The brown bass was used for all of Stanley´s electric bass work- as a soloist and as a sideman-during and after Return To Forever. It is the bass pictured on his first solo album for Nemperor Records entitled Stanley Clarke (1974). His actual first solo album was entitled Children Of Forever (1973) on the Polydor label. But that album was recorded while he still had his "nasty jazz purist attitude," and you won´t hear him mention it often.

School Days (1976), Stanley´s most widely known solo work, was composed and performed on the brown bass. He acknowledges: "Anyone who seriously wants to learn to play the bass has to buy that record and learn to play that song (the title track). "Far from boastfully, Stanley recognizes School Days as a jazz-rock standard, much to the eternal chagrin of anyone who has ever worked in the electric bass section of a musical instrument sore since.

Stan and the brown bass are often credited with creating the slap/funk bass technique. Appearing first on the Stanley Clarke album, it is now a worldwide standard playing style. "A lot of guys think that I started it, or that Louis Johnson (Brothers Johnson) popped first on the bass. But it was Larry Graham ( Sly & the Family Stone, Graham Central Station). He didn´t do it the way I do. But I saw him do it first and I took it from there."

What Stanley did do was to formalize the technique. "Larry started it, but he only had one lick. That put the seed there. When I started doing it, I was the first guy in jazz to pop anything. And I played it over (chord) changes. A lot of guys could jam all day in E but couldn´t play it over changes. " Soon everyone jumped on the bandwagon and Stanley all but dropped the technique. " Now I´ve got a great idea. It´s a new lick that´s kind of a four-fingered pop. It´s real powerful."

The brown bass has been around the world about fifteen times, Stanley approximates. It´s been on tour with Return To Forever (1971-76), Jeff Beck (two tours 1978), The New Barbarians (1979 tour with Keith Richard, Ron Wood, and Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste), and of course many different incarnations of The Stanley Clarke band. " The New Barbarians gig was mostly Chuck Berry-type stuff. It wasn´t a tough gig but a lot of fun." Jeff Beck hired Stanley as a sideman and appeared on three of Stanley´s albums (Modern Man-1978, I wanna play for you- 1979, and Time Exposure- 1984).

Are you ready ? (for the future) from Time Exposure 1984)

What was the best gig ever ? " The best time I had playing was a Tokyo gig in 1979. "Stanley and the "School Day´s band were on atour of Japan when suddenly "everythin was perfect. The audience competely understood everything we were trying to do. The sound was perfect. The band was on. Everything hooked up. It worked."

Some of the last days of the brown bass saw Stanley´s biggest pop success to date with the Clarke/Duke Project. Stanley and George Duke teamed up to do a one-shot album for fun that produced a top-twenty pop hit "Sweet Baby, " and enabled them to tour as Clarke/Duke for nearly four years.

Sweet Baby (from Stanley Clarke/George Duke Project 1)

But the brown bass was gettin´ old. Stanley had new basses; one with a tremolo bar called "the black bass" and a new Alembic called "the cherry bass". And he was continuing to use and experiment with new and different tunings. The first of these was the piccolo bass. Right around School Day´s time he was becoming bored with "slaving behind sad sax players who solo all day. My main reason to have the piccolo bass built was to play melody. I figured I´d take a solo."

Luthier Carl Thompson built the first piccolo bass to Stanley´s specifications. It basically has the same intervals (E, A, D, G), scale and spacing of the regular bass, but it is tuned one octave higher. Other players have followed suit incliding Ron Carter who had an acoustic version built for him. But Stanley maintains: "It was my idea."

Then came the tenor bass. This is regular bass with lighter gauge strings tuned one fourth higher and eliminating the low E string (A, D, G,C instead of E, A, D, G). " I never liked the brown bass tunded any other way." So as new tunings were becoming basses of chice, and the brown bass was looking quite weathered, Stanley "retired" it around 1983.