Another bassist gone -- Ray Shulman

[Dave W]

Gentle Giant's Ray Shulman dead at 73

[amptech]

Sad loss, but he left some footprints..

[uwe]

Is there a little Progster lurking in Dave trying to get out?



And he played violin and trumpet too, switching instruments was of course a Gentle Giant trademark.



Gentle Giant's music was complex, convention-defying and quirky, but it always had warmth. (They tried to become a more straightforward rock band towards the end of their career - it didn't work and took a lot away from their uniqueness.) Rest in all those strange meters and modern chamber music compositions, Ray.

[Alanko]

Very saddened to read this. Gentle Giant were a musical force. They supported Jethro Tull and I think pushed Tull towards the detailed through-composition on things like Songs from the Wood. Cobbling that music together in the studio is one thing, but turning them into pieces that can be performed live with rock instruments is something else. I think Ian Anderson saw a level of musical control and precision in GG that was just missing in Tull.


Seemingly Ray downplayed his bass skills, claiming he was only following Kerry Minear's left hand.

[Dave W]

Is there a little Progster lurking in Dave trying to get out?

Not really a fan, but I certainly didn't dislike them. They were okay. They didn't get much radio play here.

But when I was just starting on bass, I really noticed Ray's bass lines in Simon Dupree & the Big Sound, the Shulman brothers' predecessor band. Especially on Little Picture Playhouse. That song was written by their keyboards guy Eric Hine. Side note: Eric came down with glandular fever just as they were ready to go on tour, and they got a young painist named Reginald Dwight to sub for him.




But they were more into psychedelia back then.

[uwe]

Elton is a hell of a piano player, but that wouldn't have been the kind of music for him. Reportedly, he also auditioned as their singer when they were on the verge of becoming Gentle Giant but fell through.

Tull is a lot less organic than Gentle Giant who retained that quality no matter how cerebral their music was. Tull sounds often angular to me, Gentle Giant just complex, but not angular. A bit like Zappa, his music was demanding, but never angular.

I have this lavish, limited box set from them that sold so surprisingly well, they did two print editions of it due to public demand, and which now fetches more than thousand bucks on the collectors' market.



There was a handful of Gentle Giant fans at my school, they were sort of the Proggers of the Proggers, the elite of the elite. I first got to know them via their Playing The Fool Live album in 1977. It made the lower rungs  of the Top 100 of the Billboard Charts, not bad for music so idiosyncratic that it probably only got played on college radio stations.

[Alanko]

I was watching an interview with Derek Shulman yesterday. He was claiming GG were just a rock band. I wasn't convinced!

[Dave W]

I was watching an interview with Derek Shulman yesterday. He was claiming GG were just a rock band. I wasn't convinced!

I think that's how they really thought of themselves.

[uwe]

When Chrysalis pressured them in the late 70ies to become more conventional, they were still good (killer riff!), but there was something missing. This began sounding like a mix of Deep Purple, Kansas and Toto.



A couple of years before, that wonderful riff would have been one element of many in their songs. Now it was the central musical motif repeated Deep Purple-style so many times until even the dumbest member of the audience got it.  (Yup, I admit it, somewhat heavy-handed repetition is part of Purple's recipe.)

Gentle Giant sure have their devotees!

[gearHed289]

The quirky vocal style of GG kept me from ever really diving into their catalog. Great players for sure, and very inventive all around. RIP Ray.

[Alanko]

I've never found their singing that jarring. They sang in unabashed English accents where some contemporaries went a bit transatlantic. Derek sang to his limits in terms of range and dynamics, but it all worked.

I'm perpetually mind blown that a band somehow sat down and wrote something like this:



Or even earlier, coming up with this:

[uwe]

I always found their vocal melodies and arrangements very much chamber music, but that was to me part of their package. Not jarring, but mannered, but how else were you gonna sing over this stuff? Asia (the band) in terms of accessibility and reassuringly providing what you would expect they certainly weren't.