Hal Leonard’s Soul Fingers, The Music and Life of Legendary Bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn.

Soul Fingers is an amazing book and tribute to Donald!

While there are a lot of great tunes that cover his basslines, Soul Fingers is also a complete biography of his life including photos, his technique, and the gear he had used. The biography spans the entire life of Donald from the very early years to his very last gig in Japan and is a very touching and great read into this legendary bassist. I don’t want to spoil it, but there are quite a few interesting tidbits, especially covering his years with Stax to the tour in London with Booker T and the MGs, Otis Redding, and a few others… his time with Elvis to his time spent recording in LA studios, gigging with the Blues Brothers and many others.

After the biography, there is an analysis of his playing, including rhythmic choices, note choices over chord changes, and stylistic choices. Later in the book, it gets into his bass lines and includes over fifty transcriptions and most notably tunes like, “These Arms of Mine”, “Respect”, “In the Midnight Hour”, “Soul Man”, “Dock of the Bay”, “Ain’t No Sunshine”, “Sweet Home Chicago”, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and many more! All tunes are complete with notation, tempo, chord changes, and tablature.

There are 28 audio tracks that go with the book that are available from the Hal Leonard library and and access code is provided. The tracks can be downloaded or played online. If you pan to the left in Playback +, the online audio player, you can hear the full band with the bass lines, pan to the right and it is the full band without bass lines. A lot of the tracks were recorded using Duck’s 59 Fender Precision Bass. Playback + gives you a lot on control with adjustments for speed, pitch, balance, and the ability to loop sany section you want.

Check out Hal Leonard’s Soul Fingers The Music and Life of Legendary Bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn at Amazon.com