Washington, D.C. before spending his adolescence in
Queens, New York
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long Is ...
. At the age of 10, he began piano lessons. He started playing jazz in his early teens after hearing
Cannonball Adderley
Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley (September 15, 1928August 8, 1975) was an American jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s.
Adderley is perhaps best remembered for the 1966 soul jazz single "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", wh ...
on the radio. After being turned down for a pianist role in his high school band, Houston switched to the double bass. Houston began playing in bands outside of high school, with
Lenny White
Leonard "Lenny" White III (born December 19, 1949) is an American jazz fusion drummer who was a member of the band Return to Forever led by Chick Corea in the 1970s. White has been called "one of the founding fathers of jazz fusion". He has won ...
,
George Cables
George Andrew Cables (born November 14, 1944) is an American jazz pianist and composer.
Early life
Cables was born in New York City, United States. He was initially taught piano by his mother. He then studied at the High School of Performing Ar ...
,
Billy Cobham
William Emanuel Cobham Jr. (born May 16, 1944) is a Panamanian–American jazz drummer who came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with trumpeter Miles Davis and then with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
He was inducted into the ''Moder ...
,
Steve Grossman and
Charles Sullivan, all of whom grew up in the same neighborhood. In his early years, he played in a band called the Jazz Samaritans, playing Latin-style music at local parties and drawing inspiration from
Art Blakey
Arthur Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s.
Blakey made a name for himself in the ...
. At the age of 19, Clint Houston won a
Jazz Interactions Jazz Interactions, Inc. is a non-profit-making organization whose aim is "to stimulate a greater awareness of jazz by providing jazz information and educational services to New York metropolitan area."
The organization was founded in the early 1960 ...
competition, leading to an encounter with
Paul Chambers
Paul Laurence Dunbar Chambers Jr. (April 22, 1935 – January 4, 1969) was an American jazz double bassist. A fixture of rhythm sections during the 1950s and 1960s, he has become one of the most widely-known jazz bassists of the hard bop era. H ...
who encouraged him to pursue his music further.
After high school, Houston's parents encouraged him to attend the
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was founded in 1887 ...
to study
Architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...
, but he transferred to
Queens College
Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...
to study music before eventually obtaining a degree in
Graphic Art
A category of fine art, graphic art covers a broad range of visual artistic expression, typically two-dimensional, i.e. produced on a flat surface. from
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...
. During his higher education, Houston spent his weekends playing alongside Cables and White at Slugs'
matinée
In the performing arts, film exhibition, and other forms of entertainment, a matinée is a performance or exhibition in the afternoon (or occasionally earlier), as distinguished from the evening.
Matinée may also refer to:
* ''Matinée'' (alb ...
s. Their playing impressed the various bandleaders who performed at the club and the three of them began working more extensively with better-known artists.
Houston was a founding member of musical co-operative Free Life Communications, alongside
Dave Liebman
David Liebman (born September 4, 1946) is an American saxophonist, flautist and jazz educator. He is known for his innovative lines and use of atonality. He was a frequent collaborator with pianist Richie Beirach.
In June 2010, he received ...
, becoming more immersed in the loft jazz scene of 1970s New York.
By 1972, Clint Houston was playing alongside Joanne Brackeen in Stan Getz' band. Their combined efforts provided a supportive and flexible framework during his live performances. According to journalist Ted Panken:
"Stan explained to me quite a few times backstage at Keystone Korner
Keystone Korner was a jazz club in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, which opened in 1972 and continued operation until 1983. Many live recordings were made at the club. Jessica Williams was the house pianist for a number of years. ...
that ‘I have never felt as free and as totally supported as I do with this band with Joanne Brackeen, Clint Houston, and Billy Hart
Billy Hart (born November 29, 1940) is an American jazz drummer and educator. He is known internationally for his work with Herbie Hancock's " Mwandishi" band in the early 1970s, as well with Shirley Horn, Stan Getz, and Quest, among others.
B ...
. They are happy and free to go with me wherever I go.'”
Houston and Brackeen's collaborations continued, playing in clubs such as the Surf Maid on
Bleecker Street
Bleecker Street is an east–west street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is most famous today as a Greenwich Village nightclub district. The street connects a neighborhood today popular for music venues and comedy, but which ...
in New York, and appearing in many of Brackeen's early records.
Instruments and playing style
During his time with Roy Ayers, Clint Houston played both electric bass and upright bass, but found that he was increasingly being asked to play electric, to his frustration. He played a clear-bodied
Plexiglas
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) belongs to a group of materials called engineering plastics. It is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Plexiglas, Acryli ...
electric bass
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
, and 'Gertrude,' his Czechoslovakian double bass built in 1940. He found this bass for sale in a recording studio.
Houston also learned how to play
acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
, and played it on his album ''Inside the Plain of the Elliptic'' (1979) on the title track and on "Geri".
Houston preferred an upright bass with the E and A strings set higher above the
fingerboard
The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The st ...
, for greater resonance, with the G and D strings having a lower
action
Action may refer to:
* Action (narrative), a literary mode
* Action fiction, a type of genre fiction
* Action game, a genre of video game
Film
* Action film, a genre of film
* ''Action'' (1921 film), a film by John Ford
* ''Action'' (1980 fil ...
to aid fast-tempo playing. By 1978, Houston was using Barcus-Berry and Polytone
pickups on his double bass. Houston favored a combination of the German and Italian-style finger positions in his left hand, teaching this hybrid style to his private students.
Houston's bass solos are characterized by rapid, fluid playing. In an interview with ''
Down Beat
' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Ch ...
'' magazine, he stressed:
"What I'm really looking for in this instrument and through my kind of bass playing is texture. My notes are very definitely selected, because they have to go through the changes
Changes may refer to:
Books
* ''Changes'', the 12th novel in Jim Butcher's ''The Dresden Files'' Series
* ''Changes'', a novel by Danielle Steel
* ''Changes'', a trilogy of novels on which the BBC TV series was based, written by Peter Dickinso ...
, but there's a texture I hear. It's like if you play fast enough, you can almost play single notes like a chord
Chord may refer to:
* Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously
** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning
* Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve
* Chord ( ...
. If you play an arpeggio on the piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...
fast enough, it's like you just hit the chord, and sometimes you can just about get it on the bass - at the proper tempo."
Long-time collaborator Joanne Brackeen said of his playing:
"Clint played a little different from everybody else, and he really liked to solo. He played a solo more like a horn player than like a bass player, but it had a certain rhythm ..that was what he loved to do, that was his thing. Yeah, no motive other than that."
Personal life
Clint Houston was a father to at least one daughter, at one point divorced, and a
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...
fan.
Houston was married to Gerry Houston, who worked the door at the Village Vanguard. Gerry Houston, who died in 2009, was known for her 'dry, caustic sense of humor' which was useful for dealing with customers at the club. In 2010,
JazzTimes
''JazzTimes'' is an American magazine devoted to jazz. Published 10 times a year, it was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1970 by Ira Sabin as the newsletter ''Radio Free Jazz'' to complement his record store.
Coverage
After a decade of grow ...
dedicated a series of columns profiling 'people behind the scenes' at New York's jazz clubs to her memory.
Discography
As leader
* ''Watership Down'' (
Storyville, 1978) with
John Abercrombie,
Joanne Brackeen
Joanne Brackeen (born Joanne Grogan; July 26, 1938) is an American jazz pianist and music educator.
Music career
Brackeen was born in Ventura, California, United States, and attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. She was a fan of pop pi ...
,
Onaje Allan Gumbs,
Al Foster
Aloysius Tyrone Foster (born January 18, 1943) is an American jazz drummer. Foster's professional career began in the mid-60s, when he played and recorded with hard bop and swing musicians including Blue Mitchell and Illinois Jacquet. Foster pl ...
* ''Inside the Plain of the Elliptic'' (
Timeless, 1979) with
Rubens Bassini
Rubens Bassini (January 26, 1933 in Rio de Janeiro – September 1985) was a percussionist, who played bongos and congas above all. He played together with the band Os Ipanemas: Astor Silva; (trombone), Marinho (bass), Wilson das Neves (dr ...
,
Ryo Kawasaki
was a Japanese jazz fusion guitarist, composer and band leader, best known as one of the first musicians to develop and popularise the fusion genre and for helping to develop the guitar synthesizer in collaboration with Roland Corporation and K ...
, Joanne Brackeen
As sideman
With
Pepper Adams
Park Frederick "Pepper" Adams III (October 8, 1930 – September 10, 1986) was an American jazz baritone saxophonist and composer. He composed 42 pieces, was the leader on eighteen albums spanning 28 years, and participated in 600 sessions as a si ...
*''
Conjuration: Fat Tuesday's Session'' (Reservoir, 1983
990
With
Joseph Bonner
*''Triangle'' (
Whynot, 1975)
With
Joanne Brackeen
Joanne Brackeen (born Joanne Grogan; July 26, 1938) is an American jazz pianist and music educator.
Music career
Brackeen was born in Ventura, California, United States, and attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. She was a fan of pop pi ...
*''
Invitation'' (Freedom, 1976
978
*''
New True Illusion
''New True Illusion'' is an album of duets by pianist Joanne Brackeen and bassist Clint Houston recorded in 1976 and released on the Dutch Timeless label. '' (Timeless, 1976)
*''
Tring-a-Ling'' (Choice, 1977)
*''
AFT'' (Timeless, 1978)
With
Marc Copland Marc or MARC may refer to:
People
* Marc (given name), people with the first name
* Marc (surname), people with the family name
Acronyms
* MARC standards, a data format used for library cataloging,
* MARC Train, a regional commuter rail system o ...
* ''Friends'' (Oblivion, 1973)
With
Stan Getz
Stanley Getz (February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, with his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre o ...
* ''
The Master'' (
Columbia
Columbia may refer to:
* Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America
Places North America Natural features
* Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region in ...
, 1975
982
* ''
Getz/Gilberto '76'' (
Resonance
Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied periodic force (or a Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts. When an oscillat ...
, 1976
016 with
João Gilberto
João Gilberto (born João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira – ; 10 June 1931 – 6 July 2019) was a Brazilian guitarist, singer and composer who was a pioneer of the musical genre of bossa nova in the late 1950s. Around the world, he was of ...
* ''Moments in Time'' (Resonance, 1976
016 with Joanne Brackeen, Billy Hart
With
Sonny Greenwich
Sonny Greenwich, (born January 1, 1936) is a Canadian guitarist. He has played in major Canadian and American cities including a concert at Carnegie Hall. He has performed with musicians such as Charles Lloyd, Wayne Shorter, Pharoah Sanders, ...
* ''The Old Man and the Child'' (
Sackville, 1970)
With
Louis Hayes
Louis Hayes (born May 31, 1937) is an American jazz drummer and band leader. He was with McCoy Tyner's trio for more than three years. Since 1989 he has led his own band, and together with Vincent Herring formed the Cannonball Legacy Band. He ...
*''
Light and Lively
''Light and Lively'' is an album by the drummer Louis Hayes, recorded in 1989 and released on the Danish SteepleChase label.Louis H ...
'' (SteepleChase, 1989)
*''
The Crawl'' (Candid, 1989)
*''
Una Max'' (SteepleChase, 1989)
*''
Nightfall'' (SteepleChase, 1991)
*''
Blue Lou'' (SteepleChase, 1993)
With
John Hicks
Sir John Richards Hicks (8 April 1904 – 20 May 1989) was a British economist. He is considered one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. The most familiar of his many contributions in the field of economic ...
* ''
Hells Bells'' (
Strata-East, 1980
998
Year 998 ( CMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* Spring – Otto III retakes Rome and restores power in the papal city. Crescent ...
With
Terumasa Hino
is a Japanese jazz trumpeter. He is considered one of Japan's finest jazz musicians. His instruments include the trumpet, cornet, and flügelhorn.
Early life
He was born in Tokyo, Japan, and his father was a trumpeter and tap dancer. Hino star ...
*''Hip Seagull'' (Flying Disk,1978)
With
Azar Lawrence
* ''
Bridge into the New Age'' (
Prestige, 1974)
With
John Scofield
John Scofield (born December 26, 1951), sometimes referred to as "Sco", is an American guitarist and composer whose music over a long career has blended jazz, jazz fusion, funk, blues, soul and rock. He first came to mainstream attention in ...
* ''
East Meets West'' (1977)
With
Woody Shaw
Woody Herman Shaw Jr. (December 24, 1944 – May 10, 1989) was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer, arranger, band leader, and educator. Shaw is widely known as one of the most important and influential jazz trumpet ...
* ''
Blackstone Legacy'' (
Contemporary
Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from approximately 1945 to the present. Contemporary history is either a subset of the late modern period, or it is o ...
, 1970)
* ''
Rosewood
Rosewood refers to any of a number of richly hued timbers, often brownish with darker veining, but found in many different hues.
True rosewoods
All genuine rosewoods belong to the genus ''Dalbergia''. The pre-eminent rosewood appreciated in ...
'' (Columbia, 1977)
* ''
Stepping Stones: Live at the Village Vanguard'' (Columbia, 1978)
* ''
Woody III'' (Columbia, 1979)
With
Nina Simone
Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone (), was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blue ...
* ''
The Soul of Nina Simone
''The Soul of Nina Simone'' is a DualDisc, which contains a CD on one side of the disc and a DVD on the other containing footage from her appearance at 1969's Harlem Cultural Festival.
Track listing
#"Feeling Good"
#"In the Dark"
#"Since I Fe ...
'' (RCA, 2005)
With
Charles Tolliver
Charles Tolliver (born 1942) is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and co-founder of Strata East Records.
Biography
Tolliver was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1942 and moved with his family to New York City when he was 10. During his ch ...
* ''
Live in Tokyo'' (Strata-East, 1973)
* ''
Impact'' (Strata-East, 1975)
With Henny Vonk
*''Rerootin (1982)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Houston, Clint
1946 births
2000 deaths
Timeless Records artists
American jazz double-bassists
Male double-bassists
Jazz musicians from New Orleans
20th-century American musicians
20th-century double-bassists
20th-century American male musicians
American male jazz musicians