On this day · 79 years ago · 1947
79 Years Ago Today: Willie Weeks, the Bassist George Harrison Rated Over Paul McCartney, Is Born
Willie Weeks's 3.5-minute bass solo on Donny Hathaway's Live is a rite of passage for bass students. It also launched two decades of session and touring work with George Harrison, David Bowie, and Eric Clapton.
By Lowe, Bass desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Bassist Willie Weeks was born August 5, 1947, in Salemburg, North Carolina, and turns 79 today. His 3.5-minute bass solo on Donny Hathaway's Live (1972) is one of the most studied recordings in bass guitar history. It led to session and touring work with George Harrison, David Bowie, Aretha Franklin, and the Rolling Stones, and Harrison publicly rated Weeks's bass playing above Paul McCartney's when asked about a Beatles reunion in 1974.
A 3.5-minute bass solo that became a rite of passage
Willie Weeks was born August 5, 1947, in Salemburg, North Carolina, and started on electric bass in the early 1960s, counting Ron Carter, James Jamerson, and Ray Brown as early influences, per Wikipedia's account of his career. By the early 1970s he was working as a session bassist, and one date changed the trajectory of his career: Donny Hathaway's live album Live, recorded in 1971 and released in 1972.
On "Voices Inside (Everything Is Everything)," Weeks played a 3.5-minute bass solo, on a 1962 Fender Precision strung with flatwound strings, through an Ampeg SVT amplifier, that's still held up as one of the finest recorded bass solos in the instrument's history, per Bass Guitar Shack's account of the session. The same album's "Little Ghetto Boy" is a quieter showcase of the same instinct: bass lines that weave around a vocal without ever crowding it.
The session that impressed George Harrison more than the Beatles
Weeks's playing on the Hathaway album reportedly impressed a run of English rock musicians, and led directly to work with Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones ("It's Only Rock & Roll"), George Harrison, and David Bowie starting in 1974. Weeks played on five Harrison studio albums between 1974 and 1982, from Dark Horse through Gone Troppo.
The clearest evidence of how highly Harrison rated him: at a 1974 press conference for his North American tour, asked about the odds of a Beatles reunion, Harrison said he would rather have Willie Weeks on bass than Paul McCartney, according to Peter Doggett's Beatles history You Never Give Me Your Money. Weeks's discography from that decade alone runs through Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, Aretha Franklin's Let Me in Your Life, David Bowie's Young Americans, and James Taylor's Gorilla and In the Pocket.
Still on the road, decades later
Weeks kept working steadily into the 2000s, recording with John Mellencamp, Vince Gill, and John Mayer's Continuum (2006). In 2006 and 2007 he was the house bassist for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival band, and he's continued touring and recording with Clapton in the years since. He mainly plays vintage Fender Precision Basses, including the 1962 model from the Hathaway session and a 1958 Precision, plus a 1964 Jazz Bass; in 2014, Bee Basses built him a signature "WW" model.
If that Hathaway tone is what you're chasing
Weeks's Hathaway-session flatwounds were a specific, one-album choice rather than a lifelong signature gauge, and his exact modern string setup isn't documented in the kind of detail CYS requires before naming a specific current rig. What's well established is the instrument: a Fender-style Precision or Jazz bass, strung with a balanced, all-purpose set.
Regular Slinky Bass (.050-.105)
Why this one: A balanced, widely played nickel roundwound bass set, not a claim about Weeks's own current gear, which isn't documented in that kind of detail.
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