As a member of Rock and Roll Hall Of Famers Booker T. & The MGs, Donald "Duck" Dunn was house bass player at the legendary Soul/R'n'B label, Stax, where his meaty playing helped define one of the most distinctive and enduring sounds in popular music. Among the timeless recordings Dunn held down the bottom end of, are Respect, Dock Of The Bay and I've Been Loving You Too Long, by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett's In The Midnight Hour, and Hold On I'm Coming by Sam and Dave, not to mention sessions with Neil Young, Eric Clapton and Jerry Lee Lewis.











Originally hand picked by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd - the Jake and Elwood characters in cult film, The Blues Brothers, Dunn kept the classic Stax sound alive and kicking as part of The Blues Brothers Band.
"I like to keep things spontaneous," said Dunn of their live show. "That's my way of playing. Even though we were playing the same songs every night, I like to think I can change it a little bit and use my input or creativity or whatever in any way that makes the band feel better. If I make the band smile, I make everybody smile."




Born in Memphis in late November, 1941, Dunn was given his nickname by his father as the two watched a Donald Duck cartoon on TV. "It was just one of those things that stuck," he recalls. "Most of my school friends and even a few of my teachers called me Duck."

Influenced by blues and R&B stars like BB King and Ray Charles, Dunn and Cropper formed their first band, The Royal Spades, in high school. "The name came from poker; a royal spade flush," explains Duck. "We played anything from Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley stuff. We were a white band trying to play rhythm and blues music, kinda the first in Memphis to do that."

The Royal Spades evolved into the Mar-Keys, who had a hit with Last Night soon after Dunn graduated from high school. Cropper subsequently left the band to become a full-time session musician at the Stax studio. He urged Dunn to follow him and the two became part of Booker T's MGs, which in turn become the house band at Stax.

"I would have liked to have been on the road more but the record company wanted us in the studio. Man, we were recording almost a hit a day for a while there. But I never knew how popular that music was until I came to England with Otis Redding in 1967." He adds with a chuckle: "I think most of the English people thought I was a pick-up bass player. Without being racist they probably thought that being affiliated with that music, Donald 'Duck' Dunn was black!"

What else does he remember of that visit? "Otis would follow Sam and Dave and he would peak through the curtain during their set, worried as he could be, to see if he could outdo Sam and Dave. I used to watch him do that every night! Before that tour, though, we were all in admiration of Motown. We were thinking why don't our records sound like Motown? Now we listen to them and they hold up real well today."

Like many recognizable sounds from Sun to Motown, the Stax sound evolved by happy accident from a blend of musicians who worked well together. "Everyone contributed," remembers Duck. "Sometimes, if I couldn't find something to play maybe Booker found the bass line. Or maybe Steve Cropper. It was a real family-orientated company. No one had any particular ego. We were a
real team."

Dunn's greatest pleasure, however, came from the music he created with the MGs. Dunn joined the MGs when bassist Lewis Steinberg left the band after having scored a million seller with the instrumental Green Onions in 1962. The MGs continued to hit the charts well into the '70s. Among their biggest successes were Hang 'Em High and Time Is Tight, both from movie soundtracks, also Soul Limbo, a Caribbean-styled number later to become very familiar as the cowbell-intro'd theme tune of the BBC's test cricket coverage.

1977 saw the first of several reunions of Booker T. Jones, Dunn and Cropper and the band recorded two more albums during the next 20 years, eventually receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1995 Rhythm & Blues Pioneer Awards. Since his appearance in the hit 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, Dunn has also been part of popular R'n'B revue, The Blues Brothers Band, which also features Steve Cropper. Of his lifelong musical relationship with Cropper, Dunn says: "Steve and I are like married people. I can look at him and know what he'll order for dinner. We don't hang out as much as we used to. I moved to Florida and he moved to Nashville. We used to play a lot of golf together and we've kind of separated. But when we play music together we both know where we're going."