The series continues with a look at the fine veteran West Coast bassist Buddy Clark, and two very good, mostly unknown bassists: Don Prell and William Austin, whose careers were almost as brief and obscure as Gary Mapp’s, but not quite.

3. Buddy Clark – Buddy Clark was a very good bassist on the L.A. scene from the early ’50s on into the ’80s, who’s often overlooked. He’s become a favourite of mine in random, incremental installments through the …

Our look at unsung bassists continues with Tommy Williams, who mostly played with the Art Farmer-Benny Golson Jazztet and is not to be confused with the more recent jazz bassist Thomas Williams or Tommy Williams, the rock guy.

2. Tommy Williams – I’d been heavily involved with jazz – reading about it, listening to it, playing it – for about 25 years before I first came across the bass playing of Tommy Williams and I won’t soon forget it. …

The recent post about the mostly forgotten bassist Billy Taylor got me to thinking of other under-recognized ones, of which there have been no shortage through the years. So here’s a look at a few other bass players who were never even close to being household names, despite playing very well. First though, a comic rant on the overuse of the word “underrated” in jazz.

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I was going to call this article “Underrated Bassists”, but it occurred to …