Donald 'Duck' Dunn

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Donald 'Duck' Dunn · Donald Dunn was born in 1941 in Memphis, Tennessee. His father gave him the nickname Duck, after the Disney cartoon duck. As a boy he cycled and played sport with Steve Cropper, and when Cropper took up the guitar, Dunn chose the bass guitar. He taught himself to play by playing along with records. With Cropper and other school friends he formed the Royal Spades, who as the Mar-Keys scored a national hit in 1961 with Last Night on the label Satellite, the later Stax.

Music and breakthrough

In 1965 Dunn became the bassist of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, the house band of Stax. There he played on thousands of records, including by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas and Albert King. His bass lines in Respect and I Can't Turn You Loose by Redding, Hold On, I'm Comin' by Sam & Dave and Born Under a Bad Sign by Albert King became a model for other r&b musicians. They are simple, tight and melodic, and follow no textbook. Dunn played a Fender Precision Bass with thick flatwound strings, which explains his round, warm tone.

Influence

Later he worked with Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks and Neil Young. With Cropper he played in the Blues Brothers Band and appeared in the films The Blues Brothers (1980) and Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), pipe in mouth. Dunn died in 2012 in Tokyo, after a concert with Cropper. His role at Stax shows that the soul of Memphis was made by a band of Black and white musicians together.

Listening

In School of Rock

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• Mixtape 6: Fear of a Black Planet^NL Reader