The bassline for Stevie Wonder Carol Kaye thinks she “screwed” up
Carol Kaye was perhaps one of the most in-demand bassists of the Wrecking Crew collective of esteemed session musicians, sliding slick on a vast array of hits from the 1950s onwards.
While best known for her performances with The Beach Boys during the 1960s, contributing to their early surf rock chart-toppers and continuing to accompany the band during their most creatively rewarding period on albums like The Beach Boys Today! and Pet Sounds, she would later find herself celebrated for her contributions to film scores, working on soundtracks for the likes of Quincy Jones and Lalo Schiffrin before gradually retracting herself from the music industry.
Kaye was a versatile player, and that was what made her so desirable for artists and producers when trying to convince her with their track ideas. Whether it was pop, funk or jazz, Kaye knew what she could offer and was regularly left to her own devices when it came to figuring out how a bassline should be constructed for a song.
However, when the opportunity arose for her to record takes for a classic Motown track, what she ended up offering wasn’t quite as brilliant as her usual standard, or so she thought. While playing on a Motown record at the peak of the label’s popularity would have no doubt been a thrilling experience, it was also a daunting one, and something that Kaye reflects on now as being one of her biggest missteps in her illustrious career.
While Motown were known for having their own in-house musicians, The Funk Brothers, that doesn’t mean that those performers were constantly available due to the rigorous nature of their schedules. Motown were putting out new releases at an incessant rate during the 1960s, so it was common for them to recruit some of the other most talented session players on occasions like this where the usual suspects were unable to commit to a session, hence why Carol Kaye was asked to fill in on Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Was Made to Love Her’.
Unfortunately, what she offered during the session was not up to scratch, and was never used for the final cut of the track, with the label instead choosing to draft their trusted Funk Brother, James Jamerson, back into the studio to record the bassline that we now know. In an interview with SongFacts, Kaye revealed that she was given only a vague outline of where things ought to go in the track, and this ended up throwing her off.
“The first bar was written to give me an indication of what they wanted for the rest of the tune,” Kaye revealed, “and then another part I can remember was written, that triad lick was written. I screwed that one up. I mean, you always remember when you make a mistake on the hits. I made plenty of mistakes, but the feel of the record was good and that’s the main thing.”
However, her claims suggest that it was in fact her take that was used in the song, despite the track’s credits claiming that Jamerson performed on the song, which has led to a decades-long dispute over the origin of the song’s bassline. The thing is, there are no noticeable mistakes in the final recording, and it’s far more likely to be Jamerson’s bass-playing that we hear due to the similarities with his usual playing style, so it’s entirely possible that her takes were scrapped in favour of their trusted in-house performer.
