There are few bassists in jazz with quite the formidable reputation that Christian McBride  has as a player. His compelling sound on both double bass and electric bass guitar has made him a first call sideman with a huge range of players over the past 20 years of the order of Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Joshua Redman, Diana Krall and Sting to name just a few. As McBride’s latest album The Good Feeling comes out Stephen Graham talks to the great Philadelphian about writing for big band, his views on hip hop, that man Sting and a worrying polarisation in American politics.

It was a quarter-past-12 early on a Friday afternoon the day after a gig the night before at a New Haven church in Connecticut. Performing with his trio that time, Christian McBride, who it’s extraordinary to think is still only 39, is on the phone. Asked about the acoustics of the church in which he performed he says matter-of-factly “All those old churches weren’t built with jazz concerts in mind, it was very boomy, but you adjust.”

McBride had been playing that night in mid-September with pianist Christian Sands and drummer Ulysses Owens Jr, a smaller, to use one of his favourite words, “situation” than the one McBride finds himself in on his new big band album The Good Feeling which has just been released by the Michigan-based label Mack Avenue. McBride has stayed with the label, home to Gary Burton and McBride protégé Warren Wolf, following his earlier Inside Straight group debut for it Kind of Brown two years ago. With more material ready a second big band album is planned but first the label is putting out a new duets album later this year featuring an appearance by Sting, with whom McBride has been playing on and off for over a decade.

This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #158 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a FREE CD...