Carol Kaye session musician

[john]

Played bass on the recording of Be My Baby

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amazing --thanks for sharing(I haven't gotten through all of it yet)

...! wow . I hope they kept all the footage of the original video. She deserves a multi hour historical-documentary ... walking us through the decades of pop music revolving around her inputs.

I'm glad to see you're interested, Tom. I fell down this rabbit hole a couple months ago and put some of this in draft form and decided to put it up when I fell back in last night.

I think she belongs in the R&R Hall of Fame. They need a place to recognize these players.

These musicians were professionals doing a job, and while they did not always like the songs they were playing they did there best to craft a hit. Carol says that with rare exceptions, such as Brian Wilson who wrote virtually every note she played (except one or two she snuck in), the songs were generally bare bones when they started and they had to, or had a lot of freedom to make it come together. She credits the complexity and improvisation in the jazz she started out with as giving her the skills to make her part work.

The Wrecking Crew reminds me a little of PMJ -- it wasn't a set crew but the same people were often playing together. They knew each other's styles and how to complement one another and stay out of the way too.

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1999 interview
http://earcandy_mag.tripod.com/carolk.htm