Cecil McBee

Cecil McBee is a Contrebassiste of Jazz American, born the May 19th 1935 with Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Biography

Resulting from a family very believing, Cecil McBee hears as of its more young age of the Gospel, but also of the Blues. It is at the school that it starts to practice, with the Clarinette, without knowing to read the music but ear. It is after having heard a disc of Dizzy Gillespie a few years later that it passes to the Contrebasse. He plays in various groups of Rhythm and blues or Rock-and-roll, and studies the Classical music to improve his reading. He makes his first round at the seventeen years age, within an orchestra of eighteen musicians, the “Sweethearts off Rhythm” of Anna Mae Winburn. After its studies at the University of the Ohio (1953 - 1959) and some engagements with Melba Listel, Sahib Shihab and Dinah Washington, it return to the army, where it integrates the orchestra, at the sides in particular of Kirk Lightsey.

Demobilized in 1962, it connects collaborations: with Jackie McLean, Wayne Shorter (1965), Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis (1966), Pharoah Sanders (1969), Sam Rivers, Woody Shaw (1974), Abdullah Ibrahim, Harry Edison and Buddy Touches (1985), Didier Lockwood, Elvin Jones (1990 and 1993), Ricky Ford (1999), Mulgrew Miller (2001)… Since 1975, Cecil McBee also directs its own trainings, of which often formed part Chico Freeman.

Double bass player with the enormous sound, Cecil McBee asserts the influence of Ray Brown. But its phrased very personal, its tendency to pose the notes slightly behind time and its versatility (with a preference for the atmospheres post-coltraniennes) rather bring it closer to Richard Davis.

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