At a time when funk had a firm foothold around the Great Lakes, where bands like Parliament, the Ohio Players, Slave, and Earth, Wind & Fire cranked out industrial-strength soul, Portland, Oregon’s Pleasure was happy to blaze its own jazzy dance trail in the Northwest. “We were sort of isolated up there,” says bassist Nate Phillips, “so we just did our own thing.” The group’s fusion-influenced dance music reached its peak with “Glide,” the Top Ten R&B single from the album Future Now. The tune sports some of the finest bass work of the era, as Nate drives the track with his formidable slap-and-pop technique. It’s the kind of dense, booty-shaking line every would-be funkateer wishes they had written.
Phillips grew up outside Portland and was truly influenced by jazz and early fusion, like Herbie Hancock’s Fat Albert Rotunda, Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, and stuff on producer Creed Taylor’s CTI label”. Nate spawned the lick that became “Glide” on a visit to his mother’s house in Portland. “I had my Fender Jazz Bass with me—I always took it wherever I went. I was messing around playing 10ths, because I had noticed guys like Chuck Rainey doing that a lot. After about 20 minutes of working it out, I taped it and left it alone until our next rehearsal. When I played the line, everybody just fell in perfectly—I didn’t have to say anything. I have to give it up to them and their energy and enthusiasm. I’m deeply flattered and humbled by the comments young bass players make about the song—it blows me away. But I didn’t do it alone.”
Though Pleasure disbanded back in 1981, Nate has continued to play actively, producing and/or playing with Dazz Band The Crusaders, Jeff Lorber, Roy Ayers, Herb Alpert, Richard Elliot, Rick Braun, Peter White, Gerald Albright, Bobby Caldwell, Kirk Whalum, Jeff Golub, Jonathan Butler, George Duke and others.