A farewell treat: more 'hoopy' basslines

Although I am hoping to still add a few more 'Top Five' music posts retroactively to my 'Music Week' at the start of this month (my grandiose plans for that were much disrupted by my VPN and Internet connection going on the fritz), this will officially be my final music post before the end of the world on Friday. Well, OK, the penultimate music post; I've got one more lined up.

Today, we have a long planned conclusion to my Great Basslines series, a further roundup of what I have come to call 'hoopy' basslines, where the playing is more varied and intricate, rather than just propelling the song along.

Since this is the last entry in the series, I should perhaps apologise for some of my more egregious oversights in compiling it. I just haven't had time to consider jazz, for example. Or reggae, which is noted for its deceptively tricky lilting basslines. And, while I am aware that there are some outstanding exponents of the bass in the realms of funk and soul, these are not areas of music that I know very much of. I'm sure I probably could have had at least one 'Top Five' just of James Brown numbers, but I'm not famililar enough with his oeuvre (oh, go on, then - have a little blast of William 'Bootsy' Collins playing bass for him on Soul Power, from a great live show in Zaire in 1974). Michael Jackson is perhaps an even more glaring omission: songs like Billie Jean, Thriller, The Way You Make Me Feel and Smooth Criminal are certainly amongst the strongest and most recognisable basslines recorded (apparently it was Louis Johnson who played for him on the Off The Wall and Thriller albums, and Nathan East on Bad - although he is mysteriously not credited in Wikipedia entries on the individual songs). But, while I can't help but like such hooky songs, I never liked MJ; even before all the weirdness, the plastic surgery disasters and the paedophilia allegations, even when he was a little kid, there was something about him that just creeped me out. And that feeling got worse when he relaunched himself as an adult star; I never could stand that high-pitched voice, and his attempt to reinvent himself as a rock'n'roll bad boy - all that swagger and sneer, and the crotch-grabbing - struck me as ludicrous. So - sorry, Jackson fans, it has been a conscious prejudice of mine to leave him out of this series.

Having got that out of the way, here we go....

Another Top Five 'Hoopy' Basslines

5)  This Is Not A Love Song

We had Public Image Ltd in the first of these 'hoopy' selections as well, but you can't have too much of a good thing. I confess, though, I had thought this was still the great Jah Wobble playing. Music Mike pointed out in the comments below that he left the band after their third album, and this, from their fifth, actually has Louis Bernardi on bass. [The video for the album version is here.]

4)  Pusherman

Joseph 'Lucky' Scott is widely considered to be one of the greatest of all bass players, and this Curtis Mayfield track (from his score for the 1972 blaxploitation classic, SuperFly) may be his finest hour.

3)  War Pigs

We've had Black Sabbath in this series before as well, with Paranoid being one of the essential bass 'chuggers'. On this song, though, especially in the introductory section, Terry Butler isn't just the band's engine, but really gets to show off what a technically accomplished bass player he is. [This is a great live performance from 1970. You can listen to the album version instead here.]

Trivia note: There's an interesting coincidence here. Terry Butler is, of course, invariably known by his nickname 'Geezer'; and it just so happens that Jah Wobble chose Memoirs Of A Geezer as the title for his autobiography. And what a great title that is!

2)  Taxman

A special treat for Music Mike, who has been a regular comment-thread sparring partner of mine over the last year or so and was the main inspiration for me getting started on this series... and is also perhaps the world's biggest Beatles fan, and thus regularly complains about my omission of Paul McCartney from this series so far. I've been delaying this post largely for the fun of antagonising him.

And just to antagonise him some more, I kept Macca out of the top spot here. What do we have instead?

1)  The Mayor of Simpleton

I've never been a particular fan of XTC, but they did produce some undeniably hooky tunes, and Colin Moulding's bass playing always commanded attention. A friend reintroduced me to this number a couple of years ago, and it has become a favourite.

Another Top Five Basslines

Time for another selection of songs with great basslines.

This time, I'm going for...

5)  Queen - Dragon Attack

Another One Bites The Dust is, of course, one of the most iconic of all basslines, but... well, it's a bit too obvious a choice for me. And like John Deacon's other hook-monster, Under Pressure, it's been rather done to death: covered, sampled, parodied ad infinitum. So, instead, here's his third greatest bassline (like Another One Bites The Dust, also from The Game - the last of their really great albums). It doesn't really come to the fore in this clip from a show they did in Montreal in 1981, but it's superb sound and picture quality - and Brian and Freddie are fairly ripping it up (you can try the album version here, if you like).

4)  George Baker Selection - Little Green Bag

Despite the huge exposure this song got 20 years ago through its use by Quentin Tarantino over the opening credits of Reservoir Dogs, Dutch musician 'George Baker' (real name Johannes Bouwens) still seems to have a rather low profile online, and I haven't been able to find out who was playing the bass here. I would be grateful if anyone could tell me.

3)  Fleetwood Mac - The Chain

Of course, it's the incredibly hooky bit in the extended instrumental second half that we really love, possibly John McVie's finest hour - although he's had many. For me, as for many other Brits of my vintage, this is indelibly associated with BBC2's Grand Prix programme which showed highlights of the F1 races on a Sunday evening, and used this instrumental passage (I didn't realise it was part of a song until years later) as its theme music. I was an avid fan during my teens in the late '70s and early '80s. That was the period when the manic and touchingly inept veteran commentator Murray Walker was teamed with the extravagantly laidback former world champion James Hunt - one of the great accidental comedy double-acts in TV history.

And just for good measure, here's that BBC intro...

2)  Thomas Dolby - The Ability To Swing

It was Terry Jackson who played bass with The Lost Toy People, the band that Dolby put together for his superb 1988 album Aliens Ate My Buick! (one of my favourite silly album titles!), but I'm not sure who's accompanying him at this recent gig in Denver. (You can check out the album version here.)

And in the Number 1 spot this time we have....

1)  The Cure - Close To Me

Simon Gallup featured in the first instalment of this irregular series, and may well crop up again once or twice. His playing is probably the main thing I like about the band. (And this is one of my favourite video concepts, too.)

Hail to the Duck - Top Five Donald Dunn basslines

Here, as promised last month, is a celebration of the work of one of the all-time great bass players, Donald 'Duck' Dunn, who died in his sleep last month, at the age of 70, while on tour in Japan. 

In the early 1960s Dunn's childhood friend, the guitarist Steve Cropper, invited him to join him in Booker T and The M.G.s, the house band at the studio of the seminal Memphis label Stax Records. The label foundered in the 1970s, but The M.G.s continued to re-form frequently to play live shows, with and without Booker T. Jones, and also a little later became the backbone of The Blues Brothers Band. Steve and Donald made great music together for over fifty years. Although The M.G.s put out a number of albums and singles of their own, their finest work was in defining the Memphis soul sound - playing in relative anonymity behind great artists like Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, and Sam & Dave (these performers usually had all-black bands supporting them when they played live, but it was The M.G.s - a pioneer of integration in the American music scene - who played on their most famous recordings).

It's a little hard to know which basslines were originated by Duck and which just became associated with him: some of the Stax artists' hits were covers of earlier songs; Stax had complicated relationships with Atlantic and various other record labels, occasionally recording their artists for them, or using them to distribute Stax artists' records; and I've seen differing accounts of when Duck joined The M.G.s - '62, '64, or '65. And some of the songs with which he and Steve Cropper are now most associated were written by other people and first recorded much earlier; for example, She Caught The Katy and Sweet Home Chicago, two of the standout numbers from The Blues Brothers film, were written by Taj Mahal and Robert Johnson respectively.

It's also a little hard to narrow this selection down to just five picks. I may have to do another post on the Duck sometime.

But here goes....

Top Five Basslines played by Donald 'Duck' Dunn

5) Raise Your Hand (Eddie Floyd)

This bassline is rather similar to the one in Wilson Pickett's In The Midnight Hour (a Steve Cropper composition, and recorded, I believe, by Stax, with The M.G.s, but released by Atlantic in 1968), but I think I prefer this version accompanying an anthemic Eddie Floyd song (also co-composed by Cropper) that was later covered by the likes of Janis Joplin. (A wonderful live video, this, with a very young Duck and Steve in the background.)

4) Gimme Some Lovin' (Sam & Dave)

Another one of the highlights of The Blues Brothers film! I didn't discover Sam & Dave's stonking original until some years later.

3)  Can't Turn You Loose (Otis Redding)

Similar (identical?!) to the bassline in The M.G.s' instrumental Time Is Tight (which I posted a great live version of the other day), the opening of this Otis Redding track became known as 'The Blues Brothers Theme'.

2)  Soul Limbo (Booker T and The M.G.s) 

A tough call over the possibly more famous Booker T tune Green Onions, but this irresistibly upbeat number is dear to the hearts of most Englishmen of my age as a result of its being adopted as the theme music for the BBC's coverage of test match cricket in the '70s and '80s.

Ah, but in the top spot, it could only be....

1)  Soul Man (Sam & Dave)

A few days after I inaugurated this Great Basslines series, this track happened to come on in my favourite local bar, 12 Square Metres. I hadn't heard it in years, but after a handful of bars, Mike the barman and I looked at each other with a mixture of amazement and shame that we had overlooked this magical bassline in our review of the field. "Winner!" we sighed, in unison.

Further note:  Shortly after first posting this, I turned up another interesting history of the early days of Stax and of the formation of The M.G.s - well worth a look.

Time is tight

And ain't that the truth!

I have been hoping to put together a collection of musical highlights from the career of legendary bassist Donald 'Duck' Dunn (of Booker T & the M.G.s and Blues Brothers Band fame), who died this May, for the upcoming holiday weekend (7th/8th seems to be when most of the Independence Day shenanigans are going down this year), but... well, I was without Internet altogether last weekend; and I am kind of busy this week - catching up with friends, sampling barbecued food, rekindling my amour fou with beer, and so on.

However, early researches turned up this gem, the all too appropriately named Time Is Tight, one of Booker T & the M.G.s' signature tunes. This is a superb live performance from 1970, opening a concert in Oakland for Creedence Clearwater Revival (the beardy fellows glimpsed  a couple of times mooching in the wings, watching the number slack-jawed with delight, are John Fogerty and co.).

A fuller post of songs in which Duck's bass played a key role will be forthcoming... shortly. For now, sit back and enjoy this.

Another Top Five Basslines - getting 'hoopy'

My last roundup of great basslines focused on chuggers, those simple but insistent lines that drive the song along with a relentless energy. The opening entry in this series had been on hooks, bass figures that are also usually quite simple and repetitive but have such a beautiful shape to them that they have that 'earworm' quality - impossible to ignore, impossible to forget. When first trying to organise my thoughts about this series back then, I realised that there needed to be at least one further category - for basslines that might be rather less forceful or prominent but where... there's just much more going on. I still haven't settled on a definitive name for this category; so far, I've been calling them hoopy basslines.

As before, I found I had soon amassed a list of candidates that was too long for one post; so, expect one or two more hoopy anthologies later in the year. (And don't immediately start abusing me because I appear to have omitted one of your favourites!!)

Well, here we go with a......

Top Five 'Hoopy' Basslines

5=)  Bring It On Home

When I think of John Paul Jones' work with Led Zeppelin, it tends to be the grinding rock riffs of Heartbreaker or Immigrant Song that spring first to mind. Bass aficionados usually cite his playing on The Lemon Song (allegedly all improvised on the spot) as his finest hour, but I rather prefer his work here on their adaptation of the Willie Dixon blues classic. You can hear the album track here, but this extended version from their 1970 Royal Albert Hall concert is awesome.

5=)  My Generation

JPJ is probably duking it out with John "The Ox" Entwistle for the accolade of 'Greatest Rock Bassist of All Time', but I often find that, on The Who's studio albums, his intricate playing is drowned out or at any rate distracted from by there being so much else going on. I notice and appreciate him more in live performance videos (like this mind-blowing version of Won't Get Fooled Again). Amongst the studio tracks, though it's not my favourite of their songs by a long way, I think My Generation best shows off the hoopiness of his bass (and he's touchingly protective of his instrument at the end in this video, when Pete and Keith go mental smashing their gear up).

4)  Sweet Emotion

I wouldn't call myself a huge Aerosmith fan, I don't have any of their albums, but... every once in a while I come across something of theirs that I really like, and I start to think that maybe I should delve into their catalogue more thoroughly. This seems to be an untypical song of theirs - slower, more complex, and allowing space to Tom Hamilton to really show off what he's capable of.

3)  Public Image

These days, John Lydon is probably remembered mostly for The Sex Pistols, but the fact is that he's led TWO of the most important British rock bands ever: his post-Pistols project, Public Image Ltd, was a pioneer of 'post-rock' and arguably an even better band than The Pistols - musically rather than socially iconoclastic. Their key asset was the superb - jazz and reggae influenced - bass playing of John Wardle, aka Jah Wobble.

2)  Coyote

I am indebted to Beijing Beatles guitarist Troy who recommended this track to me in the comments on my first basslines post [Well, I had been led to believe it was that Troy, but I later discovered it was another one.]. I knew of the egregiously talented but sadly self-destructive bass player Jaco Pastorius through his work with Joe Zawinul's electro-jazz ensemble Weather Report, but I hadn't realised that he'd enjoyed a close collaboration with the lovely singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell through the late '70s. The album version can be heard here, but this is an interesting, slowed down live performance. [I found an extended reminiscence of Jaco by Joni that is worth reading.]

But in the top spot this time I'm going for...

1)  You Can Call Me Al

It's hard to pick out just one example from Sowetan musician Bakithi Khumalo's gorgeous playing on the two Paul Simon albums Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints; there's something interesting going on in almost every track he's featured on. This is the one that particularly sticks in the mind because of the exuberant little run at around 3.45 - but it's MARVELLOUS all the way through. The album version is here, but this is a great live show.

A sad footnote: I just discovered that the great bass player Donald 'Duck' Dunn died a few weeks ago, peacefully in his sleep at the age of 70. He was performing to the end, on a tour in Japan with his lifelong friend, the guitarist Steve Cropper, with whom he had formed the backbone of Booker T & The M.G.'s (the house band at seminal Memphis recording studio Stax Records, and hence the sound of many classic '60s blues and soul tracks), and later of The Blues Brothers Band. When I started doing this basslines series at the start of the year, it soon occurred to me that I could probably do a whole post - at least one! - just on M.G.s basslines. I'll try to get around to that next month, as a tribute to The Duck.

Another Top Five Basslines - 'Chuggers'

A few months back I did my first 'Top Five' on favourite basslines and it proved to be one of my more popular posts. I said at the time that this idea would probably evolve into its own sub-series, because in the process of compiling the first selection I'd thought of probably a couple of dozen more songs that I really ought to have at least given a mention to.

I also started groping towards a classification of great basslines into three main types: hooks (quite simple bass figures that are one of the most prominent features of the song and somehow just have that 'earworm' quality - hear it once and never forget it), chuggers (even simpler and more repetitive bass figures that drive the song forward powerfully and drill their way into your brain more by sheer relentlessness than any particular 'hooky' quality), and, er, well a third category which I'm still struggling to come up with a good name for: I called it hoopy at first (the kind of bass that's often not so front-and-centre of the mix but buried in the heart of the music... weaving sinuously through it with a restless energy and inventiveness; a lot of Paul McCartney's work with The Beatles and Colin Moulding's with XTC is like this).

Anyway, that first selection was all classic hooks; so, this time out, I thought I'd go for some chuggers.

Play LOUD, and enjoy.

5)  I Won't Back Down

Ha! That might well be my theme song! Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers was one of those albums that just about everyone bought at the end of the '80s. I don't think I'd heard of him before that, but kept an eye out for other stuff of his thereafter: I particularly liked the soundtrack he did a few years later for Edward Burns's second film, She's The One. This song comes up quite a lot on the playlist down at my local bar, and it suddenly struck me what a perfectly simple exemplar of the chugger this is: it isn't loud, it isn't fast, it isn't angry; it doesn't do anything very much; it hardly varies at all; but it carries the song along, just chug-chug-chugging like an outboard motor on medium revs. I hadn't known until just now that Jeff Lynne (of ELO and Traveling Wilburys fame) was playing bass on this. (And Ringo Starr appears to be playing drums in this video, although it was Phil Jones on the album. Not sure what's going on with that!)

4)  Smells Like Teen Spirit

Nirvana rather passed me by at the time. I was flat broke, so didn't have the wherewithal to go buying new records. And I still had some hundreds of records I'd impulsively picked up in the bargain bin over the preceding decade and seldom or never played. So, new music wasn't getting much of a look-in during the early '90s. I discovered them some years on, after Kurt's death, and while I admired the musicianship, could understand why they had been hailed as the most important representatives of the 'Seattle sound', they never found a place in my heart. This album, though, and this song have a dark intensity that's impossible to dismiss... and Krist Novoselic's bass throbs so broodingly through it, conjuring exactly that kind of relentlessness I was thinking of when I was trying to define the categories above.

3)  Paranoid

Ah, the indispensable heavy rock chugger! Crikey, I hadn't realised that this was 42 years old. I only got to know Ozzy a dozen or so years later: I don't think I've ever seen footage of him this young before - spooky! Ozzy was just 21 in this video, and Terry 'Geezer' Butler, chugging away at pretty high revs on the bass, was only 20.

2)  Lust For Life

Damn, it's hard to find a good studio version of the Iggy Pop classic on Youtube. This is the new video brought out to accompany the song's prominent use in Danny Boyle's 1996 breakout film Trainspotting, but I think it's the original 1977 studio version, with Tony Sales driving along the bass (his brother Hunt plays the drums here, which gives you that extra level of tightness you don't often find in a rhythm section).

And in the top spot this time we have...

1)  White Wedding

I used to have the 12" of this (one of the very few I ever bought), but I can't now recall who was credited as the bassist. I had thought it was Phil Feit, who I remember as being the regular bass player in Billy Idol's touring band, but it's hard to verify this online: one contributor to a bassists' forum suggests that on the record it was Sal Cuevas, who's known primarily as a salsa and jazz player. One of the GREAT chuggers, whoever was playing it! Ah, the '80s - we were young then. Well, I was.

Top Five Basslines

A little New Year's musical treat for you!

Well, I've been pondering a post like this for ages, but the idea had dropped off my agenda for a while, and I've only just got around to resurrecting it. Of course, once I started thinking seriously about it, I couldn't limit myself to just FIVE. I think I'm going to sneak in six here; and I have enough nominations left over to fill one or two follow-up instalments later in the year...

[Thanks for inspiration to the formidably knowledgeable Bucketoftongues, another Beijing-based blogger (and copywriter/editor, it would seem), who I happened across for the first time a few days ago.]

Anyway, off the top of my head....

My Top Five (or so) Favourite Basslines

5=)  My Baby Just Cares For Me

Here's the rather sweet claymation video from Nick Park's Aardman studio which helped to carry the classic Nina Simone version of the song to the top of the UK pop charts (well, No. 5, anyway) when it was re-released in 1987. Most of the bassline is carried by the piano, but if you listen carefully, there is a very mellow upright bass underlining it as well - though I can't discover who was playing this. (You can also hear an extended studio version here, or watch her tearing it up live at the Montreux Jazz Festival here.)

5=)  Stand By Me

Here's a rare TV clip of Ben E. King performing his great hit; alas, the opening and closing are clipped a bit. Ruby informs me that his bass player was called Wendell Marshall. A year or so ago on Froogville I found another marvellous version of this song by the Playing For Change project, which supports street musicians.

4)  I Scare Myself

Possibly my favourite Thomas Dolby track (and I'm a big fan): Matthew Seligman playing bass, from the 1984 album The Flat Earth. You should really listen to the album version to enjoy the bass in all its richness, and for genuine trumpet rather than synthesizer (the video isn't that interesting, and seems strangely just a little short); but this is quite a good live performance from Channel 4's great '80s music show The Tube (which gave Jools Holland his start as a presenter). It's also interesting to check out the original version by its composer Dan Hicks, with his band The Hot Licks.

3)  Caramel

Yes, I've posted this on here before, in my 'Great Songs' series. But no apologies - it's a fabulous song, one of  the marvellous Suzanne Vega's very best. And it all hangs on that lilting bossa nova bassline. I'm not sure who played this; two bassists are credited on her Nine Objects Of Desire album, Bruce Thomas (who used to play with Elvis Costello's band, The Attractions) and Sebastian Steinberg.  Here's the video for the song; but there are some good live performances worth checking out as well, particularly this one from the TV show 'Sessions at West 54th'. You should also listen to the unaccompanied version (missing the bass, of course) from her recent series of Close-Up albums.

2)  The Love Cats

Hmm, are all my selections here played on an upright bass? I think perhaps they are (I have a feeling Caramel might be an electric bass; but the rest are all definitely uprights). I wonder what that signifies?? There don't seem to be any good quality postings of the original video at the moment; this rather grainy MTV screening is the best of a very bad lot. However, this clip - from a German TV show called Bananas - is pretty good (apart from Robert Smith's refusal to even attempt to mime in sync!). Great stuff from Simon Gallup here. On reflection, I realise that the basslines are actually the thing I like most about The Cure. Robert's voice has always irritated me, but they have some great basslines.

Ah, but in the top spot, it can only be....

1)  Fever

I discovered just the other day that Peggy Lee's bass player, Max Bennett, introduced this song to her and begged her to add it to her repertoire. That probably tells you all you need to know about what a fantastic bassline it is. The great lady, of course, made the song her own, adding half of the lyrics we know today herself. You can listen to the original recording here (accompanied by a montage of photos of Peggy). This, however, is an interesting - rather speeded up - live performance from the late '60s, with Max on bass and Jack Sperling on drums. No other accompaniment on this song: just a rhythm section, some finger snaps, and that wonderful voice.