“There I was, 28 years old, playing with Stevie Wonder – and he makes the song a bass feature!” Did Nate Watts play on the most under-appreciated bass anthem ever?

Like hit songs, bass anthems come in all varieties. There are the solo album features, such as Stanley Clarke’s School Days; group-set gems like Jaco’s Teen Town, with Weather Report, and Paul McCartney’s Come Together, via the Beatles; and sideman shoutouts such as Willie Weeks on Donny Hathaway’s Everything Is Everything.

And then there’s Do I Do. When you consider the song is an over-10-minute album track added to a compilation by Stevie Wonder, whose left hand had spun its own bass masterpiece (Boogie on Reggae Woman), but played no part in this recording, the trail would seem to run cold.

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