This is going to take some explaining so, pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink and I shall begin. Leland Sklar is a 67 year old bass player. Any musicians amongst you will know what a ridiculously inadequate statement that is. Lee Sklar is one of the most recorded bassists in music history. He has appeared on more than 2,000 albums. I won’t list them all here but if I tell you that he is on all of the classic James Taylor and Carole King albums, Jackson Browne’s most famous early albums and albums by Ray Charles, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Phil Collins, Joe Cocker, Billy Cobham, Neil Diamond, Hall & Oates, Toto and Barbra Streisand, to name but a handful, you’ll get the picture. Lee Sklar is Mr. Bass. I have seen him play, some years ago, on a Toto tour, shortly after Mike Porcaro first displayed signs of the horrible muscular disease that eventually took his life, last month. Lee got the call, had just two days to learn the set-list, and looked like he’d been in the band for 20 years.

Lee’s rhythm partner for much of his career has been Russell Kunkel. Russ & » Continue Reading.