Your 3 most influential bass players?

[Bobbylon]

Bakithi Kumalo
Jaco
Family Man

 

[ZonieBass]

Chris Squire
John Entwistle
Jack Bruce
honorarily mention to Tim Bogert

 

[JohnnyBottom]

Jamerson
Casady (believe it or not, Bless its Pointed Little Head opened the eyes of many upcoming bassists imho, although he pulled from Bruce as well)
Pastorious

 

[Thebiggestjerk]

Michael Anthony, Geddy, Steve Harris

 

[Thebiggestjerk]

Steve Harris, Chris Squire, Geddy Lee. Honorable Mention: John Taylor.

John Taylor is egregiously underrated.

 

[rickbissonnette]

Mine would be Duck Dunn, James Jamerson, Paul McCartney

 

[Koshchei]

Jonas Hellborg, Tony Levin, Jean Baudin.

 

[mambo4]

Sting influenced me to take up a bass in the first place, more than my playing itself
John Paul Jones aka How to Play Old School Rock Bass
James Jamerson aka How to play Old School Soul Bass

 

[Plain Old Barry]

Duck
Steve Harris
Ed Friedland

 

[jjcarswell]

Paul Jackson, Stanley, Jaco

 

[logdrum]

Carlos Del Puerto (Irakere ) all my latin and Cuban jazz-- his son Carlitos played Chick Corea etc.
Jaco Pastorius - freltess-isms, funk
Gary Peacock -- abstract and avant garde, lyricism

There are more but those will be the top three

 

[FrenchBassQC]

Jeff Andrews, Jimmy Haslip and John Paul Jones.

 

[Altitude]

The first two are Mark King and John Patitucci. I came up in the 80s.

My third, and the only reason this post is interesting, was a local guy in Austin who played for an incredible funk band there called Extreme Heat. This guy was the bass player and the drummer was his brother.

I was 14. They were my first exposure to what a tight rhythm section in a funk band could sound like when done well. Hearing what they did blew my mind; I had never heard anything like it before. They mainly played in 6th Street clubs, and again I was 14 so it was hard to see them. They used to convince the bar managers to let me sit in the upstairs area alone and look down and watch. A few times a year.

Bass player is now a busy touring guy out of Nashville. He left Austin on a gig with Lee Greenwood, which was stylistically irrelevant to anything he'd done before but he later toured with Faith Hill and these days is always doing something cool. Drummer brother moved to LA and has been a sound engineer there for 30 years.

It's the people you meet along the way that make the difference.

 

[drumvsbass]

Manring, Squarepusher, Bootsy. Though Steve Harris must get honorable mention as it's really all his fault in regards to my teenage self taking up the instrument.

 

[Jogobass]

Gary Willis, Victor Wooten, Steve Harris

 

[nickpc]

Graham Maby
Simon Gallup
John Taylor

 

[Mark Karwan]

In terms of musical epigenetics, it’s probably:
1) Mike Gordon
2) Jaco
3) Chris Wood

I wonder what my band mates would say. I’ll ask them. Honorable mention for Marc Friedman.

 

[GoLeafsGo]

Dougie Thomson
John McVie
The Ox

 

[KenD]

Haven't we already trolled this? Multitudinous times?

One last time: Tiny Tim, Cindy Lauper and Kenny G.

 

[FritzM]

Squire
Jaco
Orsted