Danny Thompson, Pentangle cofounder, dies at 86

Danny Thompson, the celebrated English double bass player whose work helped bridge jazz, folk and rock, died peacefully at his home in Rickmansworth on September 23, his management said. He was 86.

Thompson's team said he passed away "peacefully" and described him as "a musician who was both beloved and admired by everybody he worked with," adding that "Danny was a force of nature. A player who served the song and who enriched the lives of every single person he met." He is survived by his wife, Sylvia, and his son, Dan Junior.

Born in Teignmouth, Devon, on April 4, 1939, Thompson taught himself the instrument as a teenager, building a makeshift bass from a tea chest at 13 before taking up the double bass two years later. He began playing professionally in Soho clubs at 16, and after two years of national service in Penang, Malaysia, where he performed in an army band, he returned to Britain and in 1963 joined a Roy Orbison tour as an electric bassist on what he later said was the only time he played electric bass. That tour was supported by a young Beatles, contemporaneous accounts note.

Thompson co-founded the folk-jazz group Pentangle in 1967 with John Renbourn, Jacqui McShee,...