I always think of John Entwistle from The Who when people are talking about great bassists. A friend talked me through some of the things he was doing and why they were exciting once and I did spontaneously start humping the speaker like a frisky dog, but I'm not actually that big a fan of the band, so I couldn't honestly put him on a list of my faves. Same reason why I'd put no jazz guys down, cos I'm just not that interested in any flavour of jazz I've dipped into, although I do enjoy hearing bods like Jimmy Garrison and of course Mingus.
Sooo... purely from the perspective of loving the sound of what they (have) played (so far):
1. George Porter Jr (from The Meters... tops my list for
Just Kissed My Baby alone, but he did great stuff behind Dr John and others)
2. Pino Palladino (for the stuff he did on those D'Angelo and Common albums, not so much for his fretless noodlings on bloody Paul Young records
)
3. Peter Hook (from Revenge
)
4. Holger Czukay (I think of
One More Night straight away... AAGRHJAGRHJASRGSRHJRAS SO EXCITED AGAIN)
5. Larry Graham (from The Family Stone... I really should hate the inventor of slap bass, and my favourite Sly bassline is actually from after Larry left, but whatever. So good.)