Extra bass hit

Christian McBride, one of the greatest bassists in jazz history and a veteran of over 300 recordings, has played with Sonny Rollins, James Brown and Sting. He’s traded licks with Philadelphia rappers, Egyptian oud players and opera diva Renée Fleming.

He doesn’t believe in saying “no.”

Monday night, he gave the same advice to about 100 jazz students packed into a practice room for the kickoff of his weeklong residency at Michigan State University.

“Take every dive gig you can,” McBride told the students. “Every bar, every bar mitzvah, every wedding, every backyard barbecue.”

The week of classes and statewide tours will culminate in a big band bash at MSU Friday with McBride and MSU’s students and professors.

Hard work and love were McBride’s favorite notes Monday.

He told the students that he first heard his hero, celebrated bassist Ray Brown, in person at New York’s Knickerbocker Club in 1991. Afterward, he went home and put a picture of Brown on his wall, “next to Jesus.”

“To hear that sound up close … whew,” he said, shaking his head. “It changed my life. He wasn’t pulling the strings way back, like he was going to shoot an arrow, but he had that gravity, that pulse.”

He didn’t choose the bass, McBride said. It chose him.

“It was like, ‘Come to me,’“ he said, opening his arms, as if for a lover.

McBride told the students to forget about the fuss their families make over them.

“Everybody was precocious when I was going to high school in Philly,” he said. Among McBride’s high school classmates were jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco, R&B crooners Boyz II Men, drummer/DJ Questlove and hip-hop MC Black Thought.

Even in such company, McBride stood out, MSU Jazz Studies chief Rodney Whitaker recalled.

“I first heard him when he was 15 in Philly,” Whitaker said. “It sent me to the practice room. I knew he was going to be bad.”

Whitaker said McBride related well to the students, in part, because he started out so young.

“He came on the scene at 17,” Whitaker said. “By the time he was 25, he had already played on 150 records. He always had a smile on his face, always upbeat and happy. The students can glean a lot from being around a guy that positive.”

McBride told the students he pioneered the use of social media to promote jazz, posting diaries of his on stage experiences, and even gets a perverse pleasure out of Internet jazz haters like JazzIsTheWorst and AngryKeithJarrett.

“Jazz needs more humor,” he said.

For all his positivity, he admitted to frustration with one consequence of saying “yes” to so many invitations. Call it the gunslinger effect.

“People think, ‘I have Christian McBride on my date,’ and write the hardest bass part they can, instead of a musical one,” he said.

McBride told the students that if they want to impress a bandleader at an audition, it’s not enough to play a standard like “Take the A Train.”

“When I played for (trumpeter) Wynton Marsalis or (pianist) Cedar Walton, I took the time to learn their compositions,” he said. “They were like, ‘You know that tune?’ Boom, you’re in.”

When a student asked McBride for his three favorite and “most inspirational” musicians, he started out strong with Ray Brown and James Brown, but the third eluded him.

“It’s impossible,” he said, naming a few of the giants he played with. “Wayne (Shorter), Herbie (Hancock), Chick (Corea) … .” He hung his head. “I can’t do it.”

After a day of classes and workshops, McBride and the MSU big band will go on the road Wednesday through Friday, hitting high schools in Byron Center and Ludington, Schoolcraft College in Livonia and Cass Tech High School in Detroit.

“The shocking part is that it’s taken me all this time to come up there and do a residency in Michigan,” McBride said. “I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time with these young students.”

An accomplished composer, McBride has received critical acclaim for “The Movement Revisited,” a massive suite of music for jazz band and gospel choir, based on the lives of four civil rights leaders. A CD is in the works. Friday’s concert at MSU will feature Whitaker’s favorite composition of McBride’s, “Shade of the Cedar Tree.”

“He’s a musical genius,” Whitaker said. “It didn’t matter what instrument he played. He just happened to choose the bass.”

Although McBride and Whitaker play the same instrument, that doesn’t mean they won’t play together this week. They’ve traded licks several times over the years, carrying on a tradition of Ray Brown’s three-bass group, Super Bass, with John Clayton as the third bassist.

“My students are already asking me if he’s going to spank me,” Whitaker said. “I hope not. I’m going to eat my Wheaties.”

MSU Jazz Orchestra I

Christian McBride, guest artist 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10 Fairchild Theatre, MSU Auditorium 150 Auditorium Road, East Lansing $8-10/students FREE (517) 353-5340, music. msu.edu