“I was getting session calls for a 5-string… we had to switch over quick”: Prolific session bassist “Ready” Freddie Washington recalls suddenly competing with Moog synths for work – and why 5-strings were the answer

“Ready” Freddie Washington is a prolific session bassist who has played with a who's who of the music world, including Herbie Hancock, B.B. King, Michael Jackson, Steely Dan, Lionel Richie, Whitney Houston, and Anita Baker.

However, he has recently revealed that even the best session players have to adapt to stay in business, recounting an era when Moog synths were all the rage for song basslines.

Ready Freddie Washington Breaks Down his Most Iconic Bass Parts - YouTube

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“I came about with the five-string because in around 1986, there was a lot of Moog bass going on,” he says in a new interview with Vertex Effects. “They got the low B flat. And so we had to compete with that to get a low B, and a lot of the arrangers, like Gene Page [the conductor, arranger, producer and composer most active between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s], he was writing for the five-string bass.”

“So we had to switch over quick. I forget this guy's name, but he had a Ken Smith bass. And I went and checked his out. I was getting session calls for the five-string. So I would have the session rent his bass. And then, once I started playing his bass, I said, ‘Okay, I'm going to New York to meet Ken Smith. And I'm going to get me a bass.’”

Washington mentioned that the bass he eventually bought cost between $1,500 and $2,000 at the time, which would be at least $5,000 today.

This turned out to be a wise investment, as he went on to use it with Phil Collins on a session that included the Golden Globe Award-winning song Two Hearts from the 1988 movie Buster.

In a 2023 Bass Player interview, Washington talked about writing the bassline for Patrice Rushen’s Forget Me Nots, which later became synonymous with Will Smith and Tommy Lee film Men in Black.