Gerald Veasley

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Gerald Veasley built a strong foundation as a bassist whose command of commercial styles never overshadowed his command of freer, improvisatory terrain. Gospel and R&B surrounded him during childhood, and by his teenage years in the late 1960s and 1970s he was already performing with several R&B groups throughout West Philly. Jazz entered his awareness around the same period, prompting an equal appreciation for Weather Report and Return to Forever alongside Earth, Wind & Fire and Smokey Robinson. On electric bass his principal touchstones remained Jaco Pastorius, Anthony Jackson, and Stanley Clarke, while Oscar Pettiford and Paul Chambers stood out as favored models on the acoustic instrument. That longstanding admiration for Weather Report and Pastorius made the moment especially meaningful when co-founder Joe Zawinul recruited him as a sideman in 1988. Veasley remained with Zawinul through 1995, yet had already joined the Heads Up International roster in the early 1990s, releasing his label debut Look Ahead in 1992, followed by Signs in 1994 and Soul Control in 1997. He stayed with the imprint for the mellow, smooth outing Love Letters in 1999 and then delivered On the Fast Track in 2001, an energetic, funk-inflected project that revisited the groove-oriented terrain of his formative years.