R.I.P.: Marshall Lytle

Marshall Lytle, whose spirited, percussive bass work was heard on one of rock ’n’ roll’s seminal recordings, “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets, died on Saturday May 25, 2013. He was 79.

 Mr. Lytle was a guitar player working at a radio station in Chester, Pa., in the early 1950s, when Bill Haley, who worked at a different station, hired him to replace the stand-up bass player in his band. It was an odd choice; Mr. Lytle, who was still a teenager, didn’t play bass. But as he explained in many interviews, Mr. Haley gave him a 30-minute lesson, showing him the slap-bass technique, in which the strings are smacked against the fingerboard. Such playing was a feature of country music, which is what Mr. Haley’s band, then known as Bill Haley and His Saddlemen, specialized in. MORE HERE