MARCUS MILLER

Marcus Miller, born June 14, 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, is a Grammy Award-winning jazz musician, composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist.

Miller is perhaps best known as a bassist, working with trumpeter Miles Davis, singer Luther Vandross, and saxophonist David Sanborn as well as a prolific solo career. Miller is classically trained as a clarinetist, and also plays bass clarinet, keyboard, saxophone, and guitar.

Biography

Formative years

As a child, Miller was around music a lot and always fooling around on the piano: His father played piano and organ (mainly in church). His father's family also includes cousin Wynton Kelly, a very influential jazz pianist who played with Miles Davis in the late fifties. At the age of eight Miller began playing the recorder, and the clarinet at age ten at the public schools he attended. In middle school, he learned saxophone as well. Miller went to the High School of Music and Art (now the Laguardia School of Performing Arts), where he majored in the clarinet. As a teenager, Miller would buy sheet music to many popular songs and want to play them. His father would teach him how to just read the guitar chord symbols and make up his own accompaniment. At the same time, Miller was playing bass in some funk bands in his neighborhood, learning about funk and grooves, and relating to people with music.

He subsequently went to Queens College, NY, majoring in music education, and business education and continued on clarinet there. Miller also participated in the jazz ensemble there, under the direction of Bud Johnson. During college Miller began to get a lot of work as a musician in NY on bass. Already very much in demand after four years, he decided to discontinue at Queens College and work full time.

Professional career
 
Marcus Miller at Paradiso

Miller spent approximately 15 years performing as a sideman or session musician and observing how great leaders operated. During that time he also did a lot of arranging and producing. During the eighties he was a member of the Saturday Night Live band ('78 and '79). He played on over 500 recordings, including those by Luther Vandross, Grover Washington Jr., Roberta Flack, Carly Simon, McCoy Tyner, Bryan Ferry and Billy Idol. He won the "Most Valuable Player" award, (awarded by NARAS to recognize studio musicians) three years in a row and was subsequently awarded "player emeritus" status and retired from eligibility. In the nineties, Miller began to record his own records, he had to put a band together to take advantage of touring opportunities.

Miller's proficiency on his main instrument, the bass guitar, is generally well-regarded. Not only has Miller been involved in the continuing development of a technique known as "slapping", particularly his "thumb" technique, but his fretless bass technique has also served as an inspiration to many, and has taken the fretless bass into musical situations and genres previously unexplored with the electric bass of any description. The influences of some of the previous generation of electric bass players, such as Larry Graham, Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius, are audible in Miller's playing. Early in his career, Miller was accused of being simply imitative of Pastorius, but has since more fully integrated the latter's methodology into his own sound.

Miller has an extensive discography, and tours frequently and widely in Europe and Japan. Between 1988 and 1990 he appeared in the first season and again toward the end as both the Musical Director and also as the house band bass player in The Sunday Night Band during the two seasons of the acclaimed music performance program Sunday Night on NBC late-night television.

Miller has won numerous Grammy's as a producer for Miles Davis, Luther Vandross, David Sanborn, Bob James, Chaka Khan and Wayne Shorter. He won a Grammy for "Best R&B Song" in 1991 for Luther Vandross' "Power of Love" and in 2001 he won for "Best Contemporary Jazz Album" for his fourth solo instrumental album, M2.

Miller currently leads his own band, which strives to faithfulness to the concepts of improvisation and innovation in jazz-based music that is perhaps more accessible to different audiences. His concerts and recorded works are often regarded as intensely creative and therefore appealing to serious musicians. In 1997 Miller played bass and bass clarinet in a band called Legends, featuring Eric Clapton (guitars and vocals), Joe Sample (piano), David Sanborn (alto sax) and Steve Gadd (drums). It was an 11-date tour of major jazz festivals in Europe.

Fender currently produces a Marcus Miller signature Fender Jazz Bass in four- and five-string versions. 

Discography

Solo period (1982–present)

1983: Suddenly
1984: Marcus Miller
1993: The Sun Don't Lie
1995: Tales
1998: Live & More
2000: Best of '82-'96
2001: M² (2002 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album)
2002: The Ozell Tapes
2005: Silver Rain
2007: Free
2008: Marcus[2]
2008: Thunder (as SMV, with Stanley Clarke and Victor Wooten)

David Sanborn period (1975–2000)

1977: Lovesongs
1980: Hideaway
1980: Voyeur
1981: As We Speak
1982: Backstreet
1984: Straight to the Heart
1987: Change of Heart
1988: Close-Up
1991: Another Hand
1992: Upfront
1994: Hearsay
1995: Pearls
1996: Songs from the Night Before
1999: Inside

Miles Davis period (1980–1990)
1981: The Man with the Horn
1981: We Want Miles
1982: Star People
1986: Tutu
1987: Music From Siesta
1989: Amandla
1991: "The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux

The Jamaica Boys period (1986–1990)

1987: The Jamaica Boys
1989: The Jamaica Boys II: J. Boys

References

Sunday Night episodes #104 (1988), #121 (1989)
Levine, Doug (25 March 2008). "Bassist Marcus Miller Surrounds Himself With New Generation of R&B Stars on 'Marcus'". VOA News (Voice of America). Retrieved on 3 January 2009.