Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine RIP Donald "Duck" Dunn

Nothing against Donna Summer or Levon Helm, but the one that really saddened me was the passing on May 13th of Donald "Duck" Dunn, the bassist for so many great Stax recordings in the late 60s. As a member of Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Dunn was heard on records by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Albert King and others. From there he went on to play with such diverse talents as Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Muddy Waters (and many many others).

Probably his most visible appearance to mainstream audiences was as a member of the Blues Brothers (as himself), where he uttered the line "We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline!"

You'll be missed, Mr. Dunn.

What a bad year it's been for music in terms of deaths.

In one of those rare moments of irony, I happened to invoke Mr. Dunn's name last night while engaging in a friendly trivia contest with my brother. The Blues Brothers' "Soul Man" came on Pandora, and my brother challenged me to name the backup band. I said Junkyard; he wanted more, so I said Steve Cropper. Then just to add the coup de grace, I mentioned the bass player, Mr. Dunn.

It's not an important moment at all, and one that hardly honors Mr. Dunn in any way. Except that I had no idea he had passed, and my brother and I had earlier lamented the passing of Donna Summer and Robin Gibb.

With the additional passing of Whitney Houston, Davey Jones, Levon Helm, and Greg Ham, it seems that a lot of the musical architects of my childhood and young adulthood are disappearing all at once.

Thank you, Mr. Dunn, for your contributions to the soundtrack of my youth.

If I could play bass as good as either Donald "Duck" Dunn, or say, like that Les Claypool from Primus (are they still around?) I'd take the former over the latter hands down. He had a great feel. I wish I'd seen one of the shows when Booker T. and the M.G.'s backed Neil Young. Those had to have been pretty great.

I was lucky enough to have attended one in the early 90s (in a 16th row seat even!) and it was as good as you would imagine, especially the older material that Young had originally recorded with Crazy Horse. They even did a song co-written by Steve Cropper as an encore: Dock Of The Bay. Although Neil Young didn't sound a thing like Otis Redding, he did put a lot of feeling (dare I say "soul"?) into his rendition of the song.