Return to Forever - Majestic Dance

Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Al DiMeola and Lenny White

I was already a music fan for years before I started learning to play guitar, having raided my mom's collection of 45s in my single-digit years, playing them on her squat brown bakelite-encased record player that only played 45 rpm singles broadcast through a single cheesy little speaker (I'll explain what a 45 single is later, young ones, don't panic), but once that educational process began, I became totally obsessed.

My best Christmas present when I was 11 was a guitar...it was a cheap, poorly-made import, but it was mine. It was a Decca acoustic guitar, and it was a musical instrument in name only. This wasn't a guitar to learn on, it was a tough-love device that made you prove that you really wanted to play with each note. And I did it until my guitar teacher informed my parents that I really did want to play and that I had what it took to get to the next level. And they gifted me with the guitar that I will treasure for the rest of my life...a Gibson acoustic guitar.

It never had one of the trademark red and white labels inside to identify its particular make, so to this day, I'm not entirely sure what model this magnificent dreadnaught happens to be. It looks like a Gibson Heritage model from 1971, but I'm not certain. I don't care. It sounds and plays beautifully, and it has aged like a fine wine. I'm the one and only owner of this beauty, and I've treated it with love and respect, just as it deserves.

When I was 12, my best Christmas present was my own AM/FM radio. It was only portable in the sense that it had a handle. About 8" wide, a foot tall and probably 4" thick, it was powered by either six D-cell batteries or through its AC cord (non-detachable, but you could stash it in the same compartment with the batteries if you wound it up right). And the antenna...it extended out about 3 feet from the side of the radio case, and with its swivel base, it could accommodate some pretty arcane angles in search of a strong FM signal. I loved it, and I had it on constantly as I dialed between my favorite stations trying to catch a good song (anything that featured a lot of guitar, essentially).

And when I was 13, my favorite Christmas present was a record player. I could finally buy and play LPs.

So I was set. The radio helped me find more music, the record player allowed me to play my favorites as much as I wanted and I had my hands full (figuratively and literally) trying to learn how to play all those songs. I was never very good at that last part, but I didn't care at all.

But I found myself needing more out of my music, and somewhere between my 13th and 14th birthdays, I discovered public radio and a whole new world of music. West Virginia Public Radio played classical music by day and jazz at night, and I fell in love with both. And they were so different. Classical was so orderly and precise and formal. I used to take my radio to the bathroom so I could listen to the New York Philharmonic in concert as I took my Sunday bath (hey, I was a kid).

Charlie Byrd, Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis

Not jazz. Jazz was looser and wilder and more unpredictable. Sure, you don't get much more precise than tunes by Duke Ellington and Count Basie's big bands, or Quincy Jones' arrangements for Frank Sinatra. But I tended to favor jazz a little more as I discovered musicians such as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus and Miles Davis. And those guitarists...Joe Pass, Jim Hall, George Barnes, Tal Farlow. The first issue of Guitar Player magazine I ever bought featured a cover story on Charlie Byrd, Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis, all of whom I'd first heard on public radio.

Then came what Frank Zappa once referred to as the "dreaded jazz-rock fusion" music (even though he dabbled in it a bit himself on "Hot Rats"), which, of course, immediately caught my teen-aged attention. John McLaughlin's playing with the Mahavishnu Orchestra changed my world. Larry Coryell was another who could blaze away with the best of them. Miles Davis blew everyone away with the groundbreaking "Bitches Brew," which featured a fantastic array of musicians, some of whom would go on to assemble a couple of my favorite bands of the era.

Jaco Pastorius

Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter would go on to form Weather Report, and their album "Heavy Weather" is a classic (which contained their great hit "Birdland," a tune you'll probably recognize right away), and it more or less introduced the world to the blindingly talented and tragically flawed Jaco Pastorius, one of the most influential bass players of the past few decades, especially in jazz. To this day I still hear young bassists playing parts very clearly bearing Jaco's distinctive style and sound.

Then there was Chick Corea and Lenny White. They eventually went on to join forces with Stanley Clarke and Al DiMeola in the mid-1970s in what is sometimes referred to as the classic lineup of the group Return to Forever. Their 1976 album "Romantic Warrior" would become their best-selling recording, earning the group a gold record.

That also was the last recording of that particular lineup. Corea decided to change the group, and he reformed RTF without White and DiMeola after that release.

But that album was, and still is, stunning. The compositions are tight and complex, and we get to hear a group of musicians at the top of their game. Corea was one of the veteran musicians in the combo and the band leader, and his keyboard work was intricate and inspired. A colleague from his days with Miles, White was a force of nature on his drumkit, providing thunderous fills throughout the album while still providing nuanced percussion where it was needed. Bassist Clarke and guitarist DiMeola came across as the young turks, young men who were full of energy and creativity and prodigious technique. These two lit musical fires and fanned them so they could see them burn. Yet they could still dial it back into a more relaxed groove when the song needed exactly that approach. Versatility was, and is, a virtue.

I couldn't get enough of that album. DiMeola and Clarke in particular grabbed my attention in a major way. I'd never heard playing like that before. I didn't even know you could play like that. I was astonished every time I heard Clarke weave through one of his complex bass runs, when I heard DiMeola pull off blistering licks, often muting the notes with the heel of his picking hand to make the notes pop in staccato flurries. It became known for a while as his "Mutola" effect, a playful amalgamation of the word mute and his last name DiMeola.

No, I never learned how to play anything by Return to Forever. To be honest, I was a little too intimidated by what I was hearing to even give it much of an attempt. But I still love that music.

These days, I don't listen to as much jazz or classical music as I used to, even though we have a great classical music radio station here in Dallas (WRR Classical 101.1 FM) and one of the best jazz radio stations I've ever heard, broadcasting from the University of North Texas campus in Denton (KNTU 88.1 The One).

Yet the desire for more music is still firmly in place, and I still welcome every discovery. And yeah, sometimes I still wish I could play a little more like Al DiMeola did in today's featured track. That's a part of my youth that I don't want to outgrow.