Moving Foward: A Conversation with Marcus Miller (Part One)

Some of the greatest musical artists are those you can identify after only a few notes, whether Miles Davis’ trumpet or BB King’s guitar. Marcus Miller’s distinctive double thump technique on the electric bass places him among this group. For the past four decades, Miller has charted a career where his unique sound has explored funkiness in its truest sense. Yes, his music – whether across his albums as a leader or many more as a sideman – makes you want to move. But it also does more than that; there is a deep meaning to his music. He has a sentimental side that explores the emotions behind the groove including those of addressing injustice.

Marcus’ sound is very eclectic, drawing from many different ideas. In a sense, this facet of his work was unavoidable. Growing up in a musical family in Brooklyn exposed him to many diverse cultural influences. Serving as a member of the Saturday Night Live band and as musical director of Sunday Night/Night Music further honed this aspect of his music. As has the over 500 recordings on which he has appeared alongside a wide range of artists from Lonnie Liston Smith to Aretha Franklin to Frank Sinatra to Eric Clapton to Al Jarreau to Elton John. He has also extensively collaborated with Luther Vandross and David Sanborn. And, of course, Miles Davis. A careful reader may note that neither part of this interview extensively discusses Miller’s time with Miles. This was by design; those topics have been saved for something very special planned for later this year.

We were fortunate to sit down with Marcus to discuss his sound, his influences, and the power of music in the modern era. 

PostGenre: How did you find your sound on the bass? 

Marcus Miller: First, there are my heroes on the bass. James Jamerson- who played on most of the Motown hits in the 60s and early 70s- and Larry Graham – who started off with Sly and the Family Stone and ended up having his own band, Graham Central Station. Graham was the pioneer of thumping the bass with your thumb and plucking the strings. Those two along with Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorious would be my four main guys. There’s also a bunch of other great bassists who have influenced me as well- Alphonso Johnson, Anthony Jackson, Rocco Prestia, and “Pops” Popswell. When I was starting out on the bass, I  just combined all the things I liked from each of those guys. 

Over time, I realized that I needed to add something a little new so my sound would reflect not just my influences but also my current circumstances. In the 80s, I was working with a lot of synthesizers and bright instruments so I needed a brighter sound on the bass to make sure that people could hear me better. One day you hear back your sound and when you hear it, you recognize it as your own. You think of your recognition casually at first then realize that being able to identify yourself from just a couple of notes is incredibly valuable.

So, then you go back and figure out what it was about those two or three notes you heard that made you recognize your sound. That’s like your ember. You blow on your ember and see if you can develop it into a whole approach. That’s how it happened with me. I heard myself on a couple of records and thought it was distinctive. It wasn’t as good as my heroes- you never sound as good as your heroes – but it did sound true to myself.

PG: Early on you had played clarinet, even going to college to study classical clarinet performance. How do you feel starting off as a classical clarinet player has impacted your work as a bassist?

MM: Starting off as a clarinetist really helped balance me out. The instrument helped broaden my education. Going to school to study the clarinet taught me orchestration and music theory. Playing the clarinet gave me a melodic perspective that a lot of bass players don’t have. And it allowed me to talk in the key of B-flat with tenor saxophonists and trumpeters. I understand how to talk to horn players in a way most bassists don’t.

Starting as a clarinetist also forced me to be really good at reading sheet music. Some people can play bass by ear their entire career without learning how to read music well. But with a classical instrument, all of your lessons are with sheet music in front of you and you need to be able to read it well.

Strength in reading music helped me a lot when I ended up going into the studios in New York. During the first 10 years or so of my career- in addition to working with Miles, David Sanborn, or Luther Vandross- I was doing a lot of studio sessions. And for those, you just go in the studio, read the chart, and add your little flavor to it. My experience with clarinet made it so I really didn’t have problems reading the charts.

PG: Speaking of your working with others, the list of people you have performed with is very extensive. It seems one less discussed name is Grover Washington, Jr. What was it like working with him, including on the classic Winelight (Elektra, 1980)? 

 MM: It was fantastic, man. I think the first album I played with Grover on was the one before Winelight, called Skylarkin’ (Motown, 1980). I was 17 or 18 years old when I started with him. Literally, just two years before, I had been jamming to “Mister Magic” in my bedroom, playing along with the record.

It was really beautiful to be in the studio actually working with him. I remember on one of the songs I played a lick, a fill where you add something to the end of the phrase. I went up high on the bass and played the fill then went back down to the bassline. Grover was soloing at the time and incorporated that line; he repeated it in his solo as we were playing. And I said to myself that at least now I knew I wasn’t in my bedroom playing alone with a record; the record would never have responded to me.

Grover was great and I was so proud to be a part of his story. I thought he and the music that he did – especially his CTI tracks – were just so incredible. I am so happy to have been a part of that story.

PG: How and when did you begin to incorporate the bass clarinet into your music? 

MM: I was working on Tutu (Warner, 1986). Miles was playing some beautiful stuff in his solos, as he always did. I wanted to find a way to highlight those lines that I thought were really special. 

I had been teasing my wife that one day I was going to get a bass clarinet. When I saw sheet music, I still felt my fingers moving to the clarinet fingerings. I thought that given how many years I had spent on the clarinet, I shouldn’t abandon the instrument. But I also couldn’t see the high pitched B-flat clarinet working in the music I was doing at the time. I figured maybe I would try a bass clarinet. That and I had always admired Eric Dolphy. Then, for Christmas, my wife got me one and put it under the Christmas tree. When I played it at first, it sounded horrible, but I was really excited and kept working on sounding better.

One day after Miles had left the studio, I took the bass clarinet in and started doubling some of his lines on it, two octaves below him. It gave the music a really interesting and sinister sound. When Miles came back the next day and listened to it, he really loved it. So, I started using the bass clarinet in his music.

When Miles passed in 1991, I put together my own band and dedicated it to him which used a good deal of bass clarinet. I started getting really into playing the bass clarinet. But it is hard to pull a clarinet out in the middle of a show after you’ve been playing bass for an hour. The reed is dry and that will make you squeak and sound horrible. At one show, the great Bennie Maupin – who played with Herbie Hancock and with Miles on Bitches Brew [Columbia, 1969] – was in the audience and came up and handed me a plastic reed. Most reeds are wooden but Bennie said to try plastic because it would change my life. So I put the plastic reed on and, because you don’t need to worry about keeping plastic wet, it solved my problem. Now I could pick the bass clarinet up in the middle of a show and play it without worrying about it sounding horrible. 

One thing that was great about adding the bass clarinet to my music is that there was no pressure on me. Everyone knew it wasn’t my primary instrument and no one else was really playing the bass clarinet in jazz. So I really never had to worry about living up to a certain standard and was able to just enjoy playing it. Over time, the bass clarinet became more and more a part of what I do.

PG: Does a plastic reed produce the same sound as a bamboo one? 

MM: No, a plastic reed makes you sound a little brighter. Some people think it also makes your tone a little harsher. If I took my plastic bass clarinet reed and sat in with an orchestra, it would be way too bright to blend in with the other woodwinds. But playing in my band with drums and electric keyboards, it still sounds like the most wooden instrument in the band. Some guys, if they’ve been playing a wooden reed their whole life, just can’t get used to the sound. A traditional bass clarinetist might say it sounds too much like a saxophone. But if you play a saxophone right next to it, you realize that it’s not the same at all. It’s still a bass clarinet, just brighter than it usually sounds. 

PG: One of the most admirable things about your music is how it emphasizes one’s ability to rise above their circumstances, no matter how harsh they may be. “Gorèe”[Renaissance (Concord, 2012)]  is about the horrors of the Transatlantic slave trade. You did not just focus on the anger and sadness associated with the horrific practice of slavery but also good things that surprisingly came from it, specifically the rise of the African American community. Afrodeezia (Blue Note, 2015) explores similar ideas as well. Obviously, slavery itself isn’t legal in the US today, but vestiges of it, and the racism which spurred it, remain. And there is also a shared anxiety, anger, and fear over things like COVID and political unrest. How do you think music can be used to rise above current circumstances?

MM: Music is just a reflection of what people are feeling at the time it is made. Because the current situation is jacked up on so many levels, it’s natural that people will be angry. I think a lot of the music you are going to get right now will reflect that anger. While I can understand the anger, I am hoping my next album will reflect a time beyond it. 

I haven’t put out a record in maybe a year or year and a half, but I am hoping that by the time I begin to work on a new album I can see a brighter side to some of the current circumstances. I am hoping that the period we are in represents someone finally turning over that American rock and exposing all the nasty stuff that was really going on beneath the surface. It’s hard to deal with. It’s really difficult. But let’s address these issues so we can finally move forward to a more stable place. That’s what I am hoping for. I don’t know how long it will take for the anger period to run its course but at a certain point, it’s something that we as a society will hopefully have moved beyond so we can begin focusing on moving forward.

PG: Another important part of our times is our reliance on technology. You have never been one to shy away from technology. How do you feel it has shaped today’s music?

MM: Like everything else, technology has its pluses and minuses. 

People who don’t have significant musical training or experience but have really great taste can use technology to make some really interesting music. Technology can also help expose people to music they might not have explored before. Someone who has only vaguely heard about the Meters can listen to their music with just the press of a button. But the downside is that easy access can run the risk of devaluing music. Sometimes you respect and value something more if you had to work hard for it.

When I was a kid, to get new music, I needed to take a half-hour bus trip to the record store. Then I would need to find the record, let’s say Stevie Wonder’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale (Tamla, 1974). After I bought it, I would get back on the bus to go home. To actually listen to it, I would open up the double album, turn on the record player, and put it on. And because Stevie wanted to tell us everything about his music, I would read who was on an album and other liner notes and immerse ourselves in the music.  

But now? All you need to do is pull out the phone, ask for the same record, and it’s immediately playing in your ear. You didn’t have to work as hard to obtain it. You’re probably not reading the liner notes much, if at all, to understand the artist’s intent. And even when you are listening, it is likely more as an accessory. It just sort of plays in the background as you go back to doing something else.

Music had such a revered place of reference in our lives before streaming technology, but it is a really different thing now. You need to get people, younger people in particular, to slow down for a minute to get them to really appreciate what’s going on musically.

More information on Marcus Miller can be found on his website.

The excellent documentary Marcus is currently available on Amazon Prime.

Stay tuned for Part Two of our interview with Marcus.