Danny Thompson, the bass great who performed with John Martyn, Pentangle and Kate Bush, died at the age of 86 on September 23 2025.
Awarded a BBC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, Thompson amassed a remarkably diverse CV, from his 12-year residency at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club to his ascendancy of the folk circuit with the likes of Nick Drake.
Growing up in Battersea, south London, Thompson’s first big musical influences were blues singers like Big Bill Broonzy. He played with Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated in the early 1960s before achieving chart success with the folk-blues-jazz fusion group Pentangle and notoriety in the 1970s from his inspired partnership with folk guitar hero John Martyn.
In the late-’80s Thompson diversified, playing on albums such as Songhai with Spanish flamenco group Ketama and Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté, as well as recording with Kate Bush, Nigel Kennedy, Baaba Maal, David Sylvian and Kathryn Tickell, and forming his own group, Danny Thompson's Whatever.
The 1990s saw an increasing involvement with singer-songwriter-guitarist Richard Thompson, with whom he recorded several albums. From there, he went on to Grammy-winning success with veteran gospel singers the Blind Boys of Alabama and worked with American singer-songwriter Darrell Scott and blues musician Eric Bibb.
“With Danny you only need to hear two notes to know it’s him,” said bassist Jon Thorne, who was commissioned by Manchester Jazz Festival to write an album for Thompson back in 2010. “There are so many adept instrumentalists pouring out of colleges up and down the country these days and they can all play anything, upside down, backwards, sideways, but it doesn’t actually mean that much if they don’t have an identity.
“I like a bass sound that takes the ceiling out with just one note, and I picked that up pretty directly from Danny.”
At the age of 14 Thompson was caught up in the skiffle craze, playing in local bands on a bass he made out of a tea chest and a single string attached to a broom handle. A year later, he bought his 1860 Gand & Frères double bass, ‘Victoria,’ for £5.
At the time he had no idea what a fabulous instrument he was buying. The elderly man who was selling it refused to take more, making him promise to “really do something with it.”
And so Thompson got down to the challenge of learning the bass. He would start at 8am, work until lunchtime and then go back for more in the afternoon. He wrote the word PRACTICE in big letters over his door, so that he couldn't get out without seeing it.
By the age of 17, Thompson was playing jazz in Soho strip clubs – a good training, despite his embarrassment, because when the other clubs closed for the night the musicians would join them and jam till dawn. Soon he got a job playing ballrooms with the Nat Allen Orchestra.
After a couple of years of National Service, during which he played trombone in the regimental band and boxed for the regimental team, Thompson got into the student band run by the British saxophone player Tubby Hayes.
“I was also with the Stan Tracey Quartet, Ronnie Scott's Quintet and the Pat Smythe Trio,” he told Bass Player in 2010. “I did about 12 years at Ronnie Scott's club, on and off. I was petrified, but it was a great schooling.”
Thompson was also recording on albums by guitarist Davy Graham, as well as with the Incredible String Band, Donovan and Nick Drake. “I was doing all these gigs at the same time as working with Alexis Korner and later with Pentangle.
“One night Pentangle sold out the Royal Albert Hall and the next night I was playing at the Kensington Court Hotel in a jazz quartet for 40 quid.”
“The first time I heard Danny’s playing was on the Hounds of Love album by Kate Bush,” says Jon Thorne. “It was a track called Watching You Without Me, and I’d never heard the double bass played like that.
“Soon after, I was given another album that Danny had played on called Brilliant Trees by David Sylvian, and there’s a track on that album called The Ink In The Well, which has got the deepest, richest, most beautiful double-bass playing you’ll ever hear in your life. That track just knocked me out.”
For many years Thompson was a jobbing session musician. “I did everything: Matt Monroe, Marianne Faithfull, Congratulations by Cliff Richards, John Williams’s Cavatina, Rod Stewart.” He even played on Barry Gray's incidental music to the TV series Thunderbirds.
Speaking to the BBC following his Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, Richard Thompson said: “Danny is unique. No one else gets his sound or plays with his attitude, and no-one else is as versatile. I can put on a Donovan track or the Incredible String Band, and my wife will say, ‘There's Danny.’
“He can do it all – rock, blues, folk, jazz, country – and still sound like him. He's a big-hearted man and he makes a big-hearted sound. His feel and time are always perfect.”
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