jay anderson

Jay Anderson provided bass for Frank Zappa's "Thing-Fish" album. He can also be heard on the 1984 re-release (overdubs) of "Cruising With Ruben & The Jets", and probably also on "The Man From Utopia" remix.

discography

random notes

     From: Patrick Neve
Jay played bass on Thing Fish... "Briefcase Boogie" to be sure, though I'm not sure which others.  He also did bass overdubs on the 1984 remix of Cruising with Ruben and the Jets.  He has last been seen playing a gig at the Blue Note in NYC with the  Steve Slagle Quintet (12/13/99). 

     From: Downbeat
Bassist/composer Jay Anderson takes center stage on his debut recording Next Exit with Randy Brecker on trumpet & flugelhorn, Billy Drewes on reeds, drummer Jeff Hirshfield, guitarist Wayne Krantz & keyboardist Dave Witham.  Local Color also explores post-bop modern jazz with special guest Toots Thielemans. "Anderson's versatile, fixed ensemble quickly stakes out a sound and then navigates multiple variations thereof. This is a bona fide band of considerable breadth.

     From: MHaugh

Hi, just letting you know that in the Jay Anderson discography, the Jay Anderson doing the photographs (the Ruby Braff listing) is Jay Anderson the jazz photographer, and he's not the same guy as the bass player.

     From: Jack P. Armstrong

During "Briefcase Boogie," right after Thing Fish says "Sister Obdewllla?!" a trumpet or something in the background plays what sounds like the trombone lick in "Debra Kadabra" that makes fun of that movie. it repeats the lick more than once, and sounds very similar, but not exactly like the "Kadabra" one - is this intentional, you think?

     From: Patrick Neve

That would be Jay Anderson bowing an upright bass.  You can hear him plucking it earlier in the song.  Gosh it sure sounds more like a cello to me.. he must be playing the highest registers of the instrument.  Thanks for pointing out that part of the song.. I hadn't heard it this closely before, and I think there's some interesting interplay between the upright bass, vocals, electric bass and drums.  It starts off with Jay playing along to Chad and the electric bass player (who is that?  Barrow? Thunes?) ... and later during the section you describe (:53) the bowed instrument is presumably playing the part of Sister Obdwella X.
(Is that a correct assumption?)

As far as the "Brainiac quote", I'd say it was unintentional, but who knows.  Probably Jay knows. Sounds like it's about 4 of the 5 correct notes, and it might even be in the same key, but I haven't checked that out.  My hunch is that if Frank had wanted that line to be quoted he would have made it a wee bit more obvious.. most of that album kind of hits you over the head.  So that would leave the options that (A) Jay quoted the Brainiac of his own accord on the spot, or (B) it was just an improvised moment of shmaltz that ended up sounding alike.

     From: Arthur Barrow

I do not play upright acoustic bass! That is someone else on Ruben. Maybe Jay Anderson (string bass on Thingfish)? I'm not sure, but I think it was Jay.

     From: JAnderson     

The reality is that my involvement w/Zappa was 1 day of work, but what an interesting day it was. 

Chad Wackerman was an old friend of mine. Frank asked if he could recommend and acoustic bassist. I was the guy. My schedule was nuts because I was permanently moving to NYC the day after the session....in fact I had to borrow a bass because mine was already in NY.

To be honest, I wasn't that familiar with Zappa's work. I knew that he was an amazing musician and looked forward to working with him. He had evidently just gotten the rights to some of his older music back from WB(?) in a lawsuit that he won. (you probably know more about it than me)

I was the only person at the session.....aside from Frank and the engineer. I was there for about 12 hours. I don't know if Zappa even knew what was going to be what. He just wanted to get as much out of me in those 12 hours as he could....I was happy to oblige. I had heard about the difficulty of his music, so I was a little apprehensive about the task that lay ahead of me. Oddly enough, I didn't read one note of music.

Some of the work was replacing the bass parts on some old M.O.I. stuff. We would listen together...he'd ask my opinion, I'd transcribe the tune & bass parts and go. We probably did 8-10 tunes like that. The rest was just improvising over pre-existing live tapes and some studio stuff.

I remember at one point he said " wait 'till you hear the guy throw-up then pull out your bow and make it sound like rats running across the floor". This gives you an idea of what the session was into. It was a lot of fun.

He was very respectful, wanted my input, and was great to work with. I remember he wanted me to hear some other things he was working on. We spent an hour listening to guitar transcriptions that Steve Vai (?) had done of Franks vocal improvs. Amazing! 

I don't know if Frank knew the music was going to be Thing Fish or not. Believe it or not I've never heard it! (or any of the other stuff I did) Chad told me that the stuff I did could be on many CDs, I have no idea.

I have no idea what the Debra Kadabra thing you're talking about is.

I did the session when I was about 27 (now 44).