Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

jazztimes.com

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit

of Victor Bailey
04/29/16

Victor Bailey landed his dream job in 1982 when, still in his early
20s, he succeeded Jaco Pastorius to become the last in the line of
stellar electric bassists in his favorite band, Weather Report. He
stayed with Weather Report until cofounders Joe Zawinul and
Wayne Shorter disbanded it in 1986, performing on the albums
Procession, Domino Theory, Sportin’ Life and This Is This!, then
continued working with Zawinul in his groups Weather Update and
the Zawinul Syndicate. Bailey also toured and/or recorded through
the years with numerous other big names from the worlds of jazz
and pop—Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, Steps Ahead, Madonna and
Lady Gaga among them—racking up appearances on more than
1,000 albums.

But today Bailey, who turned 56 on March 27, resides in an

assisted-living apartment in suburban Boston. He is confined to a
wheelchair, the muscles in his arms and legs atrophied by the
hereditary Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. His prospects of playing
bass again are slim, but he intends to resume teaching at Berklee
College of Music; in fact, he says he would already be doing so if
the terms of the medical leave he took this fall, as his upper body
began failing him, didn’t preclude it.

1 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

Bailey recently spent an hour with JT in his sparse quarters,

describing his condition and reminiscing about his career. He sat in
his wheelchair, dressed in jeans and a gray crewneck sweater, his
spirit remarkably upbeat and matter-of-fact.

Bill Beuttler: Can you describe what’s going on with you

physically? What is Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease?

Victor Bailey: It’s named for three French doctors who isolated it in
the late-1800s. Basically it’s muscular dystrophy. There are many
different kinds of muscular dystrophy; saying “muscular dystrophy”
is like saying “cancer.” It’s genetic. My grandmother had it, and my
father, and one of my father’s brothers. There are different forms of
the disease. I have type 1, there’s 1A, there’s type 2, there’s a
bunch of different types, mostly characterized by loss of muscle. I
have very little muscle on my leg at all, and now I’m starting to lose
the muscles in my hands and arms. So it’s been developing. I was
functioning normally. I started falling 25 years ago. I would just
trip—not often, but just out of the blue sometimes I would trip and
be on the ground. And I knew what it was because the disease was
in my family. So my legs have been getting progressively weaker
for the past 25 years. Only in the last year my upper body has
started to fail me. My father didn’t have problems with his upper
body until he was in his ’70s. He’s a saxophone player and he
stopped playing at maybe 77 or 78. I wasn’t expecting my arms and
hands to start going bad for another 20 years. I basically can’t even
play right now.

That’s got to be awful.

Not being able to play isn’t bothering me as much as I would have

2 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

thought. I guess I fulfilled every dream I ever had as a musician.

Being able to get out of bed or on and off the toilet and take a
shower by myself, or dress myself, is way more important than
playing the bass. I can’t do those things by myself now, so as much
as I would love to play, being able to get out of the bed in the
morning means a lot more.

Speaking of fulfilling your dreams as a musician, you joined

Weather Report in your early 20s. How did you get there so
young?

Well, I started out on drums. My father’s a writer/arranger/producer.

He arranged and produced for Nina Simone, Patti LaBelle, the
Stylistics, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Teddy Pendergrass, Billy
Paul, Blue Magic—the Philadelphia R&B acts from the ’60s and
’70s. I always played the piano, as long as I can remember, and
then at 10 I was gigging in a couple of different bands playing
drums, and I switched to bass later on. I was always gigging. I was
involved in music every single day as long as I can remember.

Why’d you switch to bass?

The bass player quit the band. I told the bass player, “Well, can I
hold your bass?” I picked it up and I could just play all the songs—
better than that guy. And my dad, who never came downstairs while
I was playing with my friends, came downstairs and said, “Who’s
that playing bass?” He said, “You should be a bass player.” I was
actually filling and improvising. I could pretty much pick up and play
any instrument, but the bass, for reasons I don’t even know, I just
felt really connected with it. Once I picked it up I never put it down.

3 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

And has it always been electric bass? Have you ever played
acoustic?

Yeah, I played acoustic when I was in high school. I played in

orchestra, jazz band and all that. When I went to Berklee, which
was for a year, I had a stand-up bass. When I moved to New York I
left it in the apartment with the guys I was with. I came back like a
month later and the thing had walked. I played a little acoustic bass,
but I was always more enamored of the electric bass.

You went to Berklee because you couldn't get into the Navy
because you had asthma.

I was gonna do the Navy, man, and then you do your four years
and you have your scholarship money. But because I had asthma I
was rejected from the Navy. When I got home from the recruiting
office my dad said, “Hey, there's a letter over there for you,” and it
was from Berklee, saying I had been accepted to Berklee. So that
was almost like a stroke of God. I'm not even religious, but fate, or
whatever you want to call it.

At Berklee your classmates were guys like Branford Marsalis

and Greg Osby.

My classmates were unbelievable: Branford, Greg Osby, Cindy

Blackman, Kevin Eubanks, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Terri Lyne
Carrington—she was a little girl but she was around. Frank Lacy,
the trombonist. A couple of rock stars: Steve Vai, he left school to
go with Zappa. Stu Hamm, who’s a tapping-bass wizard. It was a
really amazing group of people. Mark Ledford, who was the vocalist

4 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

and trumpeter in the Pat Metheny Group, he was my roommate.

Those were the days when a lot of you would go there for a
year or two and then drop out and turn pro.

At that time, if you could play you were doing gigs every single
night. [If] somebody in school got a gig with somebody in New York,
when they needed a bass player or a drummer they’d say, “Hey, I
got a friend up at Berklee.” And it’d be guys like Branford and
myself, we’d been gigging since we were little kids. You were
actually qualified to go to New York and do those gigs. I’ve got
students now who can play the mess out of the bass instrument
[but] there’s no gig I could send them on. They don’t have the
experience.

How does a guy like you, who’s come from the bandstand, try
to teach that to student musicians?

I always have them study things that are music. If we're studying
theory, modes—like we're studying the Dorian mode—well, I have
them learn to add “So What?” It's a minor scale with a major sixth.
So I always have them learn a song alongside whatever we study.
And I always have them play, I make them play for me before every
lesson. I make them find songs every week. Find a song that has
this lesson in it. Come back next week and I want to hear you play
the song. Then I just encourage them to play with people. Now, in
their era they can play with the computer, and they can all play with
the phone. When I ask them to play something, they want to pull
out their iPhone and find a track. Every week, the first thing I ask
them is, “Did you play with anybody?” And half of them didn't. And
I'm like, “There's 4,000 students here and you guys don't play

5 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

together?” And they're like, “Ah, well, I wrote something in

GarageBand and I played with my tracks.” If your roommate’s a
guitar player and you play bass, you gotta play with him during the
week, please.

Are you paying attention to the current scene? Are there good
electric bassists coming along now?

There are guys that are, technically speaking, phenomenal. In my

day I thought I had a lot of chops, but now the kids are so much
faster and so much cleaner than we were. However, when you say
“good,” I think of music. Stanley Clarke, Jaco—those guys made
some of the best music ever. It wasn’t just chops. There are some
bass players out here now who are phenomenal, but I'm not
hearing any music from any of them that I remember. A lot of them
are trying to prove how heavy they are when, if you look at all the
songs of Jaco Pastorius — who supposedly influences everybody
— most of them are not complicated. Most of them are very simple.
He's not trying to be heavy. He could play one note, and it's heavy.

Older musicians tend to realize that. But you've been gigging

since you were 10 years old. Coming up, you must have
learned that lesson faster.

Well, I learned it faster because I was playing with grown men when
I was a little kid, and because my father was a serious,
accomplished musician. Philadelphia was not a town where you
could have chops and no feeling and get on the bandstand. If you
weren't swinging, cats were not into it. Guys would be like, “Yeah,
you soloed great but then you soloed through my whole solo.” It
hurt my feelings when I was a kid, but by the time I was a teenager

6 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

I had kind of figured that part of it out—that you don't have to

always play as much as you can, all the time, to say something.

That's sort of a tough-love lesson to a 10-year-old, right?

It's something you need, though.

You were 22 the year you joined Weather Report. Was it

difficult fitting in?

I thought I was the greatest bass player at the time, long before
that. I fit in because I could. When I was 10 I could fit in with
anybody.

Your heroes on electric bass were Stanley Clarke, Alphonso

Johnson and Jaco Pastorius. But you thought you were the
best?

I thought I was the greatest bass player that there was, at the time.
Needless to say I wasn’t, but I thought I was the man. Most of what
I did came out of listening to Weather Report records anyway. I got
the gig because of Omar Hakim. I was in New York at the time
working with Hugh Masekela, and he used to be married to Miriam
Makeba. So we did some gigs with Miriam every now and then, and
then around ’82 I did two gigs at Carnegie Hall with Miriam, and
Omar was on drums. That second night he said, “I have the gig with
Weather Report, and Jaco left the band. Send Joe Zawinul your
tape.” [Zawinul] called me a couple of days later. He didn’t have my
tape yet, and he said, “Well, you’re the guy I’m going to hire. I can
feel it.” Once he and Wayne got the tape, they liked the tape—it's a
cassette, that's how long ago we're talking about.

7 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

Wayne Shorter is renowned for his cryptic remarks. Do you

recall any from your years with Weather Report?

I think it was the first time we played together, and he says, “You’re
like the girl who left a shadow on your drawer, but once you went to
get it, it wasn’t there.” Thirty-three years later I still don’t know what
he meant by that. But he says he meant, “You sound great, man.”
So I guess it’s a compliment. At the time I didn’t know the guy; I
didn’t know he was so interesting.

Omar Hakim, that's your guy. You've done a lot of stuff with
him.

Oh, yeah, Omar and I—maybe I'm not supposed to say this— we’re
one of the classic rhythm sections. Certain rhythm sections: Rocco
[Prestia] and Dave Garibaldi from Tower of Power, Peter [Erskine]
and Jaco, and Lenny [White] and Stanley, Philly Joe Jones and
Paul Chambers. There are just certain rhythm sections that work
well together.

Wayne Shorter is renowned for his cryptic remarks. Do you

recall any from your years with Weather Report?

I've got one. I think it was the first time we played together, and he
says, “You're like the girl who left a shadow on your drawer, but
once you went to get it, it wasn't there.” And, 33 years later, I still
don't know what he meant by that. But he says that he meant, “You
sound great, man.” So I guess it’s a compliment. But isn't there like,
Pinocchio or something, there's a little pixie who can't find her
shadow? I have no idea. That never left me, I never forgot it. I'm

8 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

sure he said a bunch of other crazy stuff, but that's the one I always
remembered. At the time I didn't know the guy, I didn't know he was
so interesting.

Any Zawinul stories?

Everyone’s got Zawinul quotes. Mine was Joe telling me, “Bailey,
you know I’m a better composer den Beethoven.” Then he says,
“Well, maybe not better, but I’m up dere.” I think my all-time favorite
Weather Report story was the first time we played in Philadelphia,
my mom, she didn’t really know anything about fusion but she loved
Omar Hakim. We’re sitting in the dressing room—Joe Zawinul,
Wayne Shorter, myself, Mino Cinelu, Omar Hakim—and my mother
said, “Now, all of you guys can play. But that one on the drums, now
he’s good.”

Did that get a reaction from Zawinul?

I don't remember it. He probably didn't know it. He's one of those
people like Miles Davis or Ron Carter who, to people who don't
know him, he probably seems very rough and tough. But if you
know them, and they care about you, they're the lovingest people in
the world. Joe took extremely good care of me, until the day he
died. He was always very, very good to me. And he was funny. If I
could get people to say those quotes, he was a funny guy.

Did you play with all those bands that followed Weather
Report?

I'm the only musician—not only bass player—I’m the only musician
who was with every band he had. Weather Update, Zawinul

9 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

Syndicate, and then he did a couple of big band projects in Europe

before he died. Then one of the last interviews he did, they'd ask
about all these bass players, he said, “Victor Bailey is the one who
would be in any band that I would ever have.” Which made me
really happy, because I was—I was in every band that he ever had.
Joe was another guy, like Omar, he and I could just flow together. I
think a lot of bass players, once again, guys have a lot of chops but
don’t know a lot of music. Some of the other guys, he couldn’t really
improvise, because they would have licks together that they knew,
but if he started improvising, a lot of other guys couldn't go with
him. But I could pretty much go with anybody. So he and I really
played well together. He never had to explain to me how to play. He
always had his ideas about things, but we could just play. And he
played everything a little bit different every night, too. So he would
just improvise, and we would really play together. And I could
improvise and he would go along with me.

You mentioned Ron Carter. He played on your latest album.

He played on “Countdown,” I did a version of a Coltrane tune, the

third song on the Giant Steps record. I actually transcribed
Coltrane's solo when I went to Berklee, so I made an arrangement
around the solo and got Dave Kikoski playing piano and Lenny
White played drums. I called another bass player first, who shall
remain nameless because they are very famous, but they had a
major attitude with me. I don't know what it was, but their attitude
was so bad I said, “OK, I'm gonna call Ron.” And I called Ron never
thinking he was gonna play on another bass player's record. And
he said, “Sure, I'll do it,” and then he came and he did it. And then

10 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

this other bass player calls to say, “You should have called me to
play on that.”

The same guy?

Oh, yeah. But Ron was always very nice to me, like since I was a
teenager when they would ask in magazines what electric bass
players were really good, he would always say Marcus Miller and
me. And he always told me, when I got an upright, “I got a spot for
you”—meaning he had a lesson open. Every guy in New York's
trying to get lessons from Ron, and they never can. So I bought an
upright about five years ago and started taking lessons with him.
Called him up, said, “Mr. Carter, you told me when I got a bass to
come see you.” And a bunch of upright players call me asking,
“How you get lessons from Ron?” But I took a few lessons from
him. Matter of fact, when I played in New York, when I was 19 with
Hugh Masekela, he was in the club and he said, “Young man, you
sound good. I never heard anybody on the electric bass like that.
You know how to play over chords real good. Come by my house
one day and let me show you how to play the bass.”

He’s in Guinness World Records for being on 2221 recordings.

You're on over a thousand, right?
I'm on over a thousand. Ron, if that was in the Guinness Book of
World Records that probably was in the '70s. He's probably on
twice that many by now. This was a guy who was doing studio work
every day. For years, for decades. And as many as I played on, I
spent more than half the time on the road. But everybody I ever
played with was recording, and when you came home—talking the

11 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

'80s, when I really started—pretty much everybody who could play

had a record deal. For instrumental music. I was in Steps Ahead,
and everybody had their own record deal: Erskine, [Michael]
Brecker, Mike Mainieri, Chuck Loeb. And also Weather Report. If I
played with Lenny White or Billy Cobham or whoever it was, pretty
much everybody at every gig you had had a record deal. So there
were record dates like every single day.

You’ve also worked with pop stars. Your website mentions

Madonna and Lady Gaga.

Madonna, Lady Gaga—those were absolutely great. I’m not a jazz

musician; I do it all. I played funk and R&B and pop long before I
got into jazz and fusion, and I never stopped. I got my official
recognition as a fusion guy, so people want you to be that, but
before I made any solo records I was an aspiring R&B [and pop]
producer. I had a production deal with Atlantic Records, and I had a
publishing deal with MCA as an R&B writer back in the ’80s and
’90s. I just never wound up getting the big hits that I thought I was
writing. I wasn’t that interested in being a jazz recording artist. I’ve
written way more pop tunes than I have jazz tunes.

When kids come to Berklee, do you have to point out to some

of them that there’s nothing wrong with playing pop?

Every now and then you get the kid who has illusions about pop
and all that, but I remind him, first thing, that every jazz artist isn’t a
great musician. There were many times on a jazz gig or recording
that I was just waiting to get my check and go home. I played with
Madonna, Omar Hakim was on the drums, Michael Bearden and
Jai Winding on keyboards, Paul Pesco on guitar and Luis Conte on

12 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

percussion. That’s one of the all-time best bands I ever played with.
By far. That band was kick-ass. You know, me and Omar, we made
a record with the O’Jays. It was later in the O’Jays' career so it was
not one of their biggest records, but me, Omar, Richard Tee on
piano and organ, and I forgot who played guitar—one of those guys
who's like a big studio musician. But it was a kick-ass record.
People want to know why you would play with the O’Jays.
Obviously you're not going to improvise because those guys are
singing, but anybody wants to talk to me about that—listen to
Anthony Jackson's bass line on “For the Love of Money.” You know
what I mean? It's not jazz, it's not improvised—it's one of the
greatest things anybody ever did. Some of the students have that
sort of [negative attitude toward pop], but most of the dudes aren’t
there to be jazz guys. They live in a different era now. I make all of
them study jazz. I think everybody should study jazz because it has
everything in it. But I think the beauty of Berklee is that we don’t
discourage a student from anything. If a kid wants to be a hip-hop
artist, that’s fine with me. You’re gonna be a hip-hop artist who
knows what a C-major-seventh is when I get finished with you.

Do you think there’s much chance you’ll be able to play the

bass again?

I don’t know. I’m gonna try. Right now I’m not even strong enough
to pick it up. Right now I literally can’t play at all, because my hands
don’t function and my arms aren’t strong. I can’t hold my arms up
more than just a couple of minutes.

You plan to resume teaching. Is there anything else that you

can do professionally?

13 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46

Jazz Articles: The Unbreakable Spirit of Victor Bailey about:reader?url=http://jazztimes.com/articles/171803-the-un...

I’m still writing music. The issue, professionally, is there’s really no

production work. Nobody hires a producer to produce a jazz record.
There used to be jazz producers; I produced a bunch of records.
I’m always writing music. But I’m not as concerned with that now as
I am with just trying to heal.

I saw the artwork you do on your website. How long have you
been doing that?

I was always drawing and sketching my whole life. I started painting

in 1996, and the third one I ever did, [bassist] Charles Fambrough
came by my house and saw this painting called “Upright Citizen.”
He bought that painting and put it on the cover of his record [also
titled Upright Citizen]. So I thought maybe I should keep doing this.
But I have the same issue with painting now; I can’t hold my arms
up for more than a couple minutes. But we’ll see. I’m getting my
therapy, and I don’t think I’m ever gonna run a marathon again, but
if I could just paint a little bit, I’ll be happy.

Purchase this issue from Barnes & Noble or Apple Newsstand.

Print and digital subscriptions are also available.

14 von 14 02.10.16, 17:46