nickhoorwegmusic

Yesterday I heard an incredible new CD, one that has come out in the last week. Michael Jackson ‘The Stripped Mixes’ is one of the more interesting albums I’ve heard in a long time!

The idea behind the CD is to highlight some of Michael’s wonderful singing when he was a young kid at Motown. Each track is mixed very sparsely, with the vocal track brought right to the front, accompanied by the bass track and (in the case of the Jackson 5 tracks) vocal harmony tracks. Occasionally there’ll be a string part, vibraphone part or minimal rhythm section as well but for the most part this album is vocals and bass. So as well as highlighting the vocal parts, the bass parts are highlighted too.

As a bass player who is a student of the Motown bass style, I find this especially fascinating! Wilton Felder’s bass lines on ‘ABC’ and ‘I Want You Back’ were among the first songs I ever learnt to play on the bass, and here they are on the CD sounding so fat and full. I can hear nuances here that I couldn’t pick out on the original mixes.

The biggest bass lesson is the mix of ‘Darling Dear’, a song from the Jackson 5’s ‘Third Album’ - bass part by the late James Jamerson (as I may have mentioned elsewhere, Jamerson is probably the biggest influence on how I play bass). Jamerson’s bass line on ‘Darling Dear’ is transcribed in the ‘Standing In The Shadows of Motown’ biography/transcription book and it’s one of the most difficult lines in there. I nearly had a heart attack when I heard the mix of this song! Hearing it side-by-side with Michael’s vocal part shows off Jamerson’s talent for countermelody, his incredible forward motion and flow, and his incredible funkiness. This track is worth the whole disc.

The idea of highlighting Michael Jackson’s vocals from this era is executed perfectly on the CD, because by the end of it the overwhelming feeling is that here was an exceptional talent. It doesn’t feel right that a child so young should be singing with such conviction, deep feeling and emotion about topics that hadn’t been part of his life experience yet. It’s hard to believe what you’re hearing but the tracks don’t lie; it’s all there.

I can’t wait to see what else is going to be released over the coming months! I hope it’s all as good as this.

Nick