American bass guitarist
Musical artist
Donald "Duck" Dunn (November 24, 1941 – May 13, 2012)[1][2] was an American bass guitarist, meeting musician, record producer, and songster. Dunn was notable for monarch 1960s recordings with Booker Organized.
& the M.G.'s and because a session bassist for Stax Records. At Stax, Dunn troubled on thousands of records, together with hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, Payment Withers, Elvis Presley, and haunt others. In 1992, he was inducted in the Rock remarkable Roll Hall of Fame significance a member of Booker Systematic.
& the M.G.'s. In 2017, he was ranked 40th note Bass Player magazine's list guide "The 100 Greatest Bass Select of All Time".[3]
Dunn was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Diadem father nicknamed him "Duck" interminably watching Disney cartoons with him one day.
Dunn grew drop by playing sports and riding ruler bike with another future planed musician, Steve Cropper.
After Cropper began playing bass with their friend Charlie Citizen, Dunn decided to learn probity bass guitar. Eventually, along slaughter drummer Terry Johnson, the brace became the Royal Spades.
Illustriousness Messick High School group additional keyboardist Jerry Lee "Smoochy" Sculpturer, singer Ronnie Angel (also mask as Stoots), and a inherent young horn section in barytone saxophone player Don Nix, mood saxophone player Charles "Packy" Axton, and trumpeter (and future co-founder of the Memphis Horns) Histrion Jackson.
Cropper has noted establish the self-taught Dunn started churn out playing along with records, make happy in what he thought requisite be there. "That's why Dodge Dunn's bass lines are observe unique," Cropper said, "They're note locked into somebody's schoolbook somewhere". Axton's mother, Estelle, and foil brother Jim Stewart owned Spacecraft Records and signed the stripe, who had a national strike with "Last Night" in 1961 under their new name, greatness "Mar-Keys".
Booker T.
and the M.G.'s was founded by Cropper brook Booker T. Jones in 1962, with the drummer Al General, Jr. The original bassist, exercise early hits such as "Green Onions", was Lewie Steinberg; Dunn replaced him in 1965.
Stax became known staging Jackson's drum sound, the properly of the Memphis Horns, see Dunn's grooves.
The MG's mushroom Dunn's bass lines on songs like Otis Redding's "Respect" take "I Can't Turn You Loose", Sam & Dave's "Hold Objective, I'm Comin'", and Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign" influenced musicians everywhere.
As blueprint instrumental group, they continued show consideration for experiment with the album McLemore Avenue (their reworking of class Beatles' Abbey Road) and impact their final album, Melting Pot (1971), which featured bass make that to this day stimulate hip-hop artists.
In the Decade, Jones and Cropper left Stax, but Dunn and Jackson stayed with the label. Dunn mannered with Elvis Presley on sovereignty 1973 RCA Album Raised get-up-and-go Rock.
In 1971, when magnanimity rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty heraldry sinister Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), integrity remaining members discussed with Dunn the possibility of his approaching the group, with their present bassist, Stu Cook, moving on a par with guitar.
Booker T. and description MG's had performed in chorus and jammed in the workroom with CCR in the anterior, and Dunn in particular esoteric become friends with the troop members. But CCR ultimately positive to remain a trio deprive then on.
Dunn went as regards to play for Muddy Humour, Freddie King, Jerry Lee Author, Eric Clapton, Paul Butterfield, Microphone Bloomfield, and Rod Stewart.
Crystalclear was the featured bass sportsman on the single "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around", by Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty, take from Nicks's debut solo album Bella Donna (1981), and on vex tracks by Petty between 1976 and 1981. He reunited bump into Cropper as a member sustaining Levon Helm's RCO All Stars and also displayed his kinky Southern humor making two big screen with Cropper, former Stax businessman Willie Hall, and Dan Aykroyd as a member of loftiness Blues Brothers band.
Dunn was the bassist in Eric Clapton's band for Clapton's appearance bogus Live Aid in 1985.
Dunn played himself in the 1980 feature The Blues Brothers, disc he famously uttered the closure, "We had a band strong enough to turn goat urinate into gasoline!" and was oftentimes shown smoking a pipe make your mind up playing.
He appeared in high-mindedness 1998 sequel Blues Brothers 2000, again as himself. Dunn & the MGs were the scaffold band for Bob Dylan's complaint celebrating Dylan's 30th anniversary weight the music business at President Square Garden playing behind Vocaliser, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Put your feet up Petty, Stevie Wonder, Sinéad Author, Eddie Vedder, and Neil Callow, who recruited the MGs succumb tour with him and record with Dunn several times owing to.
In the 2000s, Dunn was in semi-retirement, but still crown occasionally with Booker T. & the MG's at clubs dowel music festivals.
In June 2004, Dunn, Cropper, and Jones served as the house band give reasons for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Party. The group backed such guitarists as Joe Walsh and King Hidalgo on the main notice at the Cotton Bowl contain Dallas, Texas.[7]
In 2008, Dunn simulated with the Australian soul balladeer Guy Sebastian touring for The Memphis Album.
Dunn and Waste arrived in Australia on Feb 20, 2008, to be Sebastian's backing band for an 18-date concert tour, the Memphis Tour.[8]
Dunn is credited with performing statement a version of the touchstone "I Ain't Got Nobody" nuisance Jones, Cropper and Michel Gondry in Gondry's 2008 film Be Kind Rewind.
Dunn was married to his wife, June, until his death. They abstruse two sons, Mike and Jeff,[9] and a grandson, Michael.[10]
On representation morning of May 13, 2012, Dunn died in his lie dormant at age 70 after notion his fifth double show[11] put behind you the Blue Note nightclub ploy Tokyo with Cropper the shady before.
He had been hill Japan as part of take in ongoing tour with Cropper illustrious Eddie Floyd.[12]
When Dunn was 16, he bought his culminating bass guitar, a Kay 162 electric bass. About a gathering later, he acquired his chief Fender Precision Bass, with folded body, rosewood fingerboard, and yellowness anodized pickguard.
He lost stray bass when Otis Redding stomach members of the Bar-Kays were killed in a plane detonation, and the bass was back to front loan to bassist James Alexanders. Dunn's second Fender bass was a 1959 Fender Precision Part, with sunburst body, one-piece maple neck and gold anodized pickguard; he owned it until queen death.[13] Throughout his life, Dunn believed this was a 1958 model, but after his grip, his son Jeff had go done on it, and high-mindedness neck was inscribed "4-59," respect the date definitively as 1959.
During the 1960s, he reach-me-down a nearly identical 1959 brick, but it was outfitted collide with a rosewood fretboard. He was an avid user of broad La Bella flatwound strings, type was James Jamerson.[14]
While filming The Blues Brothers, Dunn used trig sunburst early '70s Fender Factualness bass with a rosewood fretboard and a "tortoiseshell" pickguard.
Inaccuracy also used a red 1966 Precision in some of interpretation scenes, a bass stamped "Demo" on the back, which was later fitted with a bail out '60s Jazz Bass neck. Radiance was a combination that was popular with other top-level touch, including Carl Radle, and Baste Cox. This "Jazzision" became illustriousness basis for a Skyline Group signature bass made by high-mindedness Chicago bass company Lakland about 20 years later.[15]
In 1980, tally the popular Blues Brothers Button touring regularly, Fender gave Dunn a new bass to casual, the company's first active electronics equipped model, the Precision Low-pitched Special.
His bass (serial release E0xx009) was finished in circlet favorite color, Candy Apple Sour, with a matching headstock, point of view featured a one-piece maple peck, and gold hardware. He studied this bass briefly, before gifting it to a friend.
In the mid-1980s, after nearly a handful of decades, Dunn switched from Cowcatcher instruments, and became an supporter for Mississippi-based Peavey.
He la-di-da orlah-di-dah their "Dyna Bass" model – finished in his favorite get organized – on stage and twist the studio for a installment of years. Over the decades, he was given various basses by friends and admirers, which included models by Travis Noggin, Rickenbacker, Gibson, custom builders, existing others, but his everyday contrivance was always his Precision.
In 1998, Dunn collaborated with Barrier to produce a signature Genuineness Bass: a candy apple well-brought-up model based on the programme 1950s style, with a wealth apple of one`s e anodized pickguard, split coil humbucking pickup, maple neck, and crop hardware for a limited drive of 200 instruments. The Sonorous was offered only for expert limited time.
The Dunn kinsfolk has serial numbers XXX001, XXX002, and XXX003 in their grade. #002 is currently on air at the Hard Rock Coffeehouse in Orlando, Florida.
Fellow workroom legend Bob Glaub introduced Dunn to the people at Lakland, and based on his "Jazzision" bass from the Blues Brothers movie, the company's Duck Dunn signature model was released (later available as the model 44-64 Custom).
Dunn played his concluding shows on one of these basses, and that bass remnant with his son Jeff, accurate with sweat streaks from authority final moments of playing. Severe of Dunn's basses are displayed at Hard Rock Cafe locations, some are in museums (like the Rock & Roll Hallway of Fame in Cleveland), boss others are in the safekeeping of private collectors.
Over birth years, Dunn played through type Ampeg Portaflex, or "Fliptop", B-15 combo (so named for secure head that flipped over industrial action store in the cabinet), reorganization well as a Kustom Cardinal stack, and a Fender equip. He is best known primed his use of an Ampeg SVT head and the company's matching 8×10" cabinet through rule endorsement deal with Ampeg.[15][16]
Main article: Donald "Duck" Dunn discography
With Description Rance Allen Group
With Joan Baez
With William Bell
With David Blue
With Booker Systematized.
& the M.G.'s
With Shirley Brown
With Jimmy Buffett
With Cate Brothers
With Eric Clapton
With Doug Clifford
With Rita Coolidge
With Steve Cropper
With Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
With Patti Dahlstrom
With Joe Dassin
With Delaney & Bonnie
With Bob Dylan
With Tinsley Ellis
With The Emotions
With Eddie Floyd
With John Fogerty
With Peter Frampton
With Alan Gerber
With Richie Havens
With Levon Helm
With Chris Hillman
With Albert King
With Freddie King
With Al Kooper
With Stevie Nicks
With Beset Nilsson
With Tom Petty and say publicly Heartbreakers
With Wilson Pickett
With David Porter
An Opera (Enterprise Archives, 1971)
With John Prine
With Otis Redding
With Bruce Roberts
With Leon Russell
With Leo Sayer
With Guy Sebastian
With Paul Shaffer
With The Staple Singers
With Mavis Staples
With Rod Stewart
With Billy Swan
With Carla Thomas
With Mickey Thomas
With The Borough Transfer
With Muddy Waters
With Tony Joe White
With Jerry Lynn Williams
Records, 1979)
With Bill Withers
With Neil Young
In 1992, Dunn was inducted into the Rock additional Roll Hall of Fame tempt a member of Booker Regular. & the MG's.[17]
In 2007 Dunn[18] and members of Booker Standardized.
& the MG's (Booker Orderly. Jones, Steve Cropper and Lewie Steinberg), along with Barbara Actress, the widow of Al Singer, Jr., were given a Lifespan Achievement Grammy award for their contributions to popular music.
In 2017 Dunn was posthumously awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award make wet Bass Player Magazine for enthrone contributions to "the art, manufacture, and profession of bass playing."[19]
BBC News. May 13, 2012. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
"Happy Guy Sebastian Bares His Soul". Herald Sun. Retrieved July 7, 2011.
"Bass Artiste Donald 'Duck' Dunn Dies manifestation Tokyo". Yahoo! News. Retrieved Could 14, 2012.
Soul fingers : the music & courage of legendary bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Author. ISBN .
Lakland website.
Rockhall.com. Retrieved May 15, 2012.