1.  There are basically three styles of surf music.  The first is the purely instrumental style, made up of both lead and rhythm guitar, bass, and drum set.  The use of the Whammy Bar and reverb created the effects that became synonymous with the Surf sound.  The distortion technique that became increasingly popular in heavy metal and grunge music had no place in the smooth, easy going surf style.  The best known example of instrumental Surf Music is "Wipeout", by the Surfari's.  The "Ventures" were also very successful with this genre, producing hits such as "Walk Don't Run" and "Hawaii Five-O".

2.  The other two types of surf music are vocal styles.   Vocal surf music can be easily identified with the three part harmonies, use of the falsetto voice, and the lyrics, which were generally centered around cars, racing, surfing, and anything related to the beach or ocean.  The addition of organ, electric piano, and other percussion instruments was also common.  One vocal style of Surf Music is the ballad, which is slow and gentle.  The Beach Boys recorded some popular ballads like "Sloop John B" and "Surfer Girl".  Many hit songs by the Mamas and the Papas also fit into the ballad category because of the slow tempo.  Even when they recorded songs that were known to be fast songs, such in the Beatles "I Call Your Name" and "Twist and Shout", the tempo was slowed down and the music relaxed.  

3.  The third and probably the most popular type of Surf Music, is the rock or beach style, exemplified by the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean.  Songs such as "Surfin' USA", "Good Vibrations", "Surf City", and "409" still remain classics in the history of popular music.  

The 1960's was really the heyday of Surf Music, However the high audience appeal and memorable tunes of Surf Music kept it being played on radios for a long time after that.  There was even a resurgence in the 1990's, when the Surf Rock Group, "Red Elvise's" revisited this very popular style.  

The Surfaris are an American surf rock band formed in Glendora, California, United States, in 1962. They are best known for two songs that hit the charts in the Los Angeles area, and nationally by May 1963: "Surfer Joe" and "Wipe Out", which were the A-side and B-side of the same 45 rpm single.

The Surfaris were inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2019 for their hit instrumental song, "Wipe Out".  

Bob Berryhill is the last surviving Surfaris member.  He and his family still carry on and tour as the Surfaris.

The Ventures are an American instrumental rock band formed in Tacoma, Washington, in 1958, by Don Wilson and Bob Bogle. The band, which was a quartet for most of its existence, helped to popularize the electric guitar across the world during the 1960s. While their popularity in the United States waned in the 1970s, the group remains especially revered in Japan, where they toured regularly. The classic lineup of the band consisted of Wilson (rhythm guitar), Bogle (initially lead guitar, later bass), Nokie Edwards (initially bass, later lead guitar), and Mel Taylor (drums).

Their first wide-release single, "Walk, Don't Run" (1960), brought international fame to the group, and is often cited as one of the top songs ever recorded for guitar. In the 1960s and early 1970s, 38 of the band's albums charted in the US, ranking them as the 6th best album chart performer during the 1960s, and the band had 14 singles in the Billboard Hot 100. With over 100 million records sold, the Ventures are the best-selling instrumental band of all time.

The Ventures have had an enduring impact on the development of music worldwide. The band was among the first to employ and popularize fuzz and flanging guitar effects, concept albums, and twelve-string guitars in rock music. Their instrumental virtuosity, innovation, and unique sound influenced many musicians and bands, earning the group the moniker "The Band that Launched a Thousand Bands". Their recording of "Walk, Don't Run" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for its lasting impact, and in 2008 the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Jan and Dean was an American rock duo consisting of William Jan Berry (April 3, 1941 – March 26, 2004) and Dean Ormsby Torrence (born March 10, 1940). In the early 1960s, they were pioneers of the California Sound and vocal surf music styles popularized by the Beach Boys.

Among their most successful songs was 1963's "Surf City", the first surf song ever to reach the #1 spot. Their other charting top 10 singles were "Drag City" (1963), "Dead Man's Curve" (1964; inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008), and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena" (1964).

In 1972, Dean Torrence won the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover for the psychedelic rock band Pollution's first eponymous 1971 album, and was nominated three other times in the same category for albums of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In 2013, Torrence's design contribution of the Surf City Allstars' In Concert CD was named a Silver Award of Distinction at the Communicator Awards competition.

The Beach Boys are an American rock band that formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Distinguished by their vocal harmonies, adolescent-themed lyrics, and musical ingenuity, they are one of the most influential acts of the rock era. They drew on the music of older pop vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and black R&B to create their unique sound. Under Brian's direction, they often incorporated classical or jazz elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways.

The Beach Boys began as a garage band, managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, with Brian serving as composer, arranger, producer, and de facto leader. In 1963, they enjoyed their first national hit with "Surfin' U.S.A.", beginning a string of top-ten singles that reflected a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance, dubbed the "California sound". They were one of the few American rock bands to sustain their commercial standing during the British Invasion. Starting with 1965's The Beach Boys Today!, they abandoned beachgoing themes for more personal lyrics and ambitious orchestrations. In 1966, the Pet Sounds album and "Good Vibrations" single raised the group's prestige as rock innovators. After scrapping the Smile album in 1967, Brian gradually ceded control of the group to his bandmates.

In the late 1960s, the group's commercial momentum faltered in the US, and despite efforts to maintain an experimental sound, they were widely dismissed by the early rock music press. After Carl took over as musical leader, the band made records that would later enjoy a cult following among fans. In the mid-1970s, as their concerts drew larger audiences, the band transitioned into an oldies act. Dennis drowned in 1983 and Brian soon became estranged from the group. Following Carl's death from lung cancer in 1998, the band granted Love legal rights to tour under the group's name. In the early 2010s, the original members briefly reunited for the band's 50th anniversary. As of 2022, Brian and Jardine do not perform with Love's edition of the Beach Boys, but remain official members of the band.

The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful bands of all time, selling over 100 million records worldwide. They helped legitimize popular music as a recognized art form and influenced the development of music genres and movements such as psychedelia, power pop, progressive rock, punk, alternative, and lo-fi. Between the 1960s and 2010s, the group had 36 songs reach the US Top 40 (the most by an American band), with four topping the Billboard Hot 100. In 2004, they were ranked number 12 on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest artists of all time. The founding members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

I picked the Wrecking Crew for our current discussion.

There are many studios with backing bands.  Booker T. & the M.G.'s, The Funk Brothers, MFSB, Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, The Nashville A-Team, Salsoul Orchestra, The Section, to name a few. 

• The Funk Brothers - The Funk Brothers were a group of Detroit-based session musicians who performed the backing to most Motown recordings from 1959 until the company moved to Los Angeles in 1972.  "My Girl", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", "Baby Love", " I Was Made to Love Her", "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone", "The Tears of a Clown", "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", and "Heat Wave".  

• MFSB - MFSB, officially standing for "Mother Father Sister Brother", was a pool of more than 30 studio musicians based at Philadelphia's Sigma Sound Studios.  Backed up Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the O'Jays, the Stylistics, the Spinners, Wilson Pickett, and Billy Paul.

• Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section - The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section is a group of American session musicians based in the northern Alabama town of Muscle Shoals. One of the most prominent American studio house bands from the 1960s to the 1980s, these musicians, individually or as a group, have been associated with more than 500 recordings, including 75 gold and platinum hits. The original group hired by Rick Hall in the early 1960s was Norbert Putnam, David Briggs, and Jerry Carrigan, who created hit records that brought recognition and stature to this unknown and out-of-the-way studio. This group was courted by Nashville studios and left Muscle Shoals to pursue independent careers in Nashville.

• Swampers

• To replace these musicians, Rick Hall hired a core group consisting of Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, David Hood and Jimmy Johnson, initially called "the Second FAME Gang", but widely known by the nickname "The Swampers" . The Swampers subsequently recorded, produced, or engineered classic hits by Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Leon Russell, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger and The Staple Singers. The Swampers were the subject of the 2013 documentary film Muscle Shoals

• The Nashville A-Team - The Nashville A-Team was a nickname given to a group of session musicians in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, who earned wide acclaim in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. They backed dozens of popular singers, including Elvis Presley, Eddy Arnold, Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Bob Dylan, Moon Mullican, Jerry Lee Lewis, Brenda Lee, and others.

• Salsoul Orchestra - The Salsoul Orchestra was the backing band of session musicians for many acts on the New York City label Salsoul Records and, under its own name, recorded several hit singles and albums between 1975 and 1982. 

• The Section - The Section was a US instrumental rock/jazz fusion band formed in the early 1970s by guitarist Danny Kortchmar, keyboardist Craig Doerge, bassist Leland Sklar, and drummer Russ Kunkel. Other musicians associated with the group include multi-instrumentalist David Lindley and guitarist Waddy Wachtel. They are best known for both studio and stage work in support of some of the best selling singer-songwriters and solo singers of that decade. 

The Wrecking Crew 

The Wrecking Crew is a loose collective of US session musicians based in Los Angeles whose services were employed for a great number of studio recordings in the 1960s and 1970s, including hundreds of top 40 hits. The musicians were not publicly recognized in their era, but were viewed with reverence by industry insiders. They are now considered one of the most successful and prolific session recording units in music history.

Most of the players associated with the Wrecking Crew had formal backgrounds in jazz or classical music. The group had no official name in its early years, and it remains a subject of contention exactly when they were first referred to as "the Wrecking Crew”. Drummer Hal Blaine may have first used this name as early as the late 1960s. The name, The Wrecking Crew, was certainly in common use by April 1981 when Hal Blaine used the name in an interview with Modern Drummer magazine. 

The unit coalesced in the early 1960s as the de facto house band for Phil Spector and helped realize his Wall of Sound production style. They subsequently became the most requested session musicians in Los Angeles, playing behind many popular recording artists. 

The Wrecking Crew's contributions to so many hit recordings went largely unnoticed until the publication of Blaine's memoir and the attention that followed.Hal Blaine is reputed to have played on more than 140 top-ten hits, including approximately 40 number-one hits. Other musicians who formed the unit's ranks were drummer Earl Palmer, saxophonist Steve Douglas, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, and keyboardist Larry Knechtel.  

Blaine and Palmer were among the inaugural "sidemen" inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and the entire Wrecking Crew was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007. In 2008, they were the subject of the documentary The Wrecking Crew.

In the era when the Wrecking Crew was in demand, session players were usually active in local recording scenes concentrated in cities such as New York City, Nashville, Memphis and Detroit, as well as Los Angeles, the Wrecking Crew's base of operations, and smaller specialist recording locations such as Muscle Shoals. Each local scene had its circle of "A-list" session musicians, such as The Nashville A-Team that played on numerous country and rock hits of the era, the two groups of musicians in Memphis, the Memphis Boys and Booker T. & the M.G.s with the Memphis Horns, the musicians who backed Stax/Volt recordings, and the Funk Brothers in Detroit, who played on many Motown recordings.

Los Angeles was then considered the top recording destination in the United States—consequently studios were constantly booked around the clock, and session time was highly sought after and expensive. Songs had to be recorded quickly in the fewest possible takes. In this environment, Los Angeles producers and record executives had little patience for needless expense or wasted time and depended on the service of reliable standby musicians who could be counted on to record in a variety of styles with minimal practice or takes, and deliver hits on short order.

The Wrecking Crew were the "go to" session musicians in Los Angeles during this era. Its members were musically versatile but typically had formal backgrounds in jazz or classical music, and were exceptional at sight reading.   Some of the studios were Gold Star Studios, United Western Recorders, Capitol Records, Columbia Records', and the RCA recording facility.

Hal Blaine has stated that the term was sometimes used disparagingly in the early 1960s by members of the industry's old guard of "coat and tie" session players, who felt that, with the wrecking crew's wearing "t-shirts and jeans" to sessions and their embrace of rock and roll, they were going to "wreck" the music industry.

Guitarist and bassist Carol Kaye has disputed Blaine's account of the name and stated, "We were never known as that. Sometimes we were called 'the Clique', but "the Wrecking Crew" is a Hal Blaine invented name for his own self-promotion in 1990 ..." Songfacts stated: "We couldn't find any references to 'The Wrecking Crew' in any publications from the era." In response to Kaye's contention, Blaine denied that anyone had ever heard the name "The Clique".

Earl Palmer was originally from New Orleans and had recorded with many of the Crescent City's rhythm and blues musicians, such as Fats Domino. He moved to Los Angeles in 1957, and in the 1960s played on hit records by artists such as Ike and Tina Turner, Glen Campbell, Jan and Dean, The Righteous Brothers, The Beach Boys, The Ronettes, The Everly Brothers, and Sonny & Cher. 

List of members

Sources: Kent Hartman (The Wrecking Crew)[ and Robert Lloyd ("Time of the Session"; LA Weekly)

• Electric bass: Max Bennett, Carol Kaye, Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborn, Bill Pitman, Ray Pohlman

• Double bass (upright bass): Chuck Berghofer, Jimmy Bond, Red Callender, Lyle Ritz

• Drums: Hal Blaine, Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner, Earl Palmer, Joe Porcaro

• Guitar: Vinnie Bell, Dennis Budimir, James Burton, Glen Campbell, Al Casey, Jerry Cole, Mike Deasy, Carol Kaye, Barney Kessel, Bill Pitman, Ray Pohlman, Howard Roberts, Louie Shelton, P.F. Sloan, Billy Strange, Tommy Tedesco

• Keyboards: Glen D. Hardin, Clare Fischer,[143] Mac Rebennack, Al De Lory, Larry Knechtel, Mike Melvoin, Don Randi, Mike (Michel) Rubini, Leon Russell

• Percussion: Larry Bunker, Frank Capp, Gary Coleman, Victor Feldman, Milt Holland, Joe Porcaro

• Vibraphone & Marimba: Julius Wechter, Terry Gibbs

• Other Percussion: Jingle Bells and Tambourine Sonny Bono[144][nb 7]

• Saxophone: Gene Cipriano, Steve Douglas, Jim Horn, Plas Johnson, Jackie Kelso, Jay Migliori, Nino Tempo

• Trombone: Richard "Slyde" Hyde, Dick Nash, Lou Blackburn

• Trumpet: Bud Brisbois, Roy Caton, Chuck Findley, Ollie Mitchell, Tony Terran

• Flute: Jim Horn

• Harmonica: Tommy Morgan

• Vocals: Ron Hicklin Singers often performed backup vocals on many of the same songs on which the Wrecking Crew had played instrumental tracks.

• Conductor and arranger: Jack Nitzsche

Blaine, Osborn and Knechtel were often collectively referred to as the Hollywood Golden Trio.

Compilations

• The Wrecking Crew (2015, RockBeat; 4-CD set)

Wikipedia, Wrecking Crew, last edited on 26 February 2024, at 01:41 (UTC). 

Earl Cyril Palmer (October 25, 1924 – September 19, 2008) was an American drummer. Considered one of the inventors of rock and roll, he is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Palmer was one of the most prolific studio musicians of all time and played on thousands of recordings, including nearly all of Little Richard's hits, many of Fats Domino's hits, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" by the Righteous Brothers, and a long list of classic TV and film soundtracks. According to one obituary, "his list of credits read like a Who's Who of American popular music of the last 60 years".

After the war ended Palmer studied piano and percussion at the Gruenwald School of Music in New Orleans, where he also learned to read music. He started drumming with the Dave Bartholomew Band in the late 1940s. Palmer was known for playing on New Orleans recording sessions, including Fats Domino's "The Fat Man" and "I'm Walkin" (and several more of Domino's hits), "Tipitina" by Professor Longhair, "Tutti Frutti" by Little Richard (and most of Richard's hits), "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" by Lloyd Price, and "I Hear You Knocking'" by Smiley Lewis.

His playing on "The Fat Man" featured the backbeat that has come to be the most important element in rock and roll. Palmer said, "That song required a strong afterbeat throughout the whole piece. With Dixieland you had a strong afterbeat only after you got to the shout last chorus…It was sort of a new approach to rhythm music." Reportedly, he was the first to use the word funky, to explain to other musicians that their music should be made more syncopated and danceable.

Palmer left New Orleans for Hollywood in 1957, initially working for Aladdin Records. He soon started working with the Wrecking Crew, a loose-knit group of session musicians who recorded nonstop during their heyday from 1962 to 1968.

The musicians union tracked Palmer playing on 450 dates in 1967 alone.

For more than 30 years he played drums on the soundtracks of many movies and television shows. Amongst the many artists he worked with were Glenn Yarbrough, Frank Sinatra, Phil Spector, Ricky Nelson, Bobby Vee, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Eddie Cochran, Ritchie Valens, Bobby Day, Don and Dewey, Jan and Dean, The Beach Boys, Larry Williams, Gene McDaniels, Bobby Darin, Neil Young, The Pets, The Byrds when they were still known as The Beefeaters, and B. Bumble and the Stingers. He also played in jazz sessions with David Axelrod, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic, Onzy Matthews, and Count Basie, and he contributed to blues recordings by B.B. King.

He remained in demand as a drummer throughout the 1970s and 1980s, playing on recordings for albums by Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Buckley, Little Feat and Elvis Costello.

Quotations

• "You could always tell a New Orleans drummer the minute you heard him play his bass drum because he'd have that parade beat connotation."

• When asked by Max Weinberg what more of the recording sessions he'd played on Palmer replied, "Don't ask me which ones I played on. I should have done like Hal [Blaine]. Hal used to get gold records for all the things he played on. I never did that, you know. I would like to have a room with all those things in them. It would have been nice—show my grandchildren when they grow up so they don't say, 'Oh shut up old man and sit down.' I could just say, 'Look. I don't have to tell you nothing. There it is.'"

Awards

In 2000, Palmer became one of the first session musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Hal Blaine (born Harold Simon Belsky; February 5, 1929 – March 11, 2019) was an American drummer and session musician, thought to be among the most recorded studio drummers in the music industry, claiming over 35,000 sessions and 6,000 singles. His drumming is featured on 150 US top 10 hits, 40 of which went to number one.

Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Blaine moved with his family to California in 1943 and began playing jazz and big band music before taking up rock and roll session work. He became one of the regulars in Phil Spector's de facto house band, which Blaine nicknamed "the Wrecking Crew". Some of the records Blaine played on include the Ronettes' single "Be My Baby" (1963), which contained a drum beat that became widely imitated, as well as works by popular artists such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, the Carpenters, Neil Diamond, and the Byrds.

Blaine's workload declined in the 1980s as recording and musical practices changed. In 2000, he was among the inaugural "sidemen" inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2007 he was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum as a member of the Wrecking Crew and in 2018 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Blaine played less session work from the 1980s onwards as computers and electronics began to be used in studios, and producers began to bring in younger players. The popularisation of the drum machine also reduced demand for session drummers like Blaine. He kept busy recording advertising jingles for a number of years, before semi-retiring from performing. He lost most of his wealth following a divorce. At one point, he was working as a security guard in Arizona.

Blaine died of natural causes on March 11, 2019, at age 90 in Palm Desert, California. A statement from his family read "May he rest forever on 2 and 4", referring to the second and fourth beats of a measure in music.

Awards and accolades

Blaine played on six consecutive Grammy Award Record of the Year winners:

• Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass in 1966 for "A Taste of Honey"

• Frank Sinatra in 1967 for "Strangers in the Night"

• The 5th Dimension in 1968 for "Up, Up and Away"

• Simon & Garfunkel in 1969 for "Mrs. Robinson"

• The 5th Dimension in 1970 for "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In"

• Simon & Garfunkel in 1971 for "Bridge over Troubled Water"

In March 2000, Blaine was one of the first five sidemen inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (one of the other inductees was his long-time friend and drumming colleague Earl Palmer). He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2010. In 2018, he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Selected performances

• Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special, which introduced the world to the power ballad "If I Can Dream", a dramatic tribute to the recently assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, reaching No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In addition to playing on 150 US top 10 singles, Blaine played drums on 39 recordings that hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The dates given are when each song reached number one:

• "Johnny Angel" – Shelley Fabares,[29] April 7, 1962

• "He's a Rebel" – The Crystals,[7] November 3, 1962

• "Surf City" – Jan and Dean,[30] July 20, 1963

• "I Get Around" – The Beach Boys,[12] July 4, 1964

• "Everybody Loves Somebody" – Dean Martin,[12] August 15, 1964

• "Ringo" – Lorne Greene,[31] December 5, 1964

• "This Diamond Ring" – Gary Lewis & the Playboys,[31] February 20, 1965

• "Help Me, Rhonda" – The Beach Boys,[12] May 29, 1965

• "Mr Tambourine Man" – The Byrds,[7] June 26, 1965

• "I Got You Babe" - Sonny & Cher,[32] August 14, 1965

• "Eve of Destruction" – Barry McGuire,[33] September 25, 1965

• "My Love" – Petula Clark,[31] February 5, 1966

• "Monday, Monday" – The Mamas & the Papas,[12] May 7, 1966

• "Strangers in the Night" – Frank Sinatra,[12] July 2, 1966

• "Poor Side of Town" – Johnny Rivers,[8] November 12, 1966

• "Good Vibrations" – The Beach Boys,[12] December 10, 1966

• "Somethin' Stupid" – Frank & Nancy Sinatra,[12] April 15, 1967

• "The Happening" – The Supremes,[4][34] May 13, 1967

• "Windy" – The Association,[12] July 1, 1967

• "Mrs. Robinson" – Simon & Garfunkel,[12] June 1, 1968

• "Dizzy" – Tommy Roe,[31] March 15, 1969

• "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" – The 5th Dimension,[12] April 12, 1969

• "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" – Henry Mancini,[31] June 28, 1969

• "Wedding Bell Blues" – The 5th Dimension,[31] November 8, 1969

• "Bridge Over Troubled Water" – Simon & Garfunkel,[31] February 28, 1970

• "(They Long to Be) Close to You" – The Carpenters,[12] July 25, 1970

• "Cracklin' Rosie" – Neil Diamond,[12] October 10, 1970

• "I Think I Love You" – The Partridge Family,[31] November 21, 1970

• "Indian Reservation" – The Raiders,[31] July 24, 1971

• "Song Sung Blue" – Neil Diamond,[12] July 1, 1972

• "Half Breed" – Cher,[31] October 6, 1973

• "Top of the World" – The Carpenters,[12] December 3, 1973

• "Annie's Song" – John Denver,[31] July 27, 1974

• "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" – John Denver,[12] June 7, 1975

• "Love Will Keep Us Together" – Captain & Tennille,[12] June 21, 1975

• "I'm Sorry"/"Calypso" – John Denver,[31] September 27, 1975

• "Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)" – Diana Ross,[31] January 24, 1976

Discography[edit]

• Deuces, T's, Roadsters and Drums (1963)

• Drums! Drums! A Go Go (1966)

• Psychedelic Percussion (1967)

• Have Fun!!! Play Drums!!! (1968)

• Buh-Doom (1998)

Carol Kaye (née Smith; born March 24, 1935) is an American musician. She is one of the most prolific recorded bass guitarists in rock and pop music, playing on an estimated 10,000 recordings in a career spanning over 65 years.

Kaye began playing guitar in her early teens and after some time as a guitar teacher, began to perform regularly on the Los Angeles jazz and big band circuit. She started session work in 1957, and through a connection at Gold Star Studios began working for producers Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. After a bassist failed to turn up to a session in 1963, she switched to that instrument, quickly making a name for herself as one of the most in-demand session players of the 1960s, playing on numerous hits. She moved into playing on film soundtracks in the late 1960s, particularly for Quincy Jones and Lalo Schifrin, and began to release a series of tutoring books such as How To Play The Electric Bass. Kaye became less active towards the end of the 1970s, but has continued her career and attracted praise from other musicians.

During the peak of her years of session work, she became part of a stable of Los Angeles–based musicians which went by a variety of informal names, but has since become known as "The Wrecking Crew". Her work with the collective led to her prominent role in the 2008 documentary film titled The Wrecking Crew.

Early life

At age 13, Kaye received a steel string guitar from her mother. She began playing sessions in jazz clubs around Los Angeles. During the 1950s, Kaye played bebop jazz guitar with several groups on the Los Angeles club circuit, including Bob Neal's group, Jack Sheldon backing Lenny Bruce, Teddy Edwards and Billy Higgins. She played with the Henry Busse Orchestra in the mid-1950s, and toured the US with them.

Pop sessions

In 1957, Kaye was playing a gig at the Beverly Cavern, Hollywood, when producer Robert "Bumps" Blackwell invited her to a recording session for Sam Cooke's arrangement of "Summertime". She realized she could make significantly more money with session work than playing in jazz clubs, so took it up as a full-time career. In 1958, she played acoustic rhythm guitar on Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba", recorded at Gold Star Studios, Hollywood. Through Gold Star, she began to work with producer Phil Spector, playing electric guitar on Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans' "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" and The Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me", and acoustic guitar on The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". Along with several other musicians including drummer Hal Blaine and guitarist Glen Campbell, her work with Spector attracted the attention of other record producers and she found herself in demand as a regular session player.

In 1963, when a bass player failed to show for a session at Capitol Records in Hollywood, she was asked to fill in on the instrument. She quickly discovered she preferred playing bass, and found it was a key component of a backing track and allowed her to play more inventively than the relatively simpler guitar parts she had been playing until then. From a pragmatic viewpoint, it was easier to carry a single bass to sessions instead of swapping between three or four guitars depending on the song.Kaye became the most in-demand session bassist in Los Angeles.

Kaye was the sole regular female member of The Wrecking Crew (though she has said the collective were never known by this name, which was later invented by Hal Blaine), a collective of studio musicians who played on a large number of hit records from Los Angeles in the 1960s. Throughout the decade, while at the time unknown to the public, Kaye played bass on a substantial number of records that appeared on the Billboard Hot 100. According to the New York Times, she played on 10,000 recording sessions. She appeared on sessions by Frank Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder, Barbra Streisand, The Supremes, The Temptations, the Four Tops and The Monkees. She played electric bass on Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'", while Chuck Berghofer played double bass. She also came up with the introduction on fellow session player Glen Campbell's hit "Wichita Lineman". Kaye later said that during the 1960s, she would sometimes play three or four sessions per day, and was pleased that so many of them created hit records.

Soundtracks, tutoring and later work

By 1969, Kaye was exhausted and had become disillusioned from doing session work, saying that the music had "started to sound like cardboard". At the same time, many newer rock bands disapproved of using session players, preferring to play the instruments themselves. She decided to make a change so her career evolved from playing primarily pop music to performing mostly soundtrack work, as well as writing and teaching. She wrote How To Play The Electric Bass, the first in a series of tutoring books and instructional video courses. She was featured in the 2008 film The Wrecking Crew along with a cast of other studio musicians. In one interview segment, she said that she believed at the peak of her session activity she was making more money than the US president.

] In 2020, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Kaye number five in its list of the 50 greatest bassists of all time.

Thomas Joseph Tedesco (July 3, 1930 – November 10, 1997) was an American guitarist and studio musician in Los Angeles and Hollywood. He was part of the loose collective of the area's leading session musicians later popularly known as The Wrecking Crew, who played on thousands of studio recordings in the 1960s and 1970s, including several hundred Top 40 hits.

Tedesco's playing credits include the theme from television's Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, Vic Mizzy's theme from Green Acres, M*A*S*H, Batman, and Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special. Tedesco was shown on-camera in a number of game and comedy shows, and played ex-con guitarist Tommy Marinucci, a member of Happy Kyne's Mirth-Makers, in the 1977–78 talk-show spoof Fernwood 2 Night and America 2 Night.

Career

Tedesco was described by Guitar Player magazine as the most recorded guitarist in history, having played on thousands of recordings, many of which were top 20 hits. He recorded with most of the top musicians working in the Los Angeles area including the Beach Boys, the Mamas & the Papas, the Everly Brothers, the Association, Barbra Streisand, Jan and Dean, the 5th Dimension, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Zappa, Ricky Nelson, Cher, and Nancy and Frank Sinatra as well as on Richard Harris's classic "MacArthur Park". His playing can be found on Jack Nitzsche's "The Lonely Surfer", on Wayne Newton's version of "Danke Schoen", B. Bumble and the Stingers's "Nut Rocker", the Rip Chords' "Hey Little Cobra", the Ronettes' "Be My Baby", the Sandpipers' "Guantanamera", the T-Bones' "No Matter What Shape'" and Nino Tempo & April Stevens' version of "Deep Purple". For Guitar Player, Tedesco wrote a regular column called "Studio Log" in which he would describe a day's work recording a movie, TV show or album, the special challenges each job posed and how he solved them, what instruments he used, and how much money he made on the job.

As a solo artist, Tedesco recorded a number of jazz guitar albums, but his musical career ended in 1992 when he suffered a stroke that resulted in partial paralysis. The following year he published his autobiography, Confessions of a Guitar Player.

Tedesco died of lung cancer in 1997, at the age of 67, in Northridge, California.[4] His son, Denny Tedesco (related to Damon Tedesco and Suzie Greene Tedesco,) directed the 2008 documentary film The Wrecking Crew, which features interviews with Tommy and many of his fellow session musicians. The film finally saw theatrical release in 2015, after musical rights were cleared. Before that it had been screened only at film festivals, where clearance rights were not required.

As leader

• The Electric Twelve-String Guitar (Imperial, 1964)

• The Guitars of Tommy Tedesco (Imperial, 1965)

• Calypso Soul (Imperial, 1966)

• With Love from the 50 Guitars (Musicor, 1977)

• Autumn (Trend, 1978)

• When Do We Start (Discovery, 1978)

• Alone at Last (Trend, 1979)

• Thomas Tedesco and Ocean (Nimbus West, 1982)

• Carnival Time (Discovery, 1983)

• Hollywood Gypsy (Discovery, 1986)

• My Desiree (Discovery, 1989)

• Fine Fretted Friend (Discovery, 1992)

• Tommy Tedesco Performs Roumanis' Jazz Rhapsody for Guitar & Orchestra (Capri, 1992)

As sideman

With Paul Anka

• The Music Man (United Artists, 1977)

With Hoyt Axton

• Saturday's Child (Horizon, 1963)

With Joan Baez

• Gracias a la Vida (A&M, 1974)

With Chet Baker

• Blood, Chet and Tears (Verve, 1970)

With The Beach Boys

• The Beach Boys Today! (Capitol, 1965)

• 20/20 (Capitol, 1969)

• 15 Big Ones (Reprise, 1976)

With Stephen Bishop

• Careless (ABC, 1976)

With Bill Conti

• Gloria (Columbia, 1980)[7]

With Sam Cooke

• Twistin' the Night Away (RCA Victor, 1962)

• Mr. Soul (RCA Victor, 1963)

With The Dameans

• Walk To The Gloryland (RCA, 1971)

With J. J. Cale

• Shades (Island, 1981)

With Terry Callier

• Turn You to Love (Elektra, 1979)

With The Crystals

• Twist Uptown (Philles, 1963)

With Bobby Darin

• Venice Blue (Capitol, 1965)

With Jackie DeShannon

• Jackie DeShannon (Liberty, 1963)

With Neil Diamond

• Serenade (Columbia, 1974)

With The 5th Dimension

• Up – Up and Away (Soul City, 1967)

• The Magic Garden (Soul City, 1968)

• Stoned Soul Picnic (Soul City, 1968)

• The Age of Aquarius (Soul City, 1969)

• Living Together, Growing Together (Bell, 1973)

With Don Ellis

• Haiku (MPS, 1974)

With Aretha Franklin

• Laughing on the Outside (Columbia Records, 1963)

With Michael Franks

• Michael Franks (Brut, 1973)

With Art Garfunkel

• Angel Clare (Columbia, 1973)

With Gale Garnett

• Gale Garnett Sings About Flying and Rainbows and Love and Other Groovy Things (RCA Victor, 1967)

With Richard Harris

• A Tramp Shining (Dunhill, 1968)

With Johnny Hartman

• Unforgettable Songs by Johnny Hartman (ABC, 1966)

With Quincy Jones

• The Hot Rock OST (Prophesy, 1972)

With Al Kooper

• Easy Does It (Columbia, 1970)

With Peggy Lee

• Latin ala Lee! (Capitol, 1960)

• Mirrors (A&M, 1975)

With Kenny Loggins

• Celebrate Me Home (Columbia, 1977)

With The Mamas & the Papas

• The Mamas & the Papas (Dunhill, 1966)

With Hugh Masekela

• Herb Alpert / Hugh Masekela (Horizon, 1978)

With Roger McGuinn

• Peace on You (Columbia, 1974)

With Maria Muldaur

• Waitress in the Donut Shop (Reprise, 1974)

With Walter Murphy

• Discosymphony (New York International, 1979)

With Anne Murray

• Together (Capitol, 1975)

With Michael Nesmith

• The Wichita Train Whistle Sings (Dot, 1968)

With Randy Newman

• Randy Newman (Reprise, 1968)

With Harry Nilsson

• Harry (RCA Victor, 1969)

With Jack Nitzsche

• Heart Beat (Soundtrack) (Capitol, 1980)

With Van Dyke Parks

• Song Cycle (Warner Bros., 1967)

With Billy Preston

• Greazee Soul (Soul City, 1963)

With Minnie Riperton

• Stay in Love (Epic, 1977)

With Johnny Rivers

• Changes (Imperial, 1966)

With Linda Ronstadt

• What's New (Asylum, 1983)

With Leon Russell

• Looking Back (Olympic, 1973)

With The Sandpipers

• Come Saturday Morning (A&M, 1970)

• A Gift of Song (A&M, 1971)

With Lalo Schifrin

• The Cincinnati Kid (soundtrack) (MGM, 1965)

• Music from Mission: Impossible (Dot, 1967)

• More Mission: Impossible (Paramount, 1968)

• Mannix (Paramount, 1968)

• The Fox (soundtrack) (MGM, 1968)

• Che! (soundtrack) (Tetragrammaton, 1969)

• Kelly's Heroes (soundtrack) (MGM, 1970)

• Enter the Dragon (soundtrack) (Warner Bros., 1973)

With Sarah Vaughan

• Sarah Vaughan with Michel Legrand (Mainstream, 1972)

• Biography, Tedesco, Tommy (1993). Confessions of a Guitar Player. Centerstream Publications. ISBN 978-0931759710.

Videography

• 2008 The Wrecking Crew, a documentary put together by his son Denny Tedesco