WASHINGTON — Ronald LaPread, the bassist who co-founded the Commodores, has died over the weekend at his home in Auckland, New Zealand. He was 75. His daughter confirmed the news on social media.
LaPread formed the Commodores alongside his classmates at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute in the late 1960s and was signed to Motown in 1972.
The Commodores, along with LaPread’s basslines, helped bring the funk genre into the mainstream R&B charts. LaPread’s bass licks are among the first sounds heard on the group’s iconic “Brick House” from 1977, whose suggestive lyrics, co-written by LaPread, tantalized
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