Bio:
Wow. You wanna know about me?! Ok… I’ll give you the cliff notes.
I’ve always loved music. Period. But there were some bumps along the way…
I was told I couldn’t try out for trumpet at age 9 as there was no more room in the class. I was knocked back from music school when I was 18 as I was told my school grades weren’t good enough… they probably weren’t (I’ve since taught at that music school… Shhhh… that’s between you and me!).
But because I’m stubborn as hell (ask my wife!) I took my education into my own hands. I began practicing (a lot), learning whatever I could from any musicians I could find, going to jam sessions - the whole nine yards. I got my first professional gig in a theatre band when I was 19. After that it was onto the cruise ships (it was a blast!), and after the ship gigs and back on dry land at the ripe old age of 22, it was time to get serious.
Over the next few years things got busy - really busy! I ended up performing, recording, sharing taxis, vans and planes with players artists such as Georgie Fame, The Drifters, Pee Wee Ellis, The Four Tops, Fred Wesley, The Nolans, Martin Simpson, Dennis Rollins and performing at venues such as Ronnie Scotts, The Vortex, The 606 Club, International Jazz Festivals around the world, and here’s a random for you… Montreal Grand Prix… and I missed the Grand Prix!
Whilst being a bass player, I’ve also always been heavily involved in education, and that’s where my real love lies (well, that and 80’s movies!). I’ve taught, lectured and spoken at music schools around the world, and loved every minute of it. But my experience with those students, and speaking to students that for whatever reason didn’t have the opportunity to get access to great education was what drove me to start ScottsBassLessons.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).