The musician who featured on every ‘Record of the Year’ for six years running
There aren’t many drum beats you can type. In fact, there may only be one: Boom. Boom-boom, bap. Boom. Boom-boom, bap. You can hear it off the text alone. Truly, the song that follows this beat is so magical that the first time Brian Wilson heard it on his car radio, he almost swerved off the road. Would the magic still be there without the bass drum hit heard around the world, however? Possibly not, so it stands to reason that you’d give the honour of playing that beat to the best drummer around.
In the early 1960s, that honour went to Hal Blaine, and based on his track record, he held that honour for several decades after. The Holyoke, Massachusetts native, born Harold Belsky in February 1929, took up the drums when he was eight years old and, by 13, had a kit of his own to practise on. If it sounds like he had the most understanding and encouraging parents the 1930s had to offer, you’re not far off. What helped was the fact that his father was in the industry himself.
Belsky Sr worked at a nightclub, and as soon as the young Hal was old enough to follow him, he did. He kept a watchful eye on the jazz bands who would pass through his father’s club, taking extensive notes from their drummers. By the early 1950s, the young Belsky had extensively learnt from Roy Knapp, the same man who taught Gene Krupa and had set out on his own.
After a period of time cutting his teeth as a drummer on the Chicago strip club circuit, he moved to Los Angeles and quickly fell in with a group of session musicians who, at the time, were called the First Call Gang. Under the direction of bassist and guitarist Ray Pohlman, the First Call Gang were a group of musicians whose skill and speed in learning music was so great that whenever a recording opportunity came up in LA, they were the first group to get a call.
When Phil Spector started his record label, Philles Records, only the best would do for the famously perfectionist murderer. He adopted the First Call Gang as an unofficial house band, and their work is all over the records by The Crystals, The Ronettes and The Righteous Brothers. However, the biggest feather in Blaine’s cap (along with the ‘Be My Baby’ beat, obviously) would come later in the decade, with a hot streak never to be matched by anyone since.
In 1966, the Grammy for ‘Record of the Year’ was awarded to ‘A Taste of Honey’ by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. The year afterwards, it was Frank Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night’, followed by The 5th Dimension’s ‘Up, Up and Away’. In 1969, the award went to Simon & Garfunkel with ‘Mrs Robinson’, after which The 5th Dimension won it again in 1970 for ‘Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In’. In 1971, Simon & Garfunkel won once more for ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’. Care to guess what all those records have in common?
Blaine was the drummer not only on the six records that won the most prestigious Grammy Award but all six records that won that honour in a row. Legitimately, one of the most impressive achievements ever by a sideman and a reason he was so worthy of a Grammy Award for ‘Lifetime Achievement’ in 2018, the year before he passed away at 90. Great innings worthy of a drum legend.
