CoronaVinyl Day 456 (C): School Days by Stanley Clarke

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "C," and I listened to jazz fusion bassist Stanley Clarke's fourth solo album, 1976 album School Days.

Admittedly, I was not familiar with Clarke before listening to the album, but apparently, he's a jazz fusion pioneer and the first jazz fusion bassist to be a headlining artist.  Jazz fusion, if you don't know, is a fusion of rock, jazz, funk, and R&B.

School Days is mostly all instrumental, with a couple vocal chants here and there.  As a (former, terrible) bassist myself, I appreciate a good bass line and bass riff, and there are plenty of both on the album.  It was a good album to listen to while trying to crank out some work today with the windows open.  School Days reached #2 on the Billboard jazz album chart and #34 on the Billboard 200.

Clarke has continued to make music over the last five decades.  Over the years, he has performed as a solo artist and with bands, and he has collaborated with many artists, both inside and outside the jazz world, including Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones, with whom he formed The New Barbarians in 1979 and toured for a few months that year (but didn't release any studio albums).  He has also scored TV shows and movies over the years, including Pee Wee's Playhouse (for which he was nominated for an Emmy), Boyz n the Hood, Passenger 57, and What's Love Got to Do With It.  He also been nominated for 15 Grammys and won five.

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "School Days"
The nearly eight-minute title track is also the opening track on the album, and it's a pretty rocking instrumental, with some great guitar work from Ray Gomez and, as expected, some bass soloing from Clarke.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "Hot Fun"
At just under three minutes, "Hot Fun" is by far the shortest song on the album.  But what is lacks in length, it makes up for in funk.