1001 Albums
en
Create account

47 albums · 1955–2019

The double bass, from jazz and the blues to the concert hall, Havana and rockabilly

· 1 min read · by 1001 Albums

A dark old double bass with sloping shoulders standing on a carpet in a church, a harpsichord behind it
Charles Mingus with a cigar in his mouth, his eyes half closed, his left hand on the neck of his bass, an office tower behind himLee Rocker in a shirt printed with roses and skulls slapping a flame-maple double bass at a microphone on a dark stage
An eighteenth-century double bass from Cremona in the Museo della Musica, in the church of San Maurizio, Venice, 2015. Photo: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Charles Mingus playing in Lower Manhattan on 4 July 1976. Photo: Tom Marcello, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Lee Rocker of the Stray Cats at the Uptown, Kansas City, 2007. Photo: Hozark, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The double bass is the largest and lowest of the bowed strings, about as tall as a person, with four strings tuned in fourths. In the orchestra it is mostly bowed. In jazz and the blues it is plucked, and in rockabilly the player slaps the strings against the fingerboard.

In jazz it keeps the beat and the harmony, and Oscar Pettiford, Ray Brown and Charles Mingus led their own bands from it; Charlie Haden, Dave Holland and Esperanza Spalding came later. Israel "Cachao" López recorded his descargas in Havana in 1957, Willie Dixon played it in Chicago blues, and Lee Rocker slapped it in the Stray Cats. Giovanni Bottesini wrote for it as a solo instrument in the nineteenth century, and Gary Karr and Edgar Meyer have recorded it as one.

The list has 47 records from 1955 to 2019. The electric bass guitar is left out, and so are records where the bass plays behind a singer or a soloist; some classical records are dated by the years the catalogues give them. About 40 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

What it sounds like

The theme of Bottesini's Introduzione e Gavotta, recorded in 2007Rainer Lewalter, double bass, and Mariana Hernandez, piano

Recording: Rainer Lewalter, CC BY-SA 2.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons.

By genre

Jazz 67%Classical 16%Blues 2%Other 15%
  • Jazz 67%
  • Classical 16%
  • Blues 2%
  • Other 15%

The genres named most: jazz, classical, contemporary jazz, hard bop, post-bop, avant-garde jazz.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 12 countries: United States 28, United Kingdom 4, France 3, Cuba 2, Denmark 2 and 7 more. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1950s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

More lists

Lists of Instruments first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.

29 albums · 1976–2024

The kora of Mali, the harp-lute of the jeli

· 1 min read

The kora is the harp-lute of the jeli, the griots of Mali, Guinea, Senegal and the Gambia: 21 strings over a large calabash covered in cowhide, played with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands.

World 89%Blues 3%Classical 3%Other 5%
  • World 89%
  • Blues 3%
  • Classical 3%
  • Other 5%

Read and see the list