Carol Kaye picks the 10 greatest songs she’s ever played on
Carol Kaye might not be a name that registers in circles outside of the music nerd fraternity, but there is a fat chance that just about everyone in the Western world has heard her play at one point in their lives.
She is as ubiquitous in modern music as a Fender Jazzmaster, and did just as much to shape its sound. As she said when she visited Ocean Way with a film crew, “I’m Carol Kaye, and I played on thousands of hit records,” only to be turned away from the premises by workers who seemed to think she was a grifter. But, if anything, “thousands” is underplaying it.
She has played on so many songs, in fact, that nobody knows the exact figure. The accepted rounded total stands at 10,000. Being a Los Angeles session musician in the 1960s means that a fair chunk of that whopping number are bona fide classics, too.
To put the figure into context, Bob Dylan, regarded by many as such a prolific force of nature by David Bowie that he was “green with envy” at the sheer scope of his output, has only about 665 credits to his name. Moreover, Kaye wasn’t just notching up easy tap-ins either, her credits include names like Herb Albert, Nancy Sinatra, and Stevie Wonder… and none of these feature in her own highlights reel.
What’s more, she was a trailblazer in myriad ways. The sad truth is that she couldn’t just settle for being a brilliant bassist, she was handicapped by her gender on that front. No, her unfortunate predicament was that she had to far outstrip her male counterparts if she was going to make it. However, as Quincy Jones famously remarked, “She could leave the men in the dust”. And as she famously added herself, “When you hear somebody with balls, that’s me”.
She still thumbs her bass – and the array of other instruments she is proficient on – every now and again in her home in Hollywood. She’s also still as keen as ever to reflect on her whirlwind journey, so she was asked WeekendFest to take a look back on her gilded and prolific career to champion the ten best songs that she has ever played. One of her earliest mainstream recordings was Sam Cooke’s smoother-than-buttered silk classic, ‘Summertime’.
Kaye says it was 1957 and she was guitar soloing in a jazz band, but as she states, “You don’t make a lot of money playing jazz”. That much was becoming increasingly clear in ‘57 when rock ‘n’ roll was rearing its head. So, when Cooke’s R&R walked into the studio one day and asked her whether she would play on a record she was hesitant at first, “but I knew it looked like money,” she adds, “and I had two kids to pay for”.
She went down to the studio where Cooke and his crew were playing and was asked to lay down some fills. The result is one of the most extraordinary records of all time. It’s a song that sounds like the sonic equivalent of a grand cathedral, both haunting and beautiful at the same time, capturing the ominous aura of the liberation era to come. Central to that is the distant wind of Kaye’s rumbling bass.
After her success on Sam Cooke’s record, it would seem that her future was with the four-string. Kaye didn’t mind this one iota, simply because when she was playing the guitar, she had to lug around all sorts of 12-strings, electric guitars, acoustics, and an endless list of other variations, whereas with the bass, the space in the back of her car was suddenly freed up for groceries and other home life necessities.
The second song on her list is the Ray Charles crooning anthem, ‘America The Beautiful’. But after playing with Ray Charles, the singers being sent down to Hollywood in the late 1960s just couldn’t compete. This was the high point of pop culture in her mind, and things became commercialised from there.
Kaye and other old jazz cohorts had no problem churning out hits for labels, “but at least give us something to work with,” she pleaded. Thus, thereafter her career progressed into all sorts of different fields from The Motherlode in Canada to the pure pop of the Righteous Brothers. Never swayed by cynicism, she grew to love some of these hits, too.
Elsewhere, she champions the Jimmy Webb-written Glen Campbell classic ‘Wichita Lineman’ which featured her iconic descending bassline intro and was described by Bob Dylan, no less, as the greatest song ever written; the bristling “happy song” of ‘Sloop John B’ by The Beach Boys, and it also features, and Jack Cocker’s rattling “fun” song ‘Feelin’ Alright’.
Above all, the list, like her bass playing in general, finds her playing to the song. It’s the only way to craft a classic at the end of the day.
Carol Kaye’s 10 favourite songs that she’s played on:
- ‘Summertime’ by Sam Cooke
- ‘America the Beautiful’ by Ray Charles
- ‘When I Die’ by The Motherlode
- ‘Good Vibrations’ by The Beach Boys
- ‘Wichita Lineman’ by Glen Campbell
- ‘I Don’t Need No Doctor’ by Ray Charles
- ‘Sloop John B’ by The Beach Boys
- ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ by The Righteous Brothers
- ‘The Way We Were’ by Barbra Streisand
- ‘Feelin’ Alright’ by Joe Cocker
