This bassist is most commonly known as Bob Bushnell in liner note credits, and common is certainly an appropriate word. It is a common thing to hear him playing bass if a listener is anywhere near a variety of genres. Perhaps only a professional bassist could wind up recording with both Mickey Sylvia and Ian Sylvia -- different styles completely, as well as different Sylvias. To have come up playing with bluesman Elmore James, captured on the juke-joint recording odysseys of producer Bobby Robinson, is probably all the credential a bassist would need if the assignment is rocking the house. Bushnell took many sorts of jobs, however. In fact, his discography has all the fair-handedness one would want in a parent dividing up the family fortunes. Three parts jazz, three parts folk, three parts soul, Bushnell seems to choose class projects. He plays on the type of records that are not only highly valued as they grow older, but live up to any expected peaks of enjoyment. He also worked on hits, and not only Mickey Sylvia's Love Is Strange. Bushnell played with Simon Garfunkel as well as Tim Hardin and Janis Ian, and was in the core group of many of Neil Diamond's early recordings.

He emerges as a kind of underling in folk-rock's series of territory grabs on the hit parade during the '60s, a challenging position for a bassist in a style in which the only bottom end of note was usually squeezed into blue jean bellbottoms in the backstage dressing room. Bushnell was innovative in playing bass parts on a six-string guitar, an approach that sounded great on the radio and was sometimes the rhythmic equivalent of an automobile tune-up. There seems to be something of a controversy over whether a bass, or a guitar, plays a certain part on the classic soul hit Mercy Mercy, by Don Covay, and of course Bushnell was in the band. In the early '60s he was part of at least one of the rhythm sections known as "house bands," cranking out sessions exclusively for labels such as Beacon in the company of players such as the well prepared drummer Sticks Evans and the brilliant guitarist Larry Lucie. Bushnell also made interesting use of the guitar on recordings with Gabor Szabo. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi