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Rootless voicing by themselves, almost(?) by definition don't really resolve anywhere ... the chord progression is never quite 'done'.

Wagner wrote Der Ring, a series of four operas that never really resolve till the final chord of Göitterdämmerung. I'll admit that performing Siegfried (the thrid and longest at nearly 5 hours with intermissions) in 2000 was about as much fun as I ever had on a gig. Being double-cast in the role of Wotan, it allowed me to play bass on the nights I wasn't singing. Wagner wrote wonderfully for the bass as I learned in high school when I played Die Meistersinger.

As for this so-called ambiguous chord discussion. Can't say that I've ever encountered it in over 60 years of gigging and teaching. One of the chapters in the 1964 Gene Leis book put it to bed for me when he discussed how C/E/G/A could be a C6 or an Am7 or an inversion of either depending on which note was the root. Context is everything.

How many of us are old enough to remember this?

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My dad studied out of it. I read it but never really worked the exercises. When I started playing jazz and theater in the early '70s, the lessons on chord leading and melody cut down the learning curve on gigs as I encountered the need to know these things on guitar.

Bass was never an issue for me—I listened and played constantly so my fingers knew where to go. Besides my youth symphony chair in high school, I was jamming with Chet Baker on Monday nights at Ricardo's Pizza, a block from my house. He was in rehab and living at his mother's house in Milpitas. Get thrown into that pit and you learn quickly.

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