Do we like them?

Do we like Bill Lee?

Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or company turned up, plus a long, principled musical life, but the record on how he treated people is thin.

Bill Lee, who died in May 2023 aged 94, was born in Alabama in 1928 and grew up in a musical family. He worked in Atlanta and Chicago before moving to Brooklyn in 1959. Nothing recent turned up for him, apart from tributes after his death.

He was a busy session bassist. He's the only other instrument beside Bob Dylan's guitar on “It's All Over Now, Baby Blue”, and he played on early Aretha Franklin and Simon and Garfunkel records. He also led his own bass ensemble and wrote jazz operas.

His best-known stand was about the instrument itself. When electric bass took over in the 1970s he refused to switch, and the family paid for it. Spike Lee has said his father “struggled” and that “his integrity said, I cannot play electric bass.” Spike still calls him a “great, great, great musician.”

He scored Spike's early films, including She's Gotta Have It, School Daze, Do the Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues. Reports say the two later fell out over money and family matters and stopped working together. Details are thin, and only some outlets carry them.

The good stuff is a long life of jam sessions at his Fort Greene home, mentoring younger players and sticking to his art. Obituaries remember a man who put music before money, and the Brooklyn Jazz Hall of Fame honoured him. We couldn't open every page, so the record on how he treated people day to day is thinner than we'd like.