You’ve heard the advice before: “Steal from the best, leave the rest!” In a similar vein, an internet meme attributed to either Steve Jobs, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, and any number of other famous folks claims that “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” So many people have stolen the quote that no one really knows who said it first! In the jazz world, musicians emulate their heroes, and then they add their personal interpretations to techniques that they’ve learned from the elders. Ray Brown copped from Jimmie Blanton, Ron Carter learned from Oscar Pettiford, Eddie Gomez listened to Scott LaFaro — that’s how the jazz tradition developed. The lineage of jazz bass players can be divided into the bassists who came before LaFaro and those who followed. By developing his interactive, conversational style of playing alongside drummer Paul Motian in the Bill Evans Trio, LaFaro pioneered a new style of playing that would be further developed by countless bassists: Mir