Cecil McBee

Cecil McBee (born May 19, 1935 in Tulsa / Oklahoma ) is an American jazz bassist.

Live and act

McBee learned the clarinet before switching to bass at the age of seventeen and playing in local nightclubs. He trained as a music teacher at Ohio Central State University and directed a military band in the US Army at Fort Knox for two years . In 1959 he performed with Dinah Washington . In 1962 he went to Detroit ; there were first recordings with George Bohanon ( Boss: Bossa Nova ). He then became a member of Paul Winter's folk jazz group in 1963 , with whom he moved to New York City the following year . There he worked with musicians such as Denny Zeitlin , Andrew Hill , Sam Rivers ( Emanation , 1971), Dannie Richmond , Jackie McLean (1964), Wayne Shorter (1965/6), Grachan Moncur III and Keith Jarrett .

In 1966 he played with Jarrett in the successful quartet of saxophonist Charles Lloyd , but left it after the first European tour. He also recorded with Mike Nock , Pharoah Sanders , Wynton Kelly , Yusef Lateef (1967-1969), Alice Coltrane (1969-1972) and Charles Tolliver . In the 1970s he joined a. a. with Abdullah Ibrahim , Lonnie Liston Smith , Joanne Brackeen , Art Pepper and Chico Freeman . In 1974 his first album, Mutima , appeared as a band leader, and others followed. From the mid-1980s he worked as a sideman, as in the all-star formation The Leaders , until he founded his own quintet in 1996. In 1989 he recorded with Anthony Braxton ( Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989: For Warne Marsh ).

Since the 1990s, McBee has also worked with musicians such as Wendell Harrison , Ed Sarath , John Hicks , Roy Haynes , Yosuke Yamashita , Elvin Jones , Larry Willis , Joanne Brackeen , David Liebman , Tony Lakatos , Steve Grossman , Joe Maneri , Uwe Kropinski , Sangoma Everett , Garrison Fewell , Ricky Ford , Raphe Malik , Craig Harris , John Tchicai and with the Saxophone Summit around Dave Liebman. In 2007/8 he toured with the hardbop band The Cookers in Germany. In the 2010s he can be heard on recordings by Dick Griffin , The Cookers, Ed Motta and Camille Thurman ( Waiting for the Sunrise , 2017). In the field of jazz, according to Tom Lord , he was involved in 326 recording sessions between 1962 and 2017.

↑ Moncur heard him practice and brought him to the recording of "Some other stuff" with Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams , Herbie Hancock on Blue Note in 1964
↑ Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed November 23, 2019)