Blackstone’s “Little Drummer Boy,” plus excerpts of other songs from his Legacy albums
There aren’t many musicians whose 2024 started off with the following engagements: Saturday Night Live (with Justin Timberlake), the Grammys, the Super Bowl, NBA All-Star Weekend, and The Recording Academy Honors. But we live in the age of Adam Blackstone, who has parlayed his serious groove and musicianship and easy-going, respectful demeanor into his present role as the most in-demand musical director on the planet. As if that isn’t schedule-stuffing enough, Blackstone also found time to record three solo albums within 13 months: Legacy [2022], The Legacy Experience (Live)[2023], and A Legacy Christmas [2023], all on his BASSic Black Entertainment label. The three sides are reflective of Adam’s career: expansive in musical styles — from gospel to rap to big band swing — with a wide array of guests, inluding Jill Scott, Kirk Franklin, Queen Latifah, Robert Glasper, Andra Day, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Keke Palmer, and John Scofield.
Best of all for us on the bottom is that Blackstone included several bass features that bring to mind the breadth of Marcus Miller with regard to fingerboard expression, use of multiple basses, radical reharms, and astute production, orchestration, and arranging. “The genesis was going through the pandemic,” explains the Willingboro, New Jersey-raised bassist. “I lost a cousin and a couple of friends. After attending their services, I wanted to do something to mark their lives and accomplishments, and that got me thinking about my own career. I’ve worked with many great artists, but what did I have of my own to leave for my children? So I buckled down and got to work on Legacy.” He continues, “I didn’t plan any bass features; it sort of ended up that way. I just wanted to create a good body of work. Of course, as a solo artist people were probably expecting me to showcase the bass somewhat because it’s my main instrument. But I also play other instruments, compose, produce, and arrange, so I wanted to present those gifts, as well.”
Three of the tracks with front-facing bass are “Lost,” from Legacy, and “Away in a Manger” and “Little Drummer Boy” from A Legacy Christmas. Let’s take a closer look. Adam relates the “Lost” backstory: “‘Lost’ came about through [keyboardist] Khirye Tyler, who is now Beyonce’s musical director. We had done some writing together in the pop world, and he sent me a folder of ideas for my record. One had this great, angular melody, but the structure wasn’t fleshed out. I could hear the finished product in my head, but it was a challenge to get there. I brought in three or four different drummers, and it just wasn’t sitting right. Finally I called Steven McKie from Philly, a super-vibey cat who speaks best on the drums with space — his space is so loud — and he brought it all together. Then I reached out to the legend, John Scofield, and said, ‘I have a tune I hear your tone on.’ He got right back to me and said, ‘I was just watching you on the Super Bowl, backing Dr. Dre. I’m honored that you would call Old Man Sco.’ From there, we orchestrated it with the horns, and it came out great. I played my Fender Deluxe Jazz Bass V.”
Example 1a shows the on-the-upbeats bass line behind the melody, first heard at 0:32 and later isolated at 4:20. It raises perhaps the most compelling question: What is the song’s highly ambiguous harmony? Is it in A major? F# minor? E major? The melody sounds like C# minor and has some D#’s in it; or perhaps it sits in the upper structure of F# minor? Blackstone offers, “Being harmonically open and suggesting the different possibilities is a key part of the song. Personally I tended to approach it as F# minor, the relative minor to A major [or F# Aeolian], which also brings into play A, E, D, and C#m tonalities.” His rhythmic explanation for playing on the upbeats is equally fascinating. “Normally I would play on the downbeats to establish the groove, but the claps had that covered, so I decided to play in-between the claps. As a result, suddenly everything had its own space! The melody often moves in 16th-notes, and the drums are in half-time of the claps and the bass. So you’re hearing all the subdivisions, which makes almost everything seem like its own melody.”
Example 1b shows the B section, as heard at 1:56. Bars 1 and 2 and 5 and 6 are a band unison line, with Blackstone improvising in bars 3 and 4 over the A chord, and then in bars 7 and 8, over a D chord. “That’s a contrast to the other sections, sort of tension and release. Everyone plays the same line and the track calms down rhythmically, and it’s also more A major than F#m, so it’s lighter.”
Last, Ex. 1c has the basic shape Blackstone works around in the solo sections, beginning at 3:00 — but listen as he rolls through the different changes without pinning down the chords too much. “What happened was Sco and Khirye did their solos and sent them in, so when I went to play along to them I was just vibing and reacting, trying to catch things here and there, but keeping it open.”
Blackstone feels that A Legacy Christmas — made in the same spirit of creating a Christmas music legacy for his family — is his best work. Regarding “Away in a Manger” in particular, he had heard an interesting reharmonized version that his keyboardist Justin C. Gilbert did on a holiday record ten years ago, and Adam collaborated with him to make it a bass feature. He played his fretless Ibanez Gary Willis GWB35 5-string, as well as his 1957 3/4 upright with Black Diamond strings and a Gage Realist pickup. (He found the instrument through an audience member at a concert he did in Philadelphia when he was 17.) There’s also a (French) bowed upright track.
Example 2a has the opening melody, showcasing the chord reharms. In bars 5 and 6, a two-bar transition before the melody returns, Blackstone improvises through the Lydian tonality that’s a key color throughout the track.
Example 2b begins at 3:04, where the track has modulated down to Db, Gilbert’s keyboard has the melody, and Adam’s upright takes the spotlight. In walking through the changes, he spontaneously creates an ear-grabbing counterpoint to the melody in bar 2. Bars 4 and 5 set up the coda figure with more cool changes. The cycling major chords bring to mind the coda of The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.”
Turning to the complete transcription, Blackstone explains his reason for covering “Little Drummer Boy,” as arranged by him and co-producer Terance Vaughn. “When I was growing up, every little boy wanted to play drums. We all banged on something, and that comes from the music we heard in church, as well. My concept was The Greatest Showman meets gospel, so you have everything from the chants and BJ The Chicago Kid’s vocal to the hip-hop breakdown.” There are four bass tracks: “Low bass,” which Adam cut live with the rhythm section; “lead bass”; “harmony bass”; and a track with Adam playing some bass notes on acoustic piano (all overdubbed). He played his Jackson Adam Blackstone signature 5-string — dubbed the “Gladys Jackson” model — with Elixir roundwounds, recorded direct via an Avalon U5 DI into a Universal Audio mic preamp.
The track begins with eight measures of drumline-style drums and percussion, establishing the marching-band feel. Adam enters in bar 5, playing an alternately clean and muted high D to “announce that the song is going to feature bass.” Letter A has the opening melody, played by the lead bass, except for the last three notes in bar 30 (and the first note of 31), with the lower note handled by the harmony bass. As for Adam’s fills during the melody (bars 16–17, 20, and 26), for which he’s mainly thinking D major and B minor pentatonic, he reveals, “I’m trying to channel a lot of different influences: Marcus Miller and Derrick Hodge on bass, Roger Troutman on talk box, Bill Watrous on trombone, and vocalists like Michael Jackson and Jill Scott.” Letter B is a four-bar transition between sections that introduces new colors, including the entrance of the low bass for the first time (not shown), Adam’s vocal chant, female background vocals (“á la the Clark Sisters”), and band unison hits in bar 35.
The layers keep coming at letter C, with BJ The Chicago Kid singing in harmony above the lead bass, and horns and additional instrumentation sneaking in. Blackstone embellishes the melody (bar 40), continues his fills between phrases (bars 38, 42, 46, and 52), and plays cool ascending 6ths in bar 43. For the last four measures of the section (bars 53–56), three voices can be heard: lead bass on the melody (stems up), harmony bass below that (stems down), and BJ’s harmony vocal line. Letter D is a key section best described as the bridge. It consists of a two-bar call-and-answer pattern between the vocal chant and Adam’s lead bass (bars 57–62), BJ improvising, and then a four-bar breakdown (bars 65–69) that Blackstone describes as “trap meets classic hip-hop with an 808, to give the track a modern twist.” The breakdown also has fills from the harmony bass part, including some with Moogerfooger and wah-wah plug-ins (not shown).
Letter E is a six-bar transition to the outro with the three voices: lead bass on the melody (stems down), harmony bass above it (stems up), and BJ’s harmony vocal, briefly stating the melody. Then comes a band unison riff in bar 74, a powerful signature of gospel music where all the disparate parts stop what they’re doing and join together to state a phrase. Finally, the ten-bar outro is full celebration mode. Blackstone again answers the vocal chants with fills, and after band unison accents in bar 82, he fills over the drumline, leading to his double-stop on the closing 16th-note hits (with low bass grabbing the root). Adam advises, “Familiarize yourself with the melody, and then begin to work on embellishments of your own. I had the melody in my head both when I was playing it and when I was filling in-between. I used hammers, slides, and vibrato like a vocalist, if there was a lyric I wanted to emphasize — so, learn the lyrics, as well. As for the feel, the drumline establishes the syncopation and subdivisions, so lay the melody right in the pocket.” –BM
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