Nathan Watts

Nathan Lamar Watts (born March 25, 1954, in Detroit, Michigan.) is an American session bassist, best known for his work with Stevie Wonder from the 1970s to the present. He has served as Stevie Wonder's musical director since 1994. Born in Detroit, Nathan Watts started playing the trumpet while he was still in elementary school, inspired by Lee Morgan. Watts was part of a trio that featured other future prominent session musicians Ray Parker Jr. on clarinet and drummer Ollie Brown and frequented Motown's Hitsville Studios to attend rehearsals and recordings of The Funk Brothers, the base-band of the label. When Parker abandoned the clarinet in favor of the guitar, he convinced Watts to switch to bass, which was the first thing that he did after graduating from high school in 1972. With his first instrument, a National Bass, Watts learned "Cold Sweat" by James Brown, and soon began to study the lines of other great bassists such as James Jamerson, Chuck Rainey, and Bob Babbitt. When Ray Parker Jr. joined Marvin Gaye's band, Watts joined a local group called the Final Decision, with the intention of studying accounting, if his career as a musician failed.