Just what is a "tic tac" bass anyway?

[Bobbe Seymour]

Carl, Happy anniversery! We all send your wife our condolences.(just kidding again).
I hope Ya'll have another fifty happy years together!
Bobbe

[Mylos Sonka]

Over on Hillbilly.com some months back, Bob Moore's wife posted a long piece on this subject. Her husband played bass on thousands of sessions in the fifties and sixties and beyond. I have lost the posting, but if memory serves she said that a baritone guitar was used, the notes muted with the palm, and played to duplicate the doghouse bass notes.

As for the earlier use of the technique, if you don't remember hearing it in Hank Williams' sound, shame on you. Sammy Pruitt referred to it-- I think it was in Jerry River's biography of Hank-- as "crack rhythm." That is what I have always called it. As the Drifting Cowboys were Ray Price's band after Hank died, and Ray had been Hank's protege for a short while, it makes sense that you'd hear the same sound on Price's recordings of that period.

It would seem that Bradley refined the simple alternating muted guitar for a precise duplication of the bass lines with an instrument more suited to the sound he was after.

Hope this helps the discussion.

Mylos

[Dave Brophy]

Picture of a Danelctro 6-string bass: http://theband.hiof.no/band_pictures/danelectro_ub2.jpg

Pic of Danko on a Fender VI: http://theband.hiof.no/articles/fender_bass_vi.html

I bet he didn't play that thing too long.They didn't have the bottom of a "regular" Fender bass,and were hard to play.The strings were too close together.
A friend of mine used to have one,and I never knew until now that Fender only made 7-800 of them.

[Bob Hempker]

I would like to hear any guitar player that would "Eat Harold Bradley's Lunch." That's quite a statement. Carl, have you ever really heard Harold play? I'm not talking about commercial recordings, but really "play." I've heard many great guitar players, including Harold. When you get into that league, no one will "Eat your Lunch."

On a more positive note, I developed a program with my profex II to play tic-tac lines on the lower strings on my C6 neck. It works great. The only problem is: Most Country type tunes that a tic-tac is used on has steel and/or fiddle(s) playing lead lines. It's hard to drop out of the tic-tac line and start playing steel without something sounding like it's "missing."

------------------

[John Floyd]

I agree with you Bob, If anybody could eat Harolds Lunch, it would have had to pass thru his body first. I used to have a couple of Harold Bradley albums that would make most guitar players want to quit the business.
One of the original Superpickers!
------------------
John
<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by John Floyd on 16 May 2001 at 04:26 PM.]</p></FONT>

[Larry Miller]

I had heard that tic-tac bass was used to help the stand up bass be heard better on the AM radio. Harold was an innovator, so anything that comes after him doesn't count....

[Rich Paton]

Hi folks! I don't think the tic-tac bass is/was a Nashville-only thing.
I have a cut of a Roy Clark tune, named "Dented Fender", with L.A. studio guitarist Howard Roberts on tic-tac bass. While many tic-tac parts on a recording are subtle yet add much to a tune, this Clark tune's T-T bass part is rather prominent in the mix, and sets a cool, funky groove in the cut.
I'm sure it was was an L.A. production, most likely on Capitol.
I'm also certain that Carol Kaye ( L.A. studio bassist extroidinare (sp?) played hundreds if not thousands of T-T bass overdubs to the bass lines on 60's top-forty hits, too.
BTW, while on the subject of the six-string bass, there's a wild recording of Billy Butler (guitarist on Bill Doggett's cut of "Honky-Tonk"), where Butler plays bebop jazz guitar leads on a Fender Bass VI model. The cut is Wes Montgomery's "The Thumb", and has to be heard to be believed.
A wonderful thread, and very informative!