A Little History

I was born in Southern California in 1959.  I started playing bass after messing around with piano and my brother's drums. I was what people term as a self taught musician for many years, though I did have piano lessons as a youngster. I started off learning regular stuff off of records. Steve Young, my brother's guitar player, and Pete Sackett the bass player helped me a lot in the beginning, while I was playing bass lines on a broken stringed guitar that was laying around. It sounded awful I am sure but, it was music to me. I was learning stuff that my brother's band was doing like Humble Pie, Cream and The Who. I love Jack Bruce, John Entwhistle and John Paul Jones. You know, the rock bag. I mean, why not, we were a bunch of white kids living in a very nice suburb, north of Atlanta. Oh, I hope I didn't rob anyone of their hard life equals good musicianship thing. Don't forget, Miles was the son of a doctor.  I continued my quest for musical knowledge by asking lots of questions of musician friends and bandstand mates and listening to lots of music.

And Then There Was Light

I was pretty happy admiring those rock guys, then it happened! I was watching PBS one day. They had some crazy jazz fusion group. It was Return To Forever. OH MY GOD! Chick Corea, Lenny White, Al Dimeola and Stanley Clark blew me away! They had the screen sectioned off so you could watch all four of those guys individually. I couldn't take my eyes off of Stanley's fingers.  I started learning stuff off of Stanley's albums. All of the Lopsy Lu and School Days stuff really knocked me out. After that came another mind crunch... Jaco Pastorious. I can't even tell you what his playing did to me and almost every bass player on the planet during the 70's and 80's. While living in Deland, Florida, I fell in love with Wes Montgomery and Ron Carter. Ron had these albums that were this sort of weird Mississippi mud slappin' music. He was playing a lot of melodies on a piccolo bass with Buster Williams playing bass behind him. I bought all of them. With all of that, I continued playing rock, blues and pop stuff in various awful bands with minor exposure to jazz from the guys I played with. 

Life On The Beach

While I was in Daytona Beach I learned a lot playing with Clarence Wares, Arnold Ramsey and of course Jimmy Graves (another great life long friend). I played with those three guys in many different bands doing different crap from rock, calypso, reggae, funk to straight ahead jazz. You had to do all of that stuff to pay the bills in Daytona. I was tiring of the gigs I was doing and my own playing. Of course, that's probably the best thing that can happen to a young musician. During my stay in Daytona, I put myself through a rough time for some reason. But, I was smart enough to keep my mind from being idle. I started studying with Harold Blanchard. He is without a doubt, one of the truly great men of our world. He changed everything for me. I told him I wanted to be able to play interesting lines on bass and compose some interesting music. He made me write four part chorales 'til I freakin' popped! I thank you Harold Blanchard for the musical and spiritual guidance. 

The Acoustic Years 

After a while, I moved to Jacksonville where I completed a degree in music performance at the University of North Florida. That is where I met Rob Denty (with whom I have built a very special musical relationship and he is a BURNIN’  tenor and soprano player!!!),  Keith Davis ( a great pianist and friend), Kevin Bales, Dr. Bill Prince, Rich Matteson, Jack Petersen, Bunky!, Marcus Printup, Doug Wamble, Noel Freidline, Ricky Rivelo, Scott Smith, Harry Pickens, Pete Chmielewski, Roy Dunlap and many others. I played in Noel's group for several years. I made a good living during those years and got to play a lot of jazz with drummer Von Barlow, pianist Noel Freidline and dyno-mite singer Renée Dickerson, now known as Renée Ebalaroza. The last I heard, they were in Vegas or something. Damn, I could go on and on about so many of these people. During my search for the greats I fell in love with PC, Charlie Haden, Steve Swallow, Anthony Jackson, Richard Davis, Miroslav Vitous. Suffice it to say, that I still enjoy playing, thanks to selfishness and all of the people out there...real or virtually imaginary. 

I'm In Jacksonville, Florida.

I moved back to Jacksonville, Florida,  making music, happily married to Michelle (she’s awesome) and making money.   Everything is better than ever.  There is so much more to tell, but my attention span is shorter than this. Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, whether they are ones of indifference, inspiration, approval or a simple hello, please send them to me by clicking on this link @jazzlake.com.

Just some thoughts from the author,

                        Paul Westlake