Out for a Duck

Reasons to be cheerful

Stuck in limbo

It’s all been a bit mathematical round here lately, so here’s something completely different. I guess we all have our own YouTube videos that we go to in times when we need cheering up. They’re all very personal choices: for me, it’s things like That Flintoff Over to Langer and Ponting in 2005, or Peter Withe’s goal against Bayern Munich in 1982. But I realised recently that lots of my choices have the same man in them, so I wanted to share them with you, on the anniversary of his death.

Here’s the first video: Booker T. and the MGs playing Soul Limbo on the David Letterman show. The person I’m interested in is Donald “Duck” Dunn, holding things together on bass, with guitarist Steve Cropper, and of course Booker T. Jones himself doing things with keys.

It’s just a deeply joyous thing. Whoever you are, it’s guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. But if you are a certain kind of British person of a certain age, it’s more than that: it’s distilled essence of Proustian memories. As the theme tune to the BBC Test cricket coverage for so many years, it can’t help but bring back the feeling of it being 10.30am on a sunny summer morning, youthful days full of potential and promise, before the inevitable England collapse to 39 for 4 and rain stopped play.

But in the days before the internet, I didn’t know what this music was. I would have guessed it was some kind of Caribbean tune perhaps, rather than from the southern USA.

Funk soul brother check it out now

The first clue might be the person who played that memorable cowbell part on the original recording: none other than the great Isaac Hayes. Theme from Shaft! Chef from South Park! The guy who was sampled for everything from Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos to Glory Box!

Someone that amazing was ready to step in because the MGs were the house band at the legendary Stax Records in Memphis. I’ve always loved the idea of the great pickup session bands of the 60s and 70s, whether the Wrecking Crew in LA, the Swampers at Muscle Shoals or the Motown Funk Brothers, ready to work magic at the drop of a hat, and the MGs’ discography is right up there with any of those.

Dunn and the rest of them were there at Stax through the 1960s, ready to perform on classic tracks from In the Midnight Hour and Soul Man to Born under a Bad Sign and (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay.

There are still some things that make us all the same

My next “Duck” Dunn video that can’t fail to bring a smile to your face is from the Blues Brothers movie. If you’re forming a fictional band and you want to play Soul Man, then why wouldn’t you hire Dunn and Cropper, who’d been there first time around?

(I don’t want to just recommend Blues Brothers tracks, but it’s definitely worth checking out the full length version of Sweet Home Chicago on the soundtrack album, with Dunn doing great things along with the rest of them).

Jimmy was cutting every link between himself and the robbery

I always hated the next tune. Layla always felt to me like it was a riff in search of a song, partly because the original single version that used to be on the radio stopped before the good bit. It’s like only playing the non-F1 bit of The Chain. And ok, it’s a bit of a cliche after Goodfellas, but I think it was years until I heard and appreciated the Piano Exit part properly.

So anyway, here’s the Philadelphia leg of Live Aid in 1985, with Clapton, a jet-lagged Phil Collins, and … guess who on bass?

I was so much older then

I’ve always been a sucker for those kind of live supergroup things that do the rounds on YouTube, and this is my all-time favourite. In fact, I'm glad it’s on YouTube because I pretty much wore the VHS tape thin back in the day. It’s from the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration at Madison Square Gardens in 1992 — and how absurd does it seem now that 30 years (apparently impossible longevity at the time) would turn out to be less than halfway through Dylan’s career?

Anyway, here’s My Back Pages, in the Roger McGuinn-Byrds arrangement from Younger than Yesterday. Featuring (deep breath) McGuinn, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, George Harrison, his Bobness — and lurking at the back, Dunn on bass.

There must be some way out of here

And speaking of Bob Dylan and supergroups, here’s Dunn and the rest of the MGs again, with Neil Young and “Poncho” Sampedro from Crazy Horse, recorded at Rock am Ring in 2002.

The 30 minute version of Down by the River later in the set is just as good as you’d imagine, and helped get me through many a long afternoon in lockdown. But if you only have a mere 11 minutes to spare then I can heartily recommend this Hendrix-worthy version of All Along the Watchtower, with Young wrestling his guitar into submission as usual.

So there you are, six videos which unfailingly make me smile. Donald “Duck” Dunn died in Tokyo on 13th May 2012, 11 years ago today, so please click on your favourite of these videos, turn the volume (and the bass!) right up and remember him.

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