Ira Wilkes

Music:

Member Since: 12/20/2007
Influences: Curtis Mayfield, Eric Gales, Wes Montgomery, Albert Collins, Doc Powell, George Benson
Below is an article taken from Bass Player Magazine. The link to the actual article can be found at the end:David Hungate’s Complete Bass Line Boz Scaggs’s ‘LowDown’ By Chris Jisi | July, 2006Active fault lines notwithstanding, Los Angeles was the epicenter of the record industry in the mid ’70s, and an exciting place to be. As compelling new talent supplanted veterans on label rosters, the session-player ranks also received a youthful infusion. In 1975, former Steve Miller Band vocalist and yet-to-break-big solo artist Boz Scaggs was producing guitarist Les Dudek’s self-titled debut when he encountered the rhythm team of drummer Jeff Porcaro, keyboardist David Paich, and bassist David Hungate on the session. The trio had been playing together since Paich and Porcaro were in high school. Impressed, Scaggs hired the twentysomethings to work on his upcoming album for Columbia. The result was Silk Degrees, a blue-eyed soul classic that rose to the No. 2 pop position and yielded six radio singles, including the hits “Lido Shuffle” and “We’re All Alone.” Behind-the-scenes buzz about the platter led to a boatload of sessions for Porcaro, Paich, and Hungate, as well as offers from labels to start a band. Within a year, the three had formed Toto, which went on to sell millions of records and score numerous hits.Silk Degrees’ chart-topping single, “Lowdown,” became an instant anthem as it crossed genres in a major way, eventually winning the 1976 Grammy for R&B Song of the Year. “Lowdown” blew away the club crowd of the time, fueled by a funky beat and two-part bass line that was miles hipper than the disco already spreading from the East. (The tune would also later be much sampled by rappers.) Hungate recalls, “It was such an exhilarating creative period. At most recording dates we were experimenting with different ideas, and we would try to invent new grooves for every song we encountered.” The Silk Degrees sessions, which took place at L.A.’s Davelin Studios in mid-September 1975, were no different. Hungate remembers, “The sessions were in the evening and very informal; we’d do one or two tunes a night. There was no sense that we were making a hit record—it was more of a jam atmosphere. Plus, we were all a little buzzed!” For “Lowdown,” Hungate, Porcaro, Paich, and guitarist Fred Tackett jammed for a while to come up with parts, with each eventually scribbling their own basic charts. They then recorded live to Scaggs’s scratch vocal, sans click track, nailing it in three takes. Paich liked a little phrase-ending hammered fill that Hungate had played at one point in the jam—inspired by a similar move the Meters’ George Porter Jr. makes on Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time” [In the Right Place, Atco, 1973]—so he asked him to stay put and record a second bass track with those verse fills. While playing along, Hungate added upper-register fills to the other sections of the tune just for fun, and was later surprised to hear they were kept in the final version. “A bassist named Ira Wilkes was the first guy I saw slap and pop,” notes David. “He showed me some moves, and I began experimenting with it. When I went on tour with Boz after the album came out, I actually used thumb slaps to play the low E and A groove because it was the most efficient way play both parts at once, live. For the track, though, I played the main groove with my index, middle, and ring fingers.” That line enters at bar 5 and continues through the first and second verses, at A and B. “The groove was something Jeff and I locked into during the jam; the 16th-note pickup was common in R&B at the time. I kept it straight and simple, alluding to a turnaround every so often [beat four in bars 28, 32, 50, etc.] that Jeff mirrored with his kick.” He laughs, “We were young, so there’s a fair amount of pushing and pulling, but it all adds to the charm of the track!” For the first bridge, at C, Hungate ups the syncopation of the main groove to change the feel. On the top, he adds cool sliding double-stops that outline the changes—dig his use of the major 7th in bar 57 and 6th in bar 59. “Those were influenced by fills the great studio guitarist David T. Walker would use, and also by Chuck Rainey’s upper-register work on songs like Aretha Franklin’s ‘Till You Come Back to Me,’ which is my all-time favorite record.” The verse figure returns at D, setting up the transition section, E, which features a guitar solo that was later overdubbed by Louie Shelton. Here, Hungate and Porcaro bump up the intensity. David says, “Jeff and I tended to start intense and build from there! He was our leader on sessions, the way Jamerson was at Motown; he was our truth meter, and if he liked what you played, he let you know.” On the upper-register overdubbed line, Hungate plays an index-popped part similar to the verse’s, except he sets up the root-7 hammer-on over the Fm7 chord and answers it with a descending 4-3 pull-off over B7. With the arrival of the third verse at F, Hungate and Porcaro maintain the pumping pace, setting up the second bridge, G. While Hungate plays a similar syncopated lower part, as in the previous bridge (and adds a cool octave in bar 98), on the top he changes his fills tastefully. Finally, at H’s outro, rhythm-section motion is at its apex. Hungate borrows the octave-5-root drop he alludes to at the start of the transition section, and adds more motion on the A7 half of the phrases on into the fade. He advises, “Stay on top of the feel and focus on the drums, especially the hi-hat. The song has an attitude, and that’s how Jeff played it. With him and David and Fred, the inspiration was bouncing off the walls—so try to pick up on that, like I did.”http://www.bassplayer.com/article/boz-scaggss-lowdown /Jul-06/21492
Record Label: Unsigned
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