Biography
Joe Mack built a long career as a session bassist that bridged the final years of the big-band period with the rise of rock & roll and its aftermath. Born Joe Macho in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1923, he arrived in the United States during childhood and first studied violin before changing to the upright acoustic bass while still in high school. In the mid-1950s he adopted the electric bass ahead of most players, quickly mastering its tonal possibilities at a moment when many peers hesitated or adapted gradually. That early command placed him in steady demand once rock & roll’s need for a deeper, more assertive bass line began to shape the hit parade. Philadelphia, where he was then living, positioned him at the center of the emerging style; as part of Dave Appell & the Applejacks he appeared in the 1956 Columbia picture Don’t Knock the Rock. The same ensemble served as house band for Cameo-Parkway Records, contributing to sessions by Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, Dee Dee Sharp, and others across the following nine years. Mack remained among the city’s most active musicians until Cameo-Parkway changed hands in the mid-1960s.
Persuaded to relocate to New York in 1965, where many of the arrangers who hired him had already moved, he resumed a comparable workload at once. Among his first New York assignments were electric overdubs for producer Tom Wilson on the Simon & Garfunkel album Sounds of Silence and on the amplified half of Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home; he also participated in the Wilson-supervised session that yielded Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Throughout the next ten years his bass appeared on Janis Ian’s For All the Seasons of Your Mind, Tom Rush’s The Circle Game, recordings by the Insect Trust and Eric Andersen, the Left Banke’s “Walk Away, Renee,” Dion’s “Abraham, Martin and John,” Melanie’s The Good Book, and Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece, among numerous other projects. Producer Bob Crewe brought him into film scoring for the 1968 soundtrack Barbarella; additional screen work included contributions to the music for Midnight Cowboy. Mack died of a heart attack in 1977.
Persuaded to relocate to New York in 1965, where many of the arrangers who hired him had already moved, he resumed a comparable workload at once. Among his first New York assignments were electric overdubs for producer Tom Wilson on the Simon & Garfunkel album Sounds of Silence and on the amplified half of Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home; he also participated in the Wilson-supervised session that yielded Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Throughout the next ten years his bass appeared on Janis Ian’s For All the Seasons of Your Mind, Tom Rush’s The Circle Game, recordings by the Insect Trust and Eric Andersen, the Left Banke’s “Walk Away, Renee,” Dion’s “Abraham, Martin and John,” Melanie’s The Good Book, and Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece, among numerous other projects. Producer Bob Crewe brought him into film scoring for the 1968 soundtrack Barbarella; additional screen work included contributions to the music for Midnight Cowboy. Mack died of a heart attack in 1977.
Albums
