Obituary : Donald "Duck" Dunn

Donald "Duck" Dunn, November 24th 1941 - May 13th 2012.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1941, Dunn began playing bass in the late 1950s having decided that the guitar was too difficult : "I tried the guitar but it had two strings too many" he was quoted. "It was too complicated man !!"

An early player of the Fender bass range (typically a Precision though occasionally a Jazz), Dunn joined Stax records in 1964 with colleagues Booker T Jones,the late Al Jackson Jr and; Steve Cropper forming Booker T and The MG's (Memphis Group). In later years he endorsed the Lakland bass range (pic below), with his own signature model.

Here they became the world's premier backing group, recording and playing live shows with  US soul legends, including Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Sam + Dave, Carla Thomas

and Eddie Floyd.

His deceptively simple bass lines (just you try playing them !!) underpinned hit after hit record and he became a major influence on generations of aspirant bass players, myself included.

He was later known for his appearances in the Blues Brothers bands and films, where he spoke a line that summed up his work with the MG's :

"We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline".