Chaka Khan’s Naughty album (1980) is an absolute dream for 1980s session musician nerds. A glimpse inside the liner notes reveals credits that read like a roll call of the greatest studio players (and singers) to have ever graced vinyl: Michael & Randy Brecker, Steve Khan, Hamish Stuart, Steve Ferrone, Don Grolnick, Phil Upchurch, Luther Vandross, and even a 16-year-old Whitney Houston.
We haven’t even discussed the album’s low-end contributors: Anthony Jackson, Willie Weeks, Mark Stevens (Chaka Khan’s brother) and Marcus Miller. Not too shabby.
Fans of Anthony Jackson will know how important Naughty is in the development of his personal style (not to mention the history of bass playing as a whole), but the efforts of a 21-year old Marcus Miller on ‘So Naughty’ are definitely worth a look, too. By 1980, Miller had already notched up recording credits with several musical heavyweights, including Lenny White, Lonnie Liston Smith, Elton John and David Sanborn.
Chaka Khan – ‘So Naughty’ Bass Transcription PDF
Things start in typical Marcus fashion, with a simple slap and pop octave pattern that is reminiscent of his line on the chorus of Bill Withers’ ‘Just The Two Of Us’. In fact, it’s almost exactly the same groove transposed by a semitone; ‘So Naughty’ was recorded several months before ‘Just The Two of Us’, so it’s possible that one influenced the other. For the verse, he switches gears with a change to fingerstyle, delivering a busy, syncopated melodic bass line that ends in unison with the synth on bars 3 and 7.
The chorus revisits the slapped octave pattern from the intro and embellishes it with a prominent fingerstyle triplet fill in the fourth bar – this octave-5th-root pattern is a good test of your plucking hand raking ability; the notes should sound smooth and connected without ringing over one another.
The middle 8 section features a sparse 16th-note groove played in unison with the synth part, after which we’re treated to a surprisingly smooth key change up a tone for another chorus section. Marcus then introduces and develops a new groove underneath Michael Brecker’s reverb-drenched sax solo, creating interest and introducing subtle variations in his part without overplaying or stealing the limelight.
Marcus’ tone on this sounds like his classic ‘80s session sound – passive Fender Jazz with both on full volume and roundwound strings to provide plenty of ‘spank’ (that’s a technical term) for the slapped parts.