Rufus Reid, Bassist
One of the best known and highly regarded jazz bassists of the past half-century, Rufus Reid appears on 14 Play-A-Longs, including the “II-V-I Progression” (Volume 3), “Movin’ On” (Volume 4), “Sonny Rollins” (Volume 8), “Minor Blues In All Keys” (Volume 57), “Dexter Gordon” (Volume 82). He also taught at Aebersold’s Summer Jazz Workshops for 45 years as a faculty member.
Ironically, legendary trombonist J. J. Johnson hired Reid for his band after hearing Reid on Play-A-Long recordings. Reid worked with Johnson for nine years. This is one of the best-known examples of how musicians turned to Play-A-Longs for their own practice and to find/collaborate with top players.
What did you gain, creatively and otherwise, by working with Jamey on the Play-A-Longs?
I thought it was a great idea, not knowing—and I don’t think he even knew—how it was really going to develop. But it was logical, and it was not easy to do at all.
For me, the most challenging (part) was he really didn’t want us (piano, bass and drums) to play like we would play (in performance). He didn’t tell me what notes to play, but we all had to be rhythmically more cautious.
So, I had to kind of monitor and not get too excited, because he (Jamey) wanted players to just play along and he didn’t want us to react to each other.
That was probably the biggest thing, and that was probably the most difficult because that’s what I was trained to do—to be able to react with the pianist, and to react with the drummer—and we’d do things at the moment. But it was a real fine line.
But it kind of checked us all to get it to —each chorus was to get a little more exciting and has some kind of growth. Musically, that’s what we’d do. You want it to develop but without getting too excited to the point where we would lose people. They couldn’t keep up or something, and quite often, we were not wrong. We were not incorrect.
But Jamey thought it was a little too advanced for the beginning players to latch a hold of. I understood that. And we got better—I got better—at doing that, but that was the most challenging for me, and I think, all of us.
Jamey wanted it perfect, but there is no perfect. Just make it solid and feel good, and like I say, the first two, or three, or four (Play-A-Longs) were probably the most challenging for everybody and we’d kind of listen back to it and learn to practice and, ‘oh, wow, okay, that makes sense.’ And it was a challenge each and every time.
Do you use the Play-A-Longs in your own practice?
Yes. I can’t tell you I did it on a regular basis, but there was a period when I wasn’t working that much and I needed to really practice playing some up tempos. So, there’s one CD (Play-A-Long) called “Burnin,” so I’d pull out the bow and, you know, something that would put a little blue flame under my behind to work at it. ‘Cos it’s hard to do this all by yourself.
What is Aebersold’s legacy for jazz musicians?
There are professionals, including myself, that if you’re rusty, or you haven’t been playing for whatever reason, and so you pull out something and you just play along with it. To this day, it does just that; it gives players—particularly players who aren’t in the area I live (New York metropolitan area)—they live in Timbuktu, or whatever, but if they have a stereo (cell phone or CD player) and they have some headphones they can get it going.