Music Monday - Bill Black

Today William Patton "Bill" Black was born.

He was the largely uncredited bassist in the group Blue Moon Boys, the band behind Elvis Presley.

After forming Bill Black's Combo, the quintet specialized in instrumental covers of the era in the late '50's to the early '60's. Eight of the recordings by Bill Black's Combo placed in the Top 40 between 1959 and 1962. These were "White Silver Sands" (U.S. No. 9), "Josephine" (U.S. No. 18), "Don't Be Cruel" (U.S. No. 11), "Blue Tango" (U.S. No. 16), and "Hearts of Stone" (U.S. No. 20). Advertised as "Terrific for Dancing" their Saxy Jazz spent a record whole year in the top 100.

The Combo appeared in the 1961 film The Teenage Millionaire and on The Ed Sullivan Show, where they performed a medley of "Don't Be Cruel," "Cherry Pink," and "Hearts of Stone", and were voted Billboard's number one instrumental group of 1961.

From Wiki:
In 1963, Bob Tucker joined the Bill Black Combo as a road manager and guitar/bass player. Black himself had been ill for the past year and a half and unable to travel. Nonetheless, he insisted that the band continue without him.

The Bill Black Combo created musical history in 1964 when they became the opening act for the Beatles (at their request) on their historical 13-city tour of America after their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Black himself was not well enough to make the tour.

Black's main stand-up bass is today owned by ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, who received the instrument as a birthday present from his late wife Linda McCartney in the late 1970s. The bass can be seen in the video clip to McCartney's song "Baby's Request". In the documentary film The World Tonight, McCartney can be seen playing the bass and singing his version of "Heartbreak Hotel".

In 1995, he played it on "Real Love", the last "new" Beatles record (one of two in which McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr overdubbed a full arrangement onto a John Lennon home recording from the late 1970s).

In 2005, Clay Steakley portrayed Black in the Elvis Presley biopic miniseries Elvis.

On April 4, 2009, Bill Black was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

We lost Bill Black October 21, 1965.