Each time I do my "Chacona" talk, several people come up afterward to name their own favorite lamento basses. (Go here to see what I'm talking about, or watch the video.) My cluster of examples from modern pop music—"Chim Chim Cher-ee" (courtesy of Paul Lansky), "Michelle," "Hotel California," "Ballad of a Thin Man," Nina Simone singing "Strange Fruit"—is obviously just the beginning. Sarah Cahill, the noted Bay Area pianist, points out that Roxy Music's "Both Ends Burning" has what I call the "classic" four-note bass, the one that is heard variously in Monteverdi's Lamento della ninfa and Ray Charles's "Hit the Road Jack." Almost all songs with this bass line are in the minor mode, but "Both Ends Burning" is more or less in the major, which produces an interestingly spooky effect.
Barney Sherman sent along a link to an Independent article in which Donovan discusses the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." This song has a recurring bass line that begins with the notes A G F-sharp F-natural:
Barney generously describes the article as a "smoking gun" for my theory that descending bass lines in 1960s and 70s pop and rock may have a conscious link to the Baroque examples that I discuss in Listen to This. Donovan says: "It's based on a descending pattern based on a Bach piece. I just passed it on. I simply had some forms at the time that they didn't." The claim is arguable, since the Beatles had earlier used a similar kind of sighing figure in "Michelle," but the citation of Bach is telling. What piece Donovan have in mind? It's possible that he was thinking of "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen" ("Weeping, Wailing, Fretting, Quaking"), which was reworked as the "Crucifixus" of the B-Minor Mass. The bass line is not the same, but there is a family resemblance of lament:
