For the past 40-plus years, local musician James King, Jr. has been laying a solid foundation for musicians around the world. His mastery of the upright bass displays confidence and ebullience. King is a bender of notes and ideas. His resonate tone puts the meat on the musical bones of a composition.
King, who resides in Bowie, Md., started his musical journey in Houston, Texas, where he was born. “My mother actually had a degree in music education, and she played piano for the church, so I kind of got into music from listening to her,” he told the AFRO.
Jazz musician James King, Jr. has played with many of the greats of the genre. He continues to perform with the Smithsonian’s Jazz Masterworks Orchestra in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy photo)
But King’s days on the piano wouldn’t last long. He briefly picked up the alto saxophone while in junior high school before moving on to the electric bass. The upright wasn’t far off. “My father had some jazz records around and, of course, the album covers; you’d see guys with the bass. And something about the bass just always fascinated me.”
That fascination inspired King to get an after-school job. “I told my father, look, as you see, I got this afterschool job. I’m consistent, why don’t you come down to this store with me and sign for this bass and I’ll pay you every week. And, believe it or not, he said, yeah.”
The bass, he would learn, is not an easy instrument to handle. “I can remember many nights”, King said, “being at the house after trying to go play with some people and lying in bed and my fingers are throbbing, like a cartoon almost. And at some point it goes away. You don’t even feel them anymore.”
Still, King was determined. And jazz would be his musical vehicle. “It’s a music that’s alive and in a lot of ways you have a lot of freedom. The jazz approach is a very democratic approach,” he said.
King would study music at Texas Southern, Hampton University and the University of the District of Columbia.
There was the time he joined the late, noted, drummer Max Roach on stage. “I did do a concert with Max Roach, here in D.C. It must have been 1979, 78 something like that. It was a great eye opener for me, a little young blood trying to play with the big stars,” King said.
He said he fondly remembers the multi-talented vibraphonist Milt Jackson, who died in 1999. “I got a chance to work with Milt Jackson three day at Blues Alley back in the day back when…an artist would come in and play the whole week. It was great. Now, Milt could bake. He actually baked a peach cobbler that week and I remember trying to mess with him a little bit, told him, ‘You didn’t bake this thing, this thing taste too good, you got one of your lady friends to bake this thing.’ It was good though. He was a great player also; great musician,” King said.
The list of musicians King has played with is like an ancient scroll of the greats: Elvin Jones, Stanley Turrentine, David “Fathead” Newman, James Moody, Regina Carter and Cyrus Chestnut, to name a few. He can also be heard on a number of albums, including his own “Allen’s Odyessy.”
These days King performs with the Smithsonian’s Jazz Masterworks Orchestra in Washington, D.C. “Some kind of way I got into the mix and they called me about something and I was able come in and play. In recent years they’ve been calling me to do quite a few of those things,” he said.
And since the late 1980s, King has been touring with sax great, Gary “Ju Ju Man” Bartz, stopping in New York, Milano, Tel Aviv and Switzerland.
