When we put our heads together a while back and decided which bassists should receive BP’s coveted Lifetime Achievement Award this year, we came up with a long, long list of names. Even though we’ve been giving these awards out since 2000, the occasional year out for publishing or pandemic reasons aside, there is still a huge number of bass players who deserve this recognition.
In the end, though, we narrowed it down to three bona fide legends of our instrument, and added a new award category while we were at it — the ‘Rising Star’ award, given to a bass player who may not have many decades as a professional behind them just yet, but who is pushing our community forward anyway. We want to commend and celebrate bassists with vision, young or old, and to acknowledge the fact that great bass didn’t only take place in the distant past.
