Glenn Worf

He was born in Dayton, Ohio, on 24 January 1954 and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, in the Orchard Ridge neighborhood, attending Madison Memorial High School. He picked up the guitar as a young teenager and soon switched to bass, because, as he put it, there were no bass players on his end of town. He has concentrated on the instrument since he was thirteen. He spent his teens listening outside the Nitty Gritty, a Madison club that booked blues artists such as Buddy Guy and Luther Allison, until he was old enough to be invited in to play. He majored in music at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire and moved to Nashville in 1979.

In Nashville he became a studio musician. Over the years he has recorded with Bryan Adams, Trace Adkins, Billy Ray Cyrus, Alan Jackson, Wynonna Judd, Toby Keith, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, Tim McGraw, Jimmy Buffett, Miranda Lambert, Aaron Neville, Lee Roy Parnell, Kenny Rogers, Bob Seger, Shania Twain, Keith Urban, Lee Ann Womack and Tammy Wynette, among others. On Earl Scruggs’s MCA album Earl Scruggs and Friends (2001) he played bass on “Ring of Fire,” “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “Blue Ridge Mountain Blues,” alongside Randy Scruggs, Glen Duncan and Harry Stinson. Around Nashville he also plays with artists such as Mike Henderson and Kevin Welch.

Knopfler heard him one Monday night at the Bluebird Cafe and later said he had known straightaway that this was real bass playing. Worf played on Golden Heart (1996), Knopfler’s first solo album, and has contributed double and electric bass to all of them since. In 2018 he was in London recording Down the Road Wherever, Knopfler’s ninth solo album, and in 2019 he toured North America with the band. He also took part in the BBC documentary Mark Knopfler: A Life in Songs, shown in January 2011.