In the finale of Donny Hathaway's classic 1972 Live album, Willie Weeks – playing a flatwound-strung '62 Fender P-Bass through an Ampeg SVT – takes a three-and-a-half-minute solo that is a seamless melding of groove, melody, and drama, making it one of the deepest bass solos on record. “Everywhere I go somebody knows my name because of that bass solo ,” Weeks told Bass Player . “It's not like with Michael Jackson – I don't get mobbed – but I am famous, and I like it.
“It's as incredible as that night Donny said, ‘On bass, ladies and gentlemen, the baddest bass player in the country – Willie Weeks, y’all!’ I'm like, ‘Oh, my God! What did he say? What am I going to do?’ I thought, I'd better build slow!” Born in Salemburg, North Carolina, Weeks grew up listening to country, pop, and R&B on the radio. At age 12 he started singing and then playing guitar in a gospel group – learning on a homemade axe strung with fishing line – and when the group began performing alongside big-time acts, he got his first glimpse of a bass guitar . “It was a Fender Precision.
I said, ‘Man, that's it!’” Weeks went on to hone his bass skills in the early ’60s in a variety of bands and locations, from Alvin Cash & the Crawlers in Buffalo, New York, to Les Watson & the Panthers in Dallas, Texas. In St. Paul, Minnesota, it was the Fabulous Amazers and prog-rockers Gypsy, whose self-titled 1970 album with Weeks on bass has become a cult item.
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