Donald "Duck" Dunn

Dunn & the MGs were the house band for Bob Dylan's concert celebrating Dylan's 30th anniversary in the music business at Madison Square Garden playing behind Dylan, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Stevie Wonder, Sinéad O'Connor, Eddie Vedder, and Neil Young, who recruited the MGs to tour with him and recorded with Dunn several times since.

Donald "Duck" Dunn (November 24, 1941 – May 13, 2012) was an American bass guitarist, session musician, record producer, and songwriter.

Dunn was notable for his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.'s and as a session bassist for Stax Records.

At Stax, Dunn played on thousands of records, including hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, Bill Withers, Elvis Presley, and many others.

Axton's mother, Estelle, and her brother Jim Stewart owned Satellite Records and signed the band, who had a national hit with "Last Night" in 1961 under their new name, the "Mar-Keys".

Booker T. and the M.G.'s was founded by Cropper and Booker T. Jones in 1962, with the drummer Al Jackson, Jr. The original bassist, on early hits such as "Green Onions", was Lewie Steinberg; Dunn replaced him in 1965.

Stax became known for Jackson's drum sound, the sound of the Memphis Horns, and Dunn's grooves.

The MG's and Dunn's bass lines on songs like Otis Redding's "Respect" and "I Can't Turn You Loose", Sam & Dave's "Hold On, I'm Comin'", and Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign" influenced musicians everywhere.

In the 1970s, Jones and Cropper left Stax, but Dunn and Jackson stayed with the label.

As an instrumental group, they continued to experiment with the album McLemore Avenue (their reworking of the Beatles' Abbey Road) and on their final album, Melting Pot (1971), which featured bass lines that to this day inspire hip-hop artists.

In 1971, when the rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty left Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), the remaining members discussed with Dunn the possibility of his joining the group, with their current bassist, Stu Cook, moving to guitar.

Booker T. and the MG's had performed in concert and jammed in the studio with CCR in the past, and Dunn in particular had become friends with the band members.

But CCR ultimately decided to remain a trio from then on.

Dunn went on to play for Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, and Rod Stewart.

Dunn worked with Elvis Presley on his 1973 RCA Album Raised on Rock.

Dunn played himself in the 1980 feature The Blues Brothers, where he famously uttered the line, "We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline!"

and was frequently shown smoking a pipe while playing.

He was the featured bass player on the single "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around", by Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty, from Nicks's debut solo album Bella Donna (1981), and on other tracks by Petty between 1976 and 1981.

He reunited with Cropper as a member of Levon Helm's RCO All Stars and also displayed his quirky Southern humor making two movies with Cropper, former Stax drummer Willie Hall, and Dan Aykroyd as a member of the Blues Brothers band.

Dunn was the bassist in Eric Clapton's band for Clapton's appearance at Live Aid in 1985.

In 1992, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Booker T. & the M.G.'s. In 2017, he was ranked 40th on Bass Player magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Bass Players of All Time".

Dunn was born in Memphis, Tennessee.

His father nicknamed him "Duck" while watching Disney cartoons with him one day.

Dunn grew up playing sports and riding his bike with another future professional musician, Steve Cropper.

After Cropper began playing guitar with their friend Charlie Freeman, Dunn decided to learn the bass guitar.

Eventually, along with drummer Terry Johnson, the four became the Royal Spades.

The Messick High School group added keyboardist Jerry Lee "Smoochy" Smith, singer Ronnie Angel (also known as Stoots), and a budding young horn section in baritone saxophone player Don Nix, tenor saxophone player Charles "Packy" Axton, and trumpeter (and future co-founder of the Memphis Horns) Wayne Jackson.

Cropper has noted how the self-taught Dunn started out playing along with records, filling in what he thought should be there.

"That's why Duck Dunn's bass lines are very unique," Cropper said, "They're not locked into somebody's schoolbook somewhere".

He appeared in the 1998 sequel Blues Brothers 2000, again as himself.

In the 2000s, Dunn was in semi-retirement, but still performed occasionally with Booker T. & the MG's at clubs and music festivals.

In June 2004, Dunn, Cropper, and Jones served as the house band for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival.

The group backed such guitarists as Joe Walsh and David Hidalgo on the main stage at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas.

In 2008, Dunn worked with the Australian soul singer Guy Sebastian touring for The Memphis Album.

Dunn and Cropper arrived in Australia on February 20, 2008, to be Sebastian's backing band for an 18-date concert tour, the Memphis Tour.

Dunn is credited with performing on a version of the standard "I Ain't Got Nobody" with Jones, Cropper and Michel Gondry in Gondry's 2008 film Be Kind Rewind.

Dunn was married to his wife, June, until his death.

They had two sons, Mike and Jeff, and a grandson, Michael.

On the morning of May 13, 2012, Dunn died in his sleep at age 70 after finishing his fifth double show at the Blue Note nightclub in Tokyo with Cropper the night before.

He had been in Japan as part of an ongoing tour with Cropper and Eddie Floyd.