Stax Bassist Duck Dunn Remembered In Memphis

Donald “Duck” Dunn played bass with Booker T. and the MGs, who backed many of the hits Stax Records put out in the 1960s. He was 70 years old when he died Sunday in Tokyo. At the audio link, you can listen to a remembrance of Dunn’s life and career that aired on All Things Considered.

For the third time in a month, the marquee at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music is eulogizing a fallen alumnus: On April 12, it read “R.I.P. Andrew Love.” May 1, it marked the death of wah-wah guitarist Skip Pitts. Today, it pays tribute to Duck Dunn, the bassist who, as a member of Booker T. and the MGs, laid the foundation for so many of the hit records that put Stax on the map.

Although I’ve lived in Memphis since the mid-1980s, I came late to the MGs. I knew Dunn first from The Blues Brothers; despite the fact that I’d heard songs like “In the Midnight Hour” and “Try A Little Tenderness” thousands of times, I was a straggler to the party that is Memphis soul. Anchored by equal parts blues, country, gospel and jazz, Memphis soul music is more fatback than lean, typified as “gutbucket” in comparison with its sophisticated counterparts in Philly or Detroit. Dunn’s finger-poppin’ instrumental oeuvre — created with guitarist Steve Cropper, drummer Al Jackson Jr. and organist Booker T. Jones — led, in a roundabout way, to my career as a freelance music journalist.