While listening to the local oldies station I’m always struck by the high quality of the bass lines from a lot of 60s and 70s songs, even the cheesiest one-hit-wonder style songs.
For the 60s, I’m talking about pop music, the kind of music that was inoffensive and appealed to a wide variety of audiences. The only thing is, I’m not knowledgeable about this kind of music because I only hear it on the radio. I wish I could describe it better, but the best I can do is say it’s stuff like the song “Band of gold” by Freda Payne. The kind of music that sounds like it’s being played on a stage in a banquet hall for a crowd of well-dressed people eating dinner. I can’t imagine that many serious music people hold this stuff in high regard or listen to it regularly, but that’s the kind of music I’m talking about. 60s ditties - not the stuff coming out of the counterculture.
For the 70s I mean people like Stephen Bishop, for example. Very cheesy, sappy music, but there are good bass lines. I remember my dad once telling me that Jackson Brown and James Taylor had the same bassist - who was that?
These one-hit wonders all seem to have funky, driving, melodic bass lines. When compared to current indie rock, for instance, it sometimes seems like bassists don’t know how to play anything more than quarter notes and simple predictable lines anymore. Again, I wish I was a scholar of 70s music so I could identify specific songs, but all I can say is it’s what I hear on the oldies stations, so it’s pop music and a lot of one-hit wonders.
What I want to know, is who were the guys that were playing bass in the studio for some of these songs?
Also Joe Osborn and Ray Pohlman. Joe Osborn played that funky bass on the chorus of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” by the Fifth Dimension, among zillions of other things you’ve definitely heard. If it came out of LA in the 1960s chances are probably better than even money that the bass is played by Kaye, Osborn, or Pohlman.
I remember reading an article in Guitar Player in the late 1970s about a guy named Chuck Rainey (possibly spelled ‘Raney’), whom it described as “the top studio bassist”.
Donald “Duck” Dunn was probably the top studio bassist of the time – and for many years afterwards. He backed Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Delany & Bonnie, Bill Withers, Rita Coolidge, Elvis, Rod Stewart, John Prine, Leon Russell, The Blues Brothers, Tom Petty, Peter Frampton, and many others.
Yes, he showed up on a lot of British 60s singles just as Page did as a studio guitarist, both pre-Led Zep. He also had a release under his own name covering The Astronauts’ “Baja,” which was quite good.
These two, along with Duck Dunn, are pretty much at the top. You can add Larry Graham from Sly & the Family Stone and Bootsy Collins from James Brown’s band and then Parliament - but they are both funk leaders more than pop…
I don’t think Paul McCartney has been mentioned yet - he is by far the most influential, and one of the most innovative, bassists pretty much ever - and the respect he gets as a bassist is very well-deserved…
Bassist Carol Kaye and drummer Hal Blaine were the backbone of The Wrecking Crew, a team of session musicians who appeared on loads of records by practically every name artist of the Sixties.
Kaye was a superb musician, but also something of a ditz, and was a surprisingly conservative person in many ways. A lot of hipsters in the Sixties would have been shocked to find out how much of their favorite music was actually being played by some VERY unhip people!
Carol Kaye appeared on several tracks on Frank Zappa’s debut “Freak Out” album- but she begged off playing on a few other tracks, because she had kids of her own, and was scandalized by some of Zappa’s lyrics! Surprisingly, she said later that Zappa was very good-natured and understanding of her qualms.
Carol Kaye did not play bass on the Freak Out sessions, however–she played 12-string guitar. She has mentioned that Zappa used “his own bass player,” which would be Roy Estrada.
Regarding Carol Kaye, are there any TBLers (The Bottom Line bass list) here who remember when she was a regular poster? Her two pet causes were 1-2-4 fingering when low on the neck, in order to prevent tendonitis and carpal-tunnel syndrome, and teaching about chord progressions instead of scales.
Some other big studio bassist (was it Chuck Rainey?) visited TBL once to claim that he, not Carol Kaye, played bass on the MASH theme song. I don’t know if it was about the movie or the TV show or if they’re the same. I do know the TV show had at least two versions, one with soft bass and one with a prominent octave line. I don’t know if they realized that but I don’t think I got involved.
There was a short-lived plan of The Beatles to have Voorman replace McCartney when things were falling apart. I’ve read the putative new band name would have been The Ladders. Voorman has designed the cover of Revolver and I believe did another cool cover for what became “the White Album” which was dropped in favor of the white. He co-wrote a very cool song Ringo recorded called “Blindman” which I just mentioned on another thread about Ringo. Check it out, B-side of “Back-Off Bugaloo,” 1971, sounds like early Wire!