Who all played bass for Crosby, Stills, Nash, etc?

Dallas Taylor is a name that comes to mind. Not certain though. In those days you could bet it was a J or P bass .

 

Dallas Taylor, great percussionist/drummer died of liver failure some years ago.

Steve Stills played bass on that first CSN record. Great parts and sound. I'm pretty sure that it was a left handed P-bass strung for right handed playing with LaBella's.

CSN never lit my fire, but I always listen to those bass parts on the first CSN record when it plays on radio.

 

Greg Reeves played on the second album Deja-Vu with Dallas Taylor on drums. He was replaced by Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuels, followed by George Perry. They always had great bassist, slap master Alex Sklarevski was in the band in the early 90's.

 

Alexis Skarlevski had been playing for them in the 90's, but I don't know if he still is. And Greg Reeves was the bass player for the early era CSN(Y).

 

Stills was the bassist on the first. He is also listed as doing the heavy lifting on the second, with Greg Reeves as a contributing artist.

Fuzzy Samuels played on the first live album. After that, there were a ton of people, apparently.

 

Dallas Taylor drummed, not sure why so many people are calling him a bassist.

Yeah, first album was Stills (he also played almost all the other instruments), Greg Reeves on much of Deja Vu and others.

I think Stills was their best bassist and their best overall musician. What a genius.

 

The first CSN album (Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, etc.) was all Stills, and in Bass Player Magazine a few years ago, when they did a transcription of the line, he said he used a Precision. No idea if it was a lefty. Only picture of him with a left-handed P bass is a jam with Jimi Hendrix, and the bass may have been Jimi's.

The first CSN&Y album, "Deja Vu" credits Greg Reeves with bass (I read somewhere once I can't find again that Reeves played on "Poppa Was A Rolling Stone" by the Temps too!), but Stills did play a lot of that album too. Dallas Taylor was the drummer on both these albums, but I bet Stills may have done some as well.

The live "4 Way Street" is Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuels, drums by Johnny Barbata (formerly with the Turtles, later with Jefferson Starship).

Still's first solo album (the one with "Love The One You're With) has Stills, and Samuels as I recall, maybe Reeves too.

The second solo album might have Leland Sklar, because by that time they'd been haging with The Section. Sklar and Russel Kunkle play on the Crosby & Nash album that has "Immigration Man".

Neil Young has used Billy Talbot (Crazy Horse) for a lot of stuff. He had Tim Drummond on "Harvest". Drummond worked with Conway Twitty, then with James Brown (he was the only white guy in Brown's band during a tour of Vietnam). I know Drummond used an early Fender single-coil Precsion, early enough to have the Bakelite saddles instead of steel ones. I know that Duck Dunn did some work for Young and did the CSNY 2000 tour.

I saw that tour in Chicago. Duck played a Lakland Bob Glaub all night. His famous 'burst/anodized guard/maple neck Fender P was in the rack, as was another Lakland, but he played the same bass all night long

Stills is a pretty amazing multi-instrumentalist. He can play just about anything, and has on several tracks. According to David Crosby there's a recording of Stills playing all the instruments on a version of "Dear Mr. Fanatasy" that in Crosby's words made Traffic sound like a bad opening act. So, unless the individual song lists a credit on the album, it could be Stills playing on any of them.

jte

 

What JTE said.

 

Hi. Stephen Stills played bass on that Suite Judy song, and that whole album. He also played lead guitar and organ. Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuels played bass on 4 Way Street, and would play with Stephen, most notably in Stephen's own "supergroup" of sorts, called Manassas. Bill Wyman (The Rolling Stones) also played on a few songs with Manassas. Anyways, back to Calvin- he recorded with Stephen on a few occasions post-Manassas, in his solo albums. I'm not sure there was any bass on Find The Cost of Freedom, just two acoustic guitars, and three excellent voices. At least the version I have. On a related note, Crosby, Stills and Nash revisited Find the Cost of Freedom on the last track of their 1982 album, Daylight Again. That revisit is actually entitled as "Daylight Again, and they end up singing the last 1/3 of that song as Find the Cost... morphing from the former to the later. It works- it's in the same key, same changes and all. There is no bass on that Daylight Again/Find the Cost of Freedom recording either, to my knowledge.

Other bassists with the group:
1970 CSN&Y- Deja Vu- Greg Reeves
1988 CSN&Y- American Dreams- Bob Glaub, Stephen
1977 CSN- CSN- George Perry, Tim Drummond, Gerald Johnson
1982- CSN- Daylight Again- George Perry, Bob Glaub, Leland Sklar, Timothy B. Schmit
1990 CSN- Live It Up- Leland Sklar, Bob Glaub
1975 C&N- Wind On The Water- Tim Drummond
1977 C&N- Live- Tim Drummond (taken from 1975-76 tours)

-I have seen footage of Stephen playing a upright, live, on a 1969/1970 TV show.
-Manassas contained another famous bass player, Chris Hillman of the Byrds, who in this setting plays guitar and mandolin, and never played bass on the Manassas recordings, as far as I can tell.

I have separate David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and some Neil Young info if/as needed. Let me know on/off this forum.

Hope this helps.

 

Read some interviews over the years, he has said the bass used was a lefty. That changes the way the the pickups listen to the strings. Vintage Guitar Mag did a nice interview with Stills a coupla' years ago.

It's pretty amazing that these CSN guys are still working! Alot of Drugs, S**, and Rock 'n Roll......lots of casualties along the way.....it must take a healthy ego and a string sense of denial to face those crowds after some of the shenanigans these guys have pulled with the press and unsuspecting "fans".......

But Stills is a great bass player in any case.

 

Stills had a 50's P Bass with the original flats still on when he recorded the first album. There's a famous story of him meeting McCrtney and absolutely harassing him to try this bass- saying things like "You gotta get rid of that toy and try a real bass". Stills is rather well known for rubbing people the wrong way, particularly bandmates.

I'm a Graham Nash man, myself.

 

I try not to play "favorites" with the band personalities, as I tend to often find someone who likes one member of the band doesn't like the other ones. I don't want to enable that in-fighting about who is better/worse, but my one of my positive thoughts about Graham is that he seems to have been the most consistent performer in CSN since the get-go, and he seems to have been the most consistent and present concern, active in helping David beat his addictions. For that alone, he should be applauded. I always felt he was the diplomat and glue that was needed between David and Stephen. This is my impression.

There's good and bad with each member, but I truly love 'em all.

 

The bass solo in Deja Vu (We have all been here before...) always knocks my socks off.

 

+1
One of the best in rock/pop music, period.

 

Neil Young's 'After The Goldrush' album also features some very fine playing by Greg Reeves. Apparently CSN&Y fired Reeves because he wanted to add one of his songs to the setlist, and also started getting a little crazy. When Neil is in the band, he has the biggest say who the support players are, he was the one who canned Stills long-time buddy Dallas Taylor.

 

Manassas was hot, CSN was hot, solo Steve was hot. I'm personally a massive fan of the Supersession album with Al Kooper and friends!