“I wasn’t interested in learning the ‘correct’ style of playing bass. I was going back to guitar”: Larry Graham explains how his unorthodox six-string style invented slap bass

Bassists like Larry Graham come around maybe once a century. Widely credited as the man who invented thumping and plucking, or slap bass if you prefer, he switched to bass from guitar and famously began to thump the strings while playing in his mother’s band as a teenager.

Joining Sly & The Family Stone in 1967, Graham made his new style the defining sound of funk. No group before or since – with the possible exception of Prince – had such success in crossing funk grooves and pop melodies the way Sly and his band did on tracks such as Stand! and Dance to the Music.

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