Pt. 1: GENIUS OF LOVE
Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/25a2HzU9Wjggi4CwxmhqnM
NOTE: YouTube is a moving target as videos get put up and taken down. I’ve tried to give enough detail in the introductory text to each that should allow you to search for the footage in question, even if it’s not in the same place, url-ly.
THESIS: Space is the place
Song No. 1 — Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love” (Tina Weymouth (kind of), bass) (1981)
“…I’m in heaven / With the maven of funk mutation…”
Very simple bass line centered on the root tone of the two doo-wop / calypso chords that the song uses: G and Em. Because those two chords are themselves close relatives, the part works even when (such as in the verses) the vocal harmonies veer off in other directions. NOTE: The part as Weymouth wrote it is played all on the 4th string, tuned down to a D.
LESSON: Paul Thompson, as posted on the “No Treble” bass resources site (his own YouTube instructional channel is called PDBass). We’ll be seeing more from PDBass because he’s very good at not only showing how to play something, but also at explaining how it works and why. NOTE: As you’ll find out in Thompson’s video, though Tina Weymouth wrote the bass line, she didn’t end up playing it on the recording due to hand cramps!
https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2023/06/03/from-the-bottom-digging-into-tom-tom-clubs-genius-of-love-bass-line/
Here’s a nice live version from the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival (with two bonus Weymouth sisters along for the ride).
Great photo of Laura, Lani, and Tina Weymouth as some very cool-looking motherfuckers hanging out at CBGB’s from around 1976 that Blondie’s Chris Stein posted to his Facebook page in 2016.
And here’s the great video — just pre-MTV — that the Tom Toms created to accompany the studio recording
Song No. 2 — George Clinton’s Parliament, “Flash Light” (Bernie Worrell, synth bass) (1978)
“…Clinton’s musicians […] Raise expectations to a new intention…”
Another great simple line NOT played by George Clinton’s great bass player, Bootsy Collins (we’ll get to him next), but played on synth bass by Bernie Worrell, who’s the guy you see in Stop Making Sense making all the weird keyboard boops and beeps on “Burning Down the House,” etc. This bass line is a nice introduction to chromaticism as a device for leading to the target note as it leads down to the IV chord (F) and then back up to the I (C).
LESSON: Ian Allison and Scott Devine of ScottsBassLessons in full dad band mode, “Top 5 FUNK riffs for every beginner bassist” from their YouTube channel, ScottsBassLessons. Other good funk lines are demonstrated in this video as well, including “Pick Up the Pieces” by the Average White Band, which you heard done live when we saw Ringo Starr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHP1UWg-hFU – start at 17:00
Bernie Worrell with Talking Heads, “Girlfriend Is Better,” from Stop Making Sense (1984). NOTE: Tina Weymouth is playing synth bass on this one. Worrell’s squealing comes to the fore at 3:15.
Song No. 3 — Parliament, “Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker),” (Bootsy Collins, bass) (1975)
“…Clinton’s musicians such as Bootsy Collins…”
Bootsy Collins played both with James Brown’s band and then with Parliament-Funkadelic, making him the literal funkiest person ever to have landed on Earth. The basic groove for this song is pretty easy, with all the little fills both optional yet instructive. Easier if you start with the chorus.
LESSON: from “The Bass Sounds of Bootsy Collins” by Jake Hawrylak on the Reverb site
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyKfZHgkhMI – start at 5:00
For a whole philosophy of bass, music, and life, see Bootsy Collins’s own account of how James Brown taught him to play “on the One,” and the space that doing that opens up for everything else. “BOOTSY’S BASIC FUNK FORMULA” from Ediblspaceships.
And then here’s a good intro to what all that means in practice, with Josh Fossgreen’s “Beginner Funk Bass Made Simple (Bootsy’s Funk Formula)” from his BassBuzz channel, which is I think a really good channel in general with a great attitude about how to approach music.
Song No. 4 — Smokey Robinson, “Going to a Go-Go” (James Jamerson, bass) (1965)
“…No one can sing / Quite like Smokey, Smokey Robinson…”
Smokey Robinson wrote many, many Motown classics: songs he sang (“Tracks Of My Tears,” “Tears Of A Clown”), and songs other people sang (“My Guy,” “My Girl”). The house band for the Detroit record label was legendary, with many other bassists — Paul McCartney and Geddy Lee included — saying that James Jamerson was their main bass influence. It’s hard to overstate his influence as someone who brought pentatonic patterning and jazz chromaticism to its rightful place in the basic toolset of the pop/rock approach to bass.
For this playlist, I’m trying to stick with patterned and riff-based lines as opposed to the more melodic/chromatic Jamerson/McCartney/Entwhistle/Kuzdas approach, and “Going to a Go-Go” is a good example of that kind of patterned simplicity, though it also introduces some of Jamerson’s amazing melodicism.
LESSON: Tab/music at SoundSlice: https://www.soundslice.com/slices/Fnsfc/
(NOTE: as far as I can tell, this has disappeared as of 2025)
If f you want to explore the Jamerson style further, this video lesson by Greg Fairweather for the bass line on Smokey Robinson’s “I Second That Emotion” is really nice (and, sentimental gentleman that I am, I love the guy’s admission that he kind of teared up while figuring out the bass line — NOTE: not the lyrics: it was the bass line’s construction that made him emotional!).
I’ll also point to this very wonderful introduction from Joss Fossgreen’s BassBuzz about a practice exercise that Jamerson apparently worked with a lot to help him develop bass lines.
Song No. 5 — Bob Marley, “Stir It Up” (Aston “Family Man” Barrett, bass) (1973)
“…Wailin’ and skankin’ to Bob Marley…”
Great verse pattern, great chorus pattern, sticking very close to the chords in the very familiar I-IV-V-IV progression (think “Wild Thing,” “Hang On Sloopy,” “Angel of the Morning”) used in this Bob Marley song.
LESSON: Time for a Brit! Here’s Stuart Clayton, “Bob Marley – ‘Stir It Up’ Full Song Tutorial for Bass”
One thing you don’t get in this particular song is something I closely associate with Barrett’s playing and that of mid-1970s reggae in general is the approach that — contra Bootsy — often avoids the One, with lines that will just skip the downbeat and then play little snaky patterns that approach it but don’t hit it. Lots of space, because space is the place. You can hear this on other Marley/Barrett staples like “I Shot the Sherriff” and “Get Up, Stand Up.” But listen to “Duppy Conqueror” for a very different approach to the same I-IV-V-IV progression as “Stir It Up.”
Song No. 6 — Gregory Isaacs, “Wailing Rudy” (Robbie Shakespeare, bass) (1980)
“…Reggae’s expanding with Sly and Robbie…”
LESSON: “R.I.P ROBBIE SHAKESPEARE 5 SIMPLE BASS LINES YOU SHOULD KNOW,” from Don Chandler’s “Donstrumental” channel. Start at 11:45 and riddim up.
Robbie Shakespeare & drummer Sly Dunbar created and produced a lot of the great recordings of the “dub” reggae style in which instrumental parts, odd sounds, and applied delay effects drop in and out of the mix in sudden, unexpected, and trippy ways — kind of anticipating hip hop sampling. This song is a good example of that, as well as a fun entry in the overall genre of songs about Rudy. (Don Chandler’s video introduces some dub greats, including the Viceroy’s “Heart of Stone,” the truly insane sounding dub version of which is called “Dub of Gold.)
For Sly and Robbie going in a pretty different direction — with a great disco bass line — check out their work with Grace Jones on a song called “Pull Up To The Bumper” (Paul Thompson’s PDBass channel has a lesson on this). This song has great shoe-gaze cover potential.
NOTE: “Pull Up To The Bumper” was recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, the Bahamas, in 1981. “Genius of Love” was recorded at Compass Point Studies in Nassau, the Bahamas, in 1981. And apparently Sly and Robbie along with Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz are the people doing the hand claps on “Genius of Love.”
Song No. 7 – Hamilton Bohannon, “Let’s Start the Dance” (Fernando Saunders, bass) (1978)
“…Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon; Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon…”
LESSON: “Let’s Start The Dance – Hamilton Bohannon – Bass Lesson,” from the YouTube channel Greg Fairweather – Bass Guitar. From Calgary, Canada, eh! He’ll show you what the funk is all aboot. Make sure you check out the part where he demonstrates the (much easier to play) breakdown section.
Hamilton Bohannon was a percussionist and bandleader who emerged out of Motown, often leading the bands that accompanied other Motown acts when they played live. When the label moved to Los Angeles, he stayed in Detroit and developed a soul/funk/disco stripped down style that pointed the way toward the dance music that would emerge in the 1980s as house music in Chicago (what they would call “hoose music” in Calgary) and as techno in Detroit. As Fairweather points out, the bass line is busy and challenging, and it was played by Fernando Saunders on a fretless bass.
Saunders would go on to be Lou Reed’s bass player for most of Reed’s work from the 1980s on, a good example of which is Saunders’s playing on 1982’s “The Blue Mask”, where he plays a very metal groove when the beat kicks in at 1:15, and then some very funky fretless squeals in the choruses, such as at 1:59.
You can see Saunders with Reed in this playlist of videos recreating a 1983 concert. It’s kind of fun to see what a bass player from his background in funk and disco does with songs like “Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll.”
For some good basic Chicago house bass, listen to Lil’ Louis’s “Club Lonely” from 1992. “Excuse me?”
Song No. 8 — The Sugar Hill Gang, “Rapper’s Delight” (Chip Shearin, bass, after Bernard Edwards’s bass line for “Good Times” by Chic”) (1979)
“…With a hippity-hop, with a hippity-ho…”
LESSON: Stuart Clayton, “Chic – ‘Good Times’ Full Song Tutorial for Bass,” from his eponymous YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ueJ01Hx4A
Not technically a sample! Producer Sylvia Robinson assembled a band to recreate the groove from Chic’s “Good Times” for which a 17-year-old player named Chip Shearin was tasked with playing the same little Bernard Edwards lick for the 17 straight minutes of the original-length recording. (I put a more radio-friendly 7-minute version on the playlist.) There is a little intro lick on “Rapper’s Delight” that isn’t in “Good Times”: it’s just D-E, E-D-G-(low) E.
For the history, get the drunk version.
Bernard Edwards played bass on a lot of great records with Chic (“Le Freak”), Sister Sledge (“We Are Family”), Diana Ross (“Upside Down”), and Madonna (“Material Girl”), as well as producing Power Station, Adam Ant, Duran Duran, Debbie Harry, and others. Here’s Chic doing “Good Times”:
Song No. 9 – Kurtis Blow, “These Are The Breaks” (Tom Wolk, bass) (1980)
“…Stepping to the rhythm of the Kurtis Blow (who needs to think when your feet just go)…”
LESSON: DeLuca (Jeff Lyons), “Bass Cover! The Breaks – Kurtis Blow” from the DeLuca Bass YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MHhI6c18sE
It’s kind of amazing to think how young hip hop and rap — at least, outside of its Bronx and Brooklyn roots — was in 1981 when “Genius Of Love” was recorded. Really the first thing anyone would have heard beyond the five boroughs was “Rapper’s Delight” from 1979, and this Kurtis Blow song from just a year later was the first certified gold rap recording. One thing I like about it is it reminds you that rap was just one part of hip hop as a cultural movement: the MC announces the “breaks” so the breakdancers know when to really show off.
The bassist, Tom Wolk, went on to a career with Hall & Oates and the Saturday Night Live house band in the 1980s. He’s the Maneater!
Song No. 10 — James Brown, “Get Up Offa That Thing” (Will Lee, bass)
“…James Brown, James Brown. James Brown, James Brown…”
LESSON: The dad bods are back: Ian Allison and Scott Devine, “Top 5 FUNK riffs for every beginner bassist” from their YouTube channel, ScottsBassLessons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHP1UWg-hFU – start at 2:52
James Brown was a full-band composer as much as a singer, and any bass lines from his oeuvre is worth a look. As suggested above, P-Funker Bootsy Collins credited Brown with changing his whole philosophy on music/life. That being said, Brown was also a Richard Nixon supporter: so be careful who you make your heroes.
Here’s a good one: “Out of Sight,” as played in one of the great music movies, the “T.A.M.I. Show, with I think Bernard Odum playing that great bass line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zieXmNwHGYA
And that wraps up Part One. Keep your eyes open for Part Two, which will focus on a single bass player and will be called “GOOD VIBRATIONS: LEARN TO PLAY THE CAROL KAYE WAY.”
The Viper & His Famous Orchestra 