I reviewed the Bass Tab White Pages recently- a good relatively inexpensive source of pretty accurate bassline transcriptions.
As well as the White Pages, Hal Leonard also publish a series of 5 ‘bibles’ – each book is genre specific. This is the second book of those 5 bibles that I’ve looked at.
I purchased this book a year or so ago for several reasons: the main one being that the kind of tunes covered in this volume are perennial dance floor fillers for working bands and personally I find it quicker to learn a song if I’ve got accurate notation than working it out by ear (which I can do, but takes me a bit more time – sometimes time is the one thing I don’t have loads of going spare!)
The R&B Bass Bible is 170 pages or so and feature’s the following 32 tunes: Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Ain’t Too Proud To BEg, Bernadette, Born Under a Bad Sign, Cool Jerk, Green Onions, Groove Me, Hard to Handle, Higher and Higher, I Can’t Help Myself, I Got You, I Heard it Through The Grapevine, I Just Want to Celebrate, I Want You Back, I Was Made To Love Her, I’ll Take You There, In The Midnight Hour, Knock on Wood, Mr Pitiful, Mustang Sally, My Girl, Nowhere to Run, Push and Pull, Respect, Road Runner, Shop Around, Soul Man, Standing in The Shadows of Love, Stop In THe Name of Love, This Old Heart Of Mine, Uptight, What’s Going on.
Unlike the Pop Rock Bass Bible, the focus here is much tighter. Nearly all the tunes are mid to late 60s classics. The majority of them are easy to intermediate standard, but there are 3 or 4 advanced tunes (Bernadette anyone?) – as I stated earlier in the review
Unlike the Bass Tab White Pages, Hal Leonard’s Bass Bible series are all printed on decent quality paper. But like the White Pages, the book doesn’t come in a spiral bound form – which means it’s utterly useless on a music stand so you’ve either got to break the spine of the book to make it stand on a music stand, or break the spine to photocopy the pages you want to put them on a music stand.
WHEN WILL MUSIC PUBLISHERS LEARN THAT THICK MUSIC BOOKS NEED TO BE SPIRAL BOUND? (Uh, probably never dude. )
The R’n’B Bass Bible is a pretty cheap ($17.95 in the US) way to add another 30 songs to your collection of basslines. If you’re a Jamerson completist there are 3 or 4 more tunes in here that aren’t in SITSOM. If you ever plan on gigging to earn extra cash with a ‘dance’ band – or a ‘wedding’ band – this book is worthy buying, it will save you some time learning tunes that you’re definitely going to have to play sooner or later!
