Tommy Potter
Acoustic Bass
About
Tommy Potter was an American jazz double bassist whose steady, harmonically sophisticated playing anchored some of the most important recordings in bebop history. He was best known as the bassist in Charlie Parker's classic quintet from 1947 to 1950, where he performed alongside Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, John Lewis, and Max Roach. Beyond the Parker years, Potter maintained a prolific sideman career throughout the 1950s, recording with Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, Count Basie, Earl Hines, Artie Shaw, and J.J. Johnson, among many others. His only leadership recordings were made in Stockholm in 1956, released as "Tommy Potter's Hard Funk." He stepped away from full-time music in the mid-1960s to focus on raising his son, and arthritis later ended his playing career entirely.
Trivia
Potter suffered a massive heart attack at age sixteen and was confined to bed for two years during recovery. He did not take up the double bass until he was twenty-one, having first studied piano and guitar. Despite appearing on some of the most celebrated jazz recordings ever made, he recorded as a leader only once, during a 1956 tour of Sweden. Ron Carter later cited Potter's work with Parker as part of the essential background knowledge he carried into his own playing.
Early Life
Charles Thomas Potter was born on September 21, 1918, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His early years were marked by a serious health crisis: at age sixteen, he suffered a massive heart attack that confined him to bed for two years. After recovering, he began his musical education on piano and guitar before switching to the double bass at the relatively late age of twenty-one in 1940. Rather than pursuing formal conservatory training, Potter developed his skills through practical experience, working with musicians such as John Malachi and trombonist Trummy Young during the early 1940s. His background on harmonic instruments gave him a strong foundation in chord voicings and melodic sensibility that would later distinguish his walking bass lines. These apprenticeship years coincided with jazz's pivotal shift from swing to bebop, and Potter's exposure to both idioms gave him the stylistic flexibility that would make him indispensable to bebop's leading figures.
Tommy Potter Solos
1947
Acoustic Bass solo - Cheryl - 1947
4/4 swing in C major at 176 BPM
Acoustic Bass solo - Buzzy - 1947
4/4 swing in B♭ major at 214 BPM
Acoustic Bass solo - Bongo Bop - 1947
4/4 swing in C major at 159 BPM
Acoustic Bass solo - The Hymn - 1947
4/4 swing in B♭ major at 316 BPM
Acoustic Bass solo - Bird Feathers - 1947
4/4 swing in B♭ major at 219 BPM
Acoustic Bass solo - Klact-Oveeseds-Tene - 1947
4/4 swing in B♭ major at 233 BPM
Acoustic Bass solo - Scrapple From The Apple - 1947
4/4 swing in F major at 200 BPM
Acoustic Bass solo - Drifting on a Reed - 1947
4/4 swing in B♭ major at 206 BPM
Acoustic Bass solo - Crazeology - 1947
4/4 swing in B♭ major at 252 BPM