In the 2000s, Dunn was in semi-retirement, although he still performed occasionally with Booker T. & the MG's at clubs and music festivals. In June 2004, Dunn, Cropper, and Jones served as the house band for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival. The group backed such guitarists as Joe Walsh and David Hidalgo on the main stage at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas. In 2008, Dunn worked with the Australian soul singer Guy Sebastian touring for "The Memphis Album". Dunn and Cropper arrived in Australia on February 20, 2008, to be Sebastian's backing band for an 18-date concert tour, the Memphis Tour. Dunn is credited with performing on a version of the standard "I Ain't Got Nobody" with Jones, Cropper and Michel Gondry in Gondry's 2008 film "Be Kind Rewind". He was married to his wife, June, until his death. They had a son, Jeff; and a grandson, Michael. On the morning of May 13, 2012, Dunn died in his sleep after finishing his fifth double show at the Blue Note nightclub in Tokyo with Cropper the night before. He had been in Japan as part of an ongoing tour with Cropper and Eddie Floyd. When Dunn was 16, Duck bought his first bass guitar, a Kay 162 Electronic Bass. About a year later, he acquired his first Fender Precision Bass, with sunburst body, rosewood neck, and gold anodized pickguard. He would lose this bass when Otis Redding and members of the Bar-Kays were killed in a plane crash, and the bass was on loan to bassist James Alexander. Duck's second Fender bass was a 1959 Fender Precision Bass, with sunburst body, one-piece maple neck and gold anodized pickguard; an instrument he owned until his death. Throughout his life, Dunn believed this was a '58 model, but after his passing, his son Jeff had work done on the bass, and the neck was inscribed "4-59," putting the date definitively as 1959. During the 1960s, he used a nearly identical 1959 model, but it was outfitted with a rosewood fretboard. He was an avid user of thick La Bella flatwound strings, as was James Jamerson. While filming "The Blues Brothers," Dunn used a sunburst early ‘70s Fender Precision bass with a rosewood fretboard and a "tortoiseshell" pickguard.