[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNtnDq3ePnU]
This tune is one of those songs that someone says the title and you think, "what song?" Then, you hear the song, and you think "Oh, that song!" It has been used in countless films and TV series. When it was released, it made it to #3 on the charts. It's strange in structure due to a couple of things. It's chromatic-minor, and it has an open fifth as the tonic. If you don't have the slightest clue what that means, just know that it's unusual.
Now, this post isn't totally about this song. It's about the man playing bass in the video above, Donald "Duck" Dunn. Many people my age will know him first and foremost as the bassist for The Blues Brothers. If you go back a generation, people may know him as the bassist for Booker T & The MGs or one of the main session musicians for Stax Records. Either way you remember him, you remember him as one of the greats.
Mr. Dunn passed away this past weekend at age 70. He was discovered by his long time collaborator and friend, Steve Cropper, the guitarist in the above video. The pair was touring in Japan and had just played a double show the night before. Dunn passed in his sleep. Dunn has recorded with such artists as Eric Clapton, Freddie King, Albert King, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, CCR, Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters, and Jerry Lee Lewis to name a few. You can hear him perform on hits like "Respect" and "I Can't Turn You Loose" by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave's "Hold On, I'm Coming" and Wilson Pickett's "Midnight Hour".
The night he passed, I was on stage performing. One of the ladies in the audience kept shouting for oldies. It was so strange to found out the next day that the man who had performed bass on several of the songs that lady had been screaming for had passed that very night. The universe is strange sometimes.
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