RIP

How'd I miss this?

Lord-like.

Fuck.

Louis Johnson - most likely, you've never heard his name before, most likely, he's one of your favorite bass players. Certainly, I love his work.

Fuck.

RIP

Personal, sentimental favorite:

Edit: As far as I know, Louis Johnson only played bass on the above version of "Silly Love Songs", which is from the soundtrack to Give My Regards To Broad Street, Macca's weird attempt at a dramatic film/extended music video that I fell in love with as a child. The soundtrack of the film involved the re-recording of many Beatles and Wings and McCartney solo works. Ringo played on some of the tracks, and George Martin, and possibly, Geoff Emerick were involved, as well as Linda McCartney. Everyone else: crack session musicians, including some members of Toto (!) and, of course, Louis Johnson.

And, of course, the fucking masterpiece:

Slower, isolated:

Play-along:

As someone who makes music (at nowhere near this level), it's infuriating sometimes how little is understood about... it's like, we can all appreciate a good tune, but, still, what it takes to get there is not understood. In my own case, having recently completed something better than anything I have ever done (but not quite good enough, still) it's all the hours I spent mixing the track, hands trembling over faders to get certain parts to sit just right even as the music was changing dramatically over time. Just so that nobody would even notice the mix when offering their critiques. And I suck. If you really, really, have ears, if you've heard thousands of hours of r&b from 1977-1983, you should hear it: the above bass line is genius. Not black genius or music genius or pop genius or whatever bullshit qualifiers in front. Just. Genius.