Carol Kaye
Birth name: Carol Smith
Born: March 24, 1935 (age 85); Everett, Washington, United States
Occupation(s): Session musician, teacher
Instruments: Bass guitar, guitar, banjo
Years active: 1949–present
Website:
www.carolkaye.com
Carol Kaye (nee 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 50 years.
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Career
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 realised 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. After bassist Ray Pohlman left studio work to become a musical director, Kaye became the most in-demand session bassist in Los Angeles.
Kaye continued to play guitar on numerous other hit songs in the 1960s and 1970s, including the twelve-string electric guitar on several Sonny & Cher songs. She also played twelve-string on Frank Zappa's album Freak Out!. At the time, it was unusual for women to be experienced session players; nevertheless Kaye remembered sessions being generally good-humoured and united by the music.
Kaye was the sole regular female member of The Wrecking Crew (though she has said the group were never known by this name, which was later invented by Blaine), a group 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 and 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.
Through her work with Spector, Kaye caught the attention of The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, who used her on several sessions, including the albums Beach Boys Today, Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!), Pet Sounds and Smile. Unlike other sessions, where she was free to work out her own bass lines, Wilson always came in with a very specific idea of what she should play. By Pet Sounds, Wilson was asking musicians such as Kaye to play far more takes than typical sessions, often running over ten passes of a song, with sessions stretching well into the night. Kaye is often credited for playing on the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" single, but a session list compiled by Craig Slowinski for The Smile Sessions box-set liner notes states that, although she played on several sessions for the song, none of those recordings made the final edit as released on the single. Brian Wilson remembers Kaye as one of the session players hired for the many sessions devoted to the song: "The bass part was important to the overall sound. I wanted Carol Kaye to play not so much a Motown thing, but a Beach Boys-Phil Spector riff".
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