a jazz musician on TV. I mean, Steve Allen would sometimes show Miles Davis or something, but it was uncommon. 

So, when we heard our name. I said, “Wow, man.” I had a bass in my hand, and what came out was “School Days.” It took me five minutes to write, but it needed a B section. When I woke up the next morning I spent another five to ten minutes and wrote the B section. In those days, we had to write stuff down on paper, and I still have what I wrote. It was a very short piece of paper, and I put it in a drawer. Then, about a year or so later, I took it to the studio with a bunch of other stuff and recorded it. I didn’t particularly care for it that much. I mean, it was nice, but I didn’t think it was all that special. 

And, so, I got in the studio and had this English engineer. We started playing, and he said, “Oh man, you better record that.” At first, I couldn’t figure out who was going to solo on it and decided, what the hell, I’ll just do the solo. And taking that solo kind of changed things in the bass world. 

Check out Part Two with Stanley Clarke here. Catch N•4EVER at the Newport Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 3, 2024. More information on the Festival can be found here. We will be providing live coverage of the event. You can read more about Stanley Clarke  on his website. 

Photo credit: Matt Lorentzen