Jake Tullock (1922 to 1988), called Cousin Jake on stage, was the longest-serving bass player and comedian with Flatt and Scruggs. He played bass and sang high baritone in the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1954 and 1955 and again from 1958 until the band split in 1969. He appears on about 230 of their records. He entered the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2018.
Why Tullock matters
Tullock was the bottom end of the most popular bluegrass band of the 1950s and 1960s. His bass is on the Carnegie Hall shows, the Newport Folk Festival sets, and The Ballad of Jed Clampett, the first bluegrass record to top the charts. That makes him one of the most heard bass players in the music’s history. He also proved that a bass player could be a full member of the act, with a voice and a stage personality of his own.
Life and career
Tullock was born on July 23, 1922, in Etowah, Tennessee. He grew up singing in church and played guitar for a gospel quartet with his sisters. As a teen he moved to Knoxville and worked with bands on WNOX radio. He served in the Army in the Pacific from 1942 to 1946.
Back in Knoxville he met Josh Graves, and that meeting led him to his first string bass. He joined Esco Hankins and the Crazy Tennesseans, where Hankins named him Cousin Jake. He then spent most of six years with the Bailey Brothers and the Happy Valley Boys and played on their Rich-R-Tone and Canary records.
In the spring of 1954 he joined Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. His first session with them came that May. Illness forced him off the road in 1955, and he played around Knoxville until Flatt and Scruggs hired him back in 1958. He stayed until the band broke up in 1969. With Graves he made a comedy and music album, Just Joshin’, in 1963.
After the split he went with Lester Flatt’s Nashville Grass. A heart attack in May 1970 slowed him down, and he retired from the road a year later. He died on June 18, 1988.
Playing style
Tullock played a solid, driving bass that sat under Earl Scruggs’s banjo and Flatt’s guitar runs. The Hall of Fame calls him a spot-on bass player. He liked to drop a slap of the bass into a pause in the singing, as he did on his first Flatt and Scruggs record, You’re Not a Drop in the Bucket.
His high baritone voice became part of the Flatt and Scruggs vocal sound in the middle and late 1960s. On stage he worked comedy routines with Josh Graves, a team that went back to their days with Esco Hankins.
Influences and legacy
Tullock learned his trade in the Knoxville radio scene and in the Bailey Brothers’ band. In the Foggy Mountain Boys he played beside Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Paul Warren, and Dobro player Josh Graves. Barry Bales plays the Tullock role in the Flatt and Scruggs tribute band the Earls of Leicester.
Signature tunes and songs
You’re Not a Drop in the Bucket The Ballad of Jed Clampett Foggy Mountain Breakdown Nobody’s Business, a comedy number with Josh Graves.
Essential recordings
Just Joshin’, with Josh Graves (Cotton Town Jubilee, 1963) Flatt and Scruggs, Hard Travelin’ (Columbia, 1963) Flatt and Scruggs at Carnegie Hall! (Columbia)
Awards and honors
International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame (2018)
What to learn from Tullock
Learn the bass part to a Flatt and Scruggs song in G, such as Salty Dog Blues. Play the root on beat one and the fifth on beat three, and keep it locked to the guitar’s bass notes. Then add one thing Tullock did: a clean, loud slap of the bass in a break in the vocal. It teaches you to listen to the singer and to treat silence as part of the groove.
Sources
Jake Tullock, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum List of Foggy Mountain Boys members, Wikipedia Awards by Category, IBMA
Related players
See the bass players hub and the bass guide. Cedric Rainwater was the first Flatt and Scruggs bass player. Josh Graves was his comedy partner and bandmate, and Barry Bales carries his part in the Earls of Leicester.