Lisle Arthur Atkinson (sometimes credited as Lysle Atkinson) was born September 16, 1940, in New York City. He started on violin at four and gave his first public concert at six. At twelve he switched to double bass and won admission to the High School of Music & Art, the Manhattan public arts school later folded into LaGuardia High School, where he played in the school orchestra. He went on to earn a degree at the Manhattan School of Music.

The break came almost as soon as he graduated: from 1962 to 1966, Atkinson was Nina Simone's bassist, present on four of her most enduring albums — Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall (1963, Colpix), Broadway-Blues-Ballads (1964, Philips), Pastel Blues (1965, Philips), and Wild Is the Wind (1966, Philips). Session documentation confirms his bass credit directly on the Carnegie Hall and Pastel Blues releases. In the same stretch he also worked with the New York Bass Violin Choir and guitarist Les Spann.

The Simone years established him, and the two decades that followed made him one of New York's most reliably working bassists across bebop and hard bop. He recorded with Betty Carter from 1969 to 1971, including her self-released 1970 Bet-Car LP Betty Carter. His 1970s session and touring credits read like a cross-section of the era's working scene: Kenny Burrell, George Coleman, Andrew Cyrille, Maynard Ferguson, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Hendricks, Helen Humes, Hank Jones, Wynton Kelly, Howard McGhee, Horace Parlan, Hazel Scott, Norman Simmons, Frank Strozier, Billy Taylor, Clark Terry, Mary Lou Williams, Stanley Turrentine, and the Thad Jones–Mel Lewis Big Band. Discogs's session-level data shows this wasn't guest-star work but steady band membership: he's a formal member of the Howard McGhee Sextet, the Norman Simmons Quartet, the Frank Strozier Sextet, the George Coleman Octet, and the Horace Parlan Quintet (Frank-ly Speaking, 1977, SteepleChase).

One 1976 date stands out for who else was in the room. The National Jazz Ensemble, Chuck Israels's repertory big band, recorded Vol. 1 (Chiaroscuro Records) with Atkinson on bass alongside alto saxophonist Lee Konitz — profiled separately on this site — in the earliest documented point of contact between the two, a decade earlier than the "1980s" shorthand sometimes attached to their association. That same year Atkinson also surfaced in rougher-edged company: drummer Andrew Cyrille's loft-jazz session Junction (IPS Records), recorded live at Studio Rivbea and Columbia University's Wollman Auditorium with tenor saxophonist David S. Ware and trumpeter Ted Daniel, and billed on the cover as one of four co-credited musicians alongside Cyrille — a rare avant-garde credit inside an otherwise straight-ahead career.

1978 brought an unusually productive week. On October 12, Atkinson recorded as sideman on pianist Richard Wyands's Then, Here And Now; the very next day, October 13, he stepped into the leader's chair for his own session, Bass Contra Bass — both cut for the Danish Jazzcraft label with overlapping personnel (Wyands, drummer Al Harewood), both released in 1979. Bass Contra Bass, true to its title, paired Atkinson with fellow bassist Paul West for a set of bass-forward duets and features, with liner notes by Ron Carter; it stands as his sole outright leader album from the era. Storyville Records reissued it twice — LP in 1983, CD in 1998 — and gave the Wyands date a parallel 1998 CD reissue that re-billed it to "Richard Wyands, Lisle Atkinson, David Lee," elevating Atkinson from sideman to co-credited artist after the fact. The following year, 1980, he co-billed a trio session with pianist Norman Simmons and drummer Al Harewood, Midnight Creeper.

In 1983 Atkinson formed his most personal project, the Neo-Bass Ensemble, co-led with his wife and fellow bassist Karen Atkinson. Its unusual instrumentation — Lisle and Karen plus up to four additional bassists, one or two cellos, and a conventional piano-and-drums rhythm section — became a fixture of annual summer concerts at Symphony Space in Manhattan, drawing guest bassists as prominent as Ron Carter and Richard Davis. The ensemble made two studio albums under his leadership: Hit It (1995, Inspire Productions) and Bebop Meets Bass Thru the Neo-Bass Ensemble (2005, self-released) — his final dated studio credit on Discogs.

Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, Atkinson's steadiest working relationship ran through the Barry Harris circle, alongside Harris's longtime drummer Leroy Williams — both profiled separately on this site. The clearest recorded evidence of that three-way partnership sits on guitarist Roni Ben-Hur's TCB Records dates: Backyard (recorded March 1995 at Van Gelder Recording Studio, with Harris on piano and Williams on drums) and Sofia's Butterfly (recorded September 10, 1997, trio format with Ben-Hur and Williams). In the same period he recorded two Norman Simmons trio dates made in Japan, Manha De Carnaval (2002) and In Private (2004), both with drummer Paul Humphrey; sideman work with guitarist Joshua Breakstone spanning 2009 to 2016; and dates with singer Jeanne Lee and pianist Sir Charles Thompson. Throughout the 1990s he also taught on the Jazzmobile faculty, holding down Saturday workshops in Harlem alongside the same generation of players he'd spent three decades recording with.

Atkinson died March 25, 2019, in New York City, at age 78, having belonged to Local 802 — the New York musicians' union — for 60 years. He was survived by his wife and Neo-Bass Ensemble co-leader Karen, brother Leon, sister Marilyn, three children, and five grandchildren.

A classically trained bassist who transitioned early from violin, Atkinson built his reputation first as Nina Simone's bassist through the mid-1960s, then as one of New York's most steadily working sidemen across three decades of bebop and hard-bop bandstands — a career defined less by star billing than by sustained membership in other musicians' working groups: the Howard McGhee Sextet, the Norman Simmons Quartet, the Horace Parlan Quintet, and, from the 1990s on, the Barry Harris/Leroy Williams circle. His one outright leader statement, Bass Contra Bass (1979), and his long-running Neo-Bass Ensemble both point toward a genuine interest in the double bass itself as a compositional voice — a duo album built around two basses, and a working group built around as many as six.