Marcus Miller has made a career out of playing bass with his thumb. However, he has recently revealed that, despite its popularity, one influential bassist wasn't a fan of that style of playing, leading him to recommend Miller for countless studio sessions.
“Anthony [Jackson] was really interesting because, in the late ’70s, he refused to play the bass with his thumb,” says Miller in a recent interview with Dunlop alongside Robert Trujillo.
“He thought it was an insult to the instrument. That's what he said. He was already kind of really solidly in the James Jamerson fingerstyle and sometimes with a pick, but he didn't want to play like this.”
However, Jackson realized Miller was already establishing himself as a front-runner in the double-thumb school of bass.
“He said, ‘Okay, Marcus, I don't like that. But you do it well.’ So whenever he'd go to a session, and somebody would say, ‘Hey, man, can you do that thing?’ because it was real popular back in the late ’70s, he go, ‘I don't do that. But call this kid Marcus.’”
Miller's superb double-thumb technique earned him the nickname “The Thumbslinger”. However, mastering this technique was something he did out of necessity, as he explained in a 2019 interview with Anderton's.
“The reason I played with my thumb a lot is because I played with a maple neck. Harder wood and the fingerstyle just didn't jump out as much.
“So I'm playing on a recording, and I really kinda need to insert myself, so I would go to this [his double-thumb technique]. I was playing ballads like that, just to get the fullness.”
Elsewhere in the Dunlop interview, Robert Trujillo recalled how he went from a teenage Black Sabbath fan to Ozzy Osbourne's bassist.
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