Bass on Top a column by Miles & Trane Since everyone else has written something about the centennials of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, why not join the parade? It is a good opportunity to look at the timeline of bassists the legendary trumpeter and saxophonist used. Born just under four months apart, the pair worked together under the elder Davis’ name periodically between Fall 1955 and Spring 1957 before a more steady affiliation in 1958-1960. It is in that latter period that this analysis will begin, as it gives a convenient bit of serendipity: the fact that two of the their most famed albums were made in that period, Davis’ Kind Blue (March 2nd and April 22nd, 1959 for Columbia) and Coltrane’s Giant Steps (May 4th–5th and December 2nd, 1959). And the analysis will end with Coltrane’s death in 1967, which came during the tenure of Davis’ “second great quintet” and before his groups swelled and electrified during his fusion period. As such, we begin with the same man, the bassist on both those albums: Paul Chambers. He had taken up the bass a decade earlier in his adopted home of Detroit (where he was a student at the seminal Cass Technical High School ... more on that later). He arrived in New York in 1954 at 19. By the time of Kind of Blue and Giant Steps, he had been on over 100 sessions from dozens of leaders, with multiple dates under Davis (with whom he had started working in late 1955) and Coltrane (who had used him for several albums in 1957-58 as well as both fellow sideman for many others and Chambers also hiring Coltrane for his own sessions). In addition to the five albums he led, Chambers played on sessions for Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller, J.J. Johnson, Lee Morgan, Red Garland, Sonny Clark, and Sonny Rollins. The collaboration between Davis and Chambers was remarkably fruitful before and after Kind of Blue and solidified a part of Davis’ music that had previously seen widely differing players like Tommy Potter, Oscar Pettiford, Al McKibbon, and Percy Heath. The rest of 1959 saw multiple engagements around the country and closed with recordings that would be part of another monumental record, Sketches of Spain, that paired Davis’ group with the Gil Evans Orchestra. 1960 continued that momentum with more Sketches of Spain recording and almost non-stop touring, including two stretches in Europe, from Spring onward. 1961 and 1962 had more of the same activity, the documents being Someday My Prince Will Come and Quiet Nights. Then, quite suddenly, Chambers left Davis’ group in early February 1963. It should be stated that Chambers did not restrict his activities solely to Davis, recording over four dozen albums during the period with, among many others, Jackie McLean, Wynton Kelly, Benny Golson, Hank Mobley, and Curtis Fuller. And after leaving Davis, he worked steadily with an array of leaders through the end of 1968, sadly passing away from tuberculosis caused and/or aggravated by drug abuse at only 33. Stepping right into the Davis group was another Cass Technical High School alumnus: Ron Carter. Nearly 26, Carter was already prophesying his prolific career, participating in over three dozen albums since 1960, with the likes of Charli Persip, Yusef Lateef, Eric Dolphy, Don Ellis, Coleman Hawkins, Cecil Payne, Jaki Byard, Wes Montgomery, Bobby Timmons, Tadd Dameron, Dizzy Reece, Ken McIntyre, Milt Jackson, Benny Golson and others, plus waxing his leader debut, Where?, for Prestige subsidiary New Jazz in 1961. It was Carter’s arrival that heralded Davis’ soon-to-be seminal band, though it took until Fall 1964 for its personnel to solidify. With Carter, Davis recorded Seven Steps To Heaven and played the Antibes festival in 1963. What is interesting though is while the “second great quintet” is thought of as a monolith, the bass chair had some upheaval/fluidity, depending on how you look at it. Gary Peacock – already a veteran and likely the only person to work for both Bud Shank and Albert Ayler – took the chair for nearly six weeks in the spring of 1964, Carter returning thereafter through the end of the year. 1965 began auspiciously with the January recording of E.S.P. but then things derailed with a convalescing Davis unable to play. And when he could, in November and December, Carter, a hot commodity, was absent, spelled by Peacock once more, then Reggie Workman, who had come up around the same time as Carter and had already come and gone in the groups of Coltrane. In 1966, Carter would return to the group but only partially, participating in East Coast performances, shows elsewhere having either Richard Davis, Carter’s only real equal in terms of fecundity, or in the Peacock mold of eclecticism, Eddie Gomez, returning permanently in October, just before the album Miles Smiles. 1967 was similar: Carter was on board when not busy elsewhere, Gomez on call, then Albert Stinson for one show (a little over two years before his passing – see Bass Tragedies column in Issue 94) and then another veteran, Buster Williams, for a tour (and playing on one track of the 1981-released compilation album Directions). Carter would fill a fixed point for all of 1967, including the albums Sorcerer and Nefertiti and would continue with Davis through the middle of 1968. Like Chambers or perhaps even more so, Carter was also on the greater jazz scene during his tenure with Davis. He recorded on sessions led by his fellow Davis bandmates but also by everyone from Bobby Timmons, Charles Lloyd, Donald Byrd and Bobby Hutcherson to Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, Eddie Harris, and Stanley Turrentine, to name only a handful. He has, of course, gone on to be likely the most recorded bassist in jazz history. Paul Chambers’ time under Coltrane was shorter and more intermittent. After Giant Steps he was part of, along with the rest of Davis’ period band, November 1959 recordings that would partly comprise Coltrane Jazz and be brought back 18 months later as one of three individual bassists taking part in the Africa/Brass recordings (though his contribution was only heard on the 1995 complete sessions version). Also in 1959 was a Birdland engagement for Coltrane where either Ahmed Abdul-Malik or George Tucker, both established and close in age to Coltrane, were on bass. In 1960 Coltrane hired the slightly younger Steve Davis in what seems to be his first professional engagement. Davis stayed in the band through the end of the year for all its live dates and played on music recorded in October and released piecemeal on My Favorite Things, Coltrane Jazz, Coltrane Plays the Blues, and Coltrane’s Sound. Though Davis lived until 1987, his credits after Coltrane were slight: the Mangione Brothers, Dave Burns, McCoy Tyner, Kenny Dorham, James Moody, Freddie McCoy, and Eddie Jefferson, all made in the ‘60s. One deviation in the year came via Coltrane’s shared date with Don Cherry, The Avant-Garde, where bass was handled by either Charlie Haden or Percy Heath. 1961 was a year in flux, bassist-wise, for Coltrane. He introduced a concept to which he would return later in the decade by using two bassists for an engagement at Chicago’s Sutherland Lounge in March: Raphael Don Garrett and Workman, the former, about six years younger, working with Roland Kirk, Paul Serrano, and Eddie Harris, the latter 11 years younger, sideman for Gigi Gryce, Donald Byrd, Duke Jordan, Richard Williams, and Dave Pike. Workman would be part of the aforementioned Africa/Brass, as would, separately, another bassist, Art Davis, already with credits under Max Roach, Lee Morgan, Booker Little, Hal Mooney, Ernestine Anderson, Dizzy Gillespie, Leo Wright, Clifford Jordan/Sonny Red, Abbey Lincoln, and Booker Little. But in May they were together for Ole Coltrane and nearly a month at the Village Vanguard in August. Workman would become the fixed bassist for Coltrane through the end of the year for concerts, including a European tour, and a small portion of the Ballads album from the end of the year. An exception was Workman either alternating or alongside Jimmy Garrison for a November stint at the Village Vanguard. If not for a family health crisis forcing Workman to leave the group at the end of 1961 and return to his native Philadelphia, he likely would have stayed with the band and jazz history been quite different. It should be said that Workman hardly is a footnote, becoming one of the most revered players of his generation. But it was Garrison who became the anchor. Born between Garrett and Workman, prior to joining Coltrane he had worked with Philly Joe Jones, Curtis Fuller, Kenny Dorham, Jackie McLean, JR Montrose, Walter Bishop, Jr., Ornette Coleman, Bill Barron, and Ted Curson. Unlike Carter and Davis, once Garrison was on board, he stayed there. That was mostly to do with Coltrane’s packed schedule of touring and albums and that, unlike Davis, he was healthy and non-combustible. From 1962-1964, Garrison was omnipresent, including the bulk of Ballads, Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (where he split duties with Ellington’s period bassist Aaron Bell), 2018 discovery Both Directions At Once, John Coltrane And Johnny Hartman, Impressions, Crescent, another new millennium unearthed gem in Blue World, and closing out the year with Coltrane’s magnum opus A Love Supreme (which added Art Davis for a second day of recording, released as a second disc to the album’s deluxe edition in 2002). In 1965 Garrison was still the main man but occasionally Davis would be alongside him: partially on The John Coltrane Quartet Plays in February and fully for June’s Ascension. Otherwise, Garrison was the sole bassist for performances and most of the other albums: Transition, Sun Ship, and Meditations. The exceptions without Davis were overdubs of Haden for the posthumously released Infinity and Garrett returning to play both bass and clarinet for Live In Seattle (as well as the 2021 archival release A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle), Om, and part of Kulu Se Mama. 1966 was even more Garrison-centric, with the only documented work including a second bassist shows in November and December with Lionel “Sonny” Johnson, the brother of Dewey Johnson, who had played on Ascension. The last year of Coltrane’s life, Garrison was there as well, with one notable absence: the Coltrane/Rashied Ali duet Interstellar Space. Unlike Chambers or Carter, Garrison was kept so busy during his time with Coltrane that his outside discography at the time is meager, though it does include his sole leader date, Illumination! with the Elvin Jones/Jimmy Garrison Sextet. Otherwise it was sessions with Lorez Alexandria, Coltrane bandmate McCoy Tyner, Sonny Rollins, Bill Dixon, and Robert F. Pozar. After Coltrane’s death, Garrison kept working but his documentation slowed, his two Blue Note dates with the Jones trio rounded out by Joe Farrell being the most enduring. There were also dates with Rolf and Joachim Kuhn, Clifford Thornton and Nathan Davis, and regular work with Alice Coltrane and Archie Shepp. His final recording came in early 1975 with Beaver Harris and Dave Burrell’s 360 Degree Music Experience. Garrison died of lung cancer in 1976 at 42.
© 2026 Andrey Henkin
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