Bass Player Dave Stone: It’s a Family Trait

Not meaning to offend any of my bass-playing friends, I’ve often wondered what motivates a musician to want to play the bass and have to haul that awkward instrument all over town when performing. Certainly it doesn’t fit under the seat when it comes to traveling on an airline. Nicki Parrott started her musical career playing the piano and took up the bass when her older sister needed a bass player for her band. Richard Simon was the guitarist in a community college stage band and was recruited to take over a much larger string instrument when the band bassist didn’t show up for a rehearsal. Richard admits, “It was love at first sight, even though I went through several layers of skin while learning to play the bass.” In Dave Stone’s case, it must be part of his family DNA. Both his father and uncle were bass players and played in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His Dad also played with Barney Bigard, toured with Harry James for three years, and worked on I love Lucy and the The Lucy Show over 17 years. Dave refers to his father as “his best friend who made a huge impact on my life.” So its‘s natural that he would want to follow in his Dad’s footsteps. Growing up in Glendale, California, Dave had a newspaper route as a kid and attended Eagle Rock High School where he played in the school band directed by Johnny Rinaldo, who would one day become his father-in
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Lew Shaw started writing about music as the publicist for the famous Berkshire Music Barn in the 1960s. He joined the West Coast Rag in 1989 and has been a guiding light to this paper through the two name changes since then as we grew to become The Syncopated Times.  47 of his profiles of today's top musicians are collected in Jazz Beat: Notes on Classic Jazz. Volume two, Jazz Beat Encore: More Notes on Classic Jazz contains 43 more! Lew taps his extensive network of connections and friends throughout the traditional jazz world to bring us his Jazz Jottings column every month.

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