Lonnie Plaxico

Lonnie Plaxico is a double bassist, composer, and producer whose career has spanned the heart of modern jazz since the late 1970s. Born in 1960 in Chicago into a musical family, he turned professional as a teenager and moved to New York by the age of twenty, working early on with Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, and Hank Jones. He held the bass chair in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers from 1983 to 1986, joined the M-Base collective, and appeared on early recordings by Steve Coleman, Cassandra Wilson, and Greg Osby. He played in Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition from 1986 to 1993 and later served as musical director for Cassandra Wilson, and he has worked with Abbey Lincoln, Dizzy Gillespie, and Stanley Turrentine.