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Born and raised in Philadelphia,
Gerald Veasley is an excellent bassist who has played his share of commercial music but definitely has the chops needed for more improvisatory settings.
Veasley was exposed to gospel and R&B as a child and went on to play in various R&B bands in West Philly as a teenager in the late '60s and 1970s. Along the way, he discovered jazz and came to appreciate
Weather Report and
Return to Forever as much as he appreciated
Earth, Wind & Fire and
Smokey Robinson.
Veasley has cited
Jaco Pastorius,
Anthony Jackson, and
Stanley Clarke as his main influences on electric bass, and has named
Oscar Pettiford and
Paul Chambers as his favorites on the acoustic bass. Having held the music of
Weather Report and
Pastorius in such high regard,
Veasley was delighted when, in 1988,
Weather Report co-founder
Joe Zawinul hired him as a sideman.
Veasley, who stayed with
Zawinul until 1995, signed with Heads Up International in the early '90s and recorded his first album for the label,
Look Ahead, in 1992 before providing
Signs in 1994 and
Soul Control in 1997.
Veasley continued with the label, issuing the mellow, smooth album
Love Letters in 1999, then returned in 2001 with
On the Fast Track, an energetic, funk-inflected return to the grooves of his early career. ~ Alex Henderson