By Robert Spencer

Joe Fonda's resume contains what look at first glance like eye-popping incongruities: electric bassist in a straight blues band, Sweet Daddy Cool Breeze; acoustic bassist and co-leader of the forward-leaning and traditionally-rooted Fonda-Stevens Group; member of Anthony Braxton's super-modernist Ghost Trance Tentet.

Fonda is casual about his huge musical leaps. "There's no separation in the music. It's all part of the same continuum. I developed a relationship with the blues as well as with the music of Braxton - I'm attracted to all that. I'm someone who's attracted to the entire spectrum of the music."

The blues was first. "I was into the Allman Brothers when I was a kid, and John Mayall, and The London Sessions with Howlin Wolf. But I really didn't discover the depth of the blues until recently. I started there and came full circle. I let my electric bass go, and pursued acoustic bass; I didn't deal with the blues for fifteen years." Jazz was the benefactor of his journey away from his roots: from his first album in 1976, Looking for the Lake by the Joe Fonda Ensemble, to recordings with Wadada Leo Smith and Braxton, with whom he recorded a celebrated series of duets, 10 Compositions (Duet) 1995 (Konnex 5071). He established a long-lasting association with pianist Michael Jefry Stevens in the Fonda-Stevens Group, and, ultimately, made his groundbreaking From the Source recording. Fonda says that of all his wide-ranging activity, he's proudest of his work with the Fonda-Stevens Group (in which "everyone embraces the entire continuum of music") and From the Source, which is truly unusual these days in being a recording that is absolutely like no other. From the Source (Konnex 5075) is a genre-blending tour de force: Fonda places reedman Anthony Braxton and trumpeter Herb Robertson in a highly original setting of poetic vocals by healer Vicki Dodds and most strikingly, the tapping of dancer Brenda Bufalino. Because of the dancing, From the Source is most effective visually, but on disc the taps mesh intriguingly with the pulses of Fonda's angularly engaging compositions. Fonda announces happily that From the Source is now an ongoing concern, with another recording in the offing - plus Evolution, his new Fonda-Stevens Group release on Leo Records, and ongoing work in Braxton's ground-breaking Ghost Trance ensembles. He even shows up, bowing his bass hypnotically, with Braxton on avant-garde trombonist Roland Dahinden's Naima, which was released by the modern classical label Mode. And he's not forgetting the blues either, having returned to his electric bass of late to record with noted German guitarist Uwe Herr and others. Most people never cover as much ground as Joe Fonda has already, and he's far from through. "My personality has always wanted to encompass the entire continuum in some way - a natural way. That's why I've been able to be involved with the blues, and be involved at the same time with someone like Anthony, who's the ultimate contemporary aspect of the continuum. He's the future." Whatever the future may hold, it looks as if it's going to hold Joe Fonda.