Danny Thompson: When the bassist who played with everyone finally made a record of his own
Following news of the death of the great British bassist Danny Thompson recently at the age of 86, one of his many collaborators, Billy Bragg, posted a touching anecdote on social media.
“[Danny Thompson] is one of those characters who can justifiably be described as legendary,” Bragg wrote, noting that Thompson had contributed “soulful double bass” to his Workers Playtime album in 1988. “He had a wealth of great stories that kept us laughing through the hanging around / waiting to play that makes up much of a musician’s life.”
Bragg also recalled when Thompson came to the studio and saw that Rod Stewart’s former drummer, Mickey Walker, was part of the sessions, too. “They started musing on when they had last worked together,” Bragg wrote. “After a bit of discussion, they came to the conclusion that it was probably when they both played on ‘Maggie May’. Listening in the control room, Wiggy [guitarist Philip Wigg] and I got a bit emotional. Rest in peace, Big Fella.”
Many of the tributes paid to Danny Thompson in the past few days have understandably focused on his incredible discography as a session man and guest player, as he spent 50 years adding his particular talents to the work of everyone from Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, Bert Jansch, and Marianne Faithfull to Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, and T Rex. Most of those years, Thompson was content in his role, bringing other artists’ visions to life. But back in 1987, just before his work with Billy Bragg, the 48-year-old bassman did come to a bit of a mid-career realisation, aided by the added scare of a car crash and subsequent time in recovery.
“There are friends of mine who have died—Sandy Denny, Nick Drake—and I thought, ‘What if I snuffed it tomorrow?” Thompson told The Guardian in a 1988 interview. “Everyone’s heard me plonking away on people’s gigs and records, but I wanted something that would say ‘This is me.’”
That something became Danny Thompson’s first solo album, the self-deprecatingly titled Whatever, which was released in 1987 to good reviews, if not earth-shattering sales. As with Thompson’s influential late 1960s band Pentangle, Whatever and its three-piece band of the same name trod in the lush valley between trad folk and modern jazz. Deciding not to employ a vocalist alongside fellow instrumentalists Bernie Holland and Tony Roberts, Thompson let Whatever speak for itself musically.
“I didn’t have a massive statement I wanted to put across,” he said. “I just wanted Kate Bush to like it. I wanted the jazzers to like it. I wanted the folk side to like it.”
The response to the record was positive enough that Thompson recorded several more projects in the Whatever series over the next decade. Most are long out of print, but the original 1987 album was re-released in 2023, and would be well worthy of a revisit for Thompson admirers who want a better sense of where his own musical tastes leaned.
As for those who looked to Danny Thompson as inspiration for their own upright bass playing, he shared this simple advice back in 1988: “A bass is about time and sound,” he said. “If you want to play fast, play a guitar. And you have to listen, and not just to other bass players. I learned so much from [pianist] Stan Tracey, just from watching his left hand, that way he stabs them out.”
Thompson’s joy when talking about music could only be rivalled by the infectiousness of that joy when you played alongside him. “I’m like a 14-year-old again every time I do it,” he concluded.
