Unsung Heroes: The Most Recorded Musician You’ve Never Heard of

(Part 1 of a series on Carol Kaye. Subscribe if you want to be notified when Part 2 comes along. Thank you!)

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Carol Kaye is one of the three or four most recorded musicians in history but is barely known to most music fans. I heard her name come up a few times over the years (for example, in an article about her work with the Beach Boys), but until recently, I had no idea just how important she has been in the world of American jazz, rock, and popular music.

Then I posted my articles on Sara Lee and Gail Ann Dorsey, two unsung heroes who play a mean bass (and happen to be women), and my friend and fellow music writer Brad Kyle urged me to take a closer look at Kaye. He also pointed me to some references.

Brad publishes “Front Row and Backstage,” a fun, deeply researched column on the classic rock era. His writing is colored by personal experience, from having lived and worked close to the American popular music scene his whole life. Check him out!

Kaye has been written about extensively, and there are at least two full documentaries about her, so I won’t try to re-tread the ground that others have covered. I’ll share a few highlights and some thoughts of my own. The most obvious comment I have upfront is that her relative obscurity in popular music lore should be a source of shame, especially to our music industry and press. Musicians like Kaye should be the ones being celebrated for actually making the music sound good. I have ranted about this in other articles, so I won’t explore it now.

Kaye was born into a poor, depression-era family and says that music was often all that kept them together. She first got her hands on a guitar at the age of 13, when her mother bought her a cheap steel guitar from an itinerant salesman. She took to it avidly, sought out a teacher, and within a few months, was herself giving lessons professionally. Then she began gigging in local taverns and nightclubs in the Los Angeles area, where she attracted the attention of serious music people.

The Hollywood producer Bumps Blackwell, who worked with Sam Cooke and Ray Charles, among others, asked her to play on some of his projects, and that opening led to a recording career that would last more than 40 years. Her first studio session was in 1957. In 1963, she was asked on a moment’s notice to fill in for a bass player who didn’t show up for a session. Soon thereafter, Kaye switched full-time to the bass, though she still has her guitar chops.

Kaye was for many years a member of the L.A.-based cooperative that would later be known as the “Wrecking Crew” (the members themselves were reportedly ambivalent about that moniker!) It was composed of top-level musicians who primarily did session work for everyone from TV and movie producers to jazz and rock artists. Some of them also had solo careers, usually under different names (Glen Campbell and Leon Russell being two of the more famous ones).

Kaye still makes music professionally but focuses more on teaching and ambassadorship than on recording. But what a catalog she amassed!

From her own website, here is a partial list of people with whom she has played:

The Beach Boys, Ray Charles, The Righteous Bros., Johnny Mathis, Nancy Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Glen Campbell, Lou Rawls, Jan & Dean, Henry Mancini, The Lettermen, Paul Revere & Raiders, the Monkees, the Buckinghams, April & Nino, Sonny & Cher, Chris Montez, Andy Williams, Quincy Jones, Joe Cocker, Ike &Tina Turner, Mel Torme, Bobby Darin, Frank Zappa, Wayne Newton, Herb Alpert, O.C. Smith, Don Ho, Al Martino and many more.

She also has numerous movie and TV credits, including:

MASH, Mission Impossible, the Brady Bunch, the Addams Family, Cannon, McCloud, Room 222, 1st Bill Cosby, Ironside, Kojak, Hawaii 5-O, Wonder Woman, Soap; Thomas Crown Affair, Sweet Charity, Airport, In The Heat Of The Night, Plaza Suite, The New Centurions, Pawnbroker, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, Change Of Habit, Le Mans, Walk Don’t Run, and On Any Sunday, to name a few.

How does one decide which recordings to feature in an article like this? With 10,000 or so recordings to choose from, all one can do is pick a few favorites and leave it at that.

So here are my picks:

“Summertime” (1957, accompanying Sam Cooke).

Here is one of the tracks from that first recording session with Bumps Blackwell. Here she is playing 12-string guitar. Kaye herself names this as one of the ten greatest things she recorded. It was also the start of her long history playing with Black musicians, during much of which the music industry was still heavily segregated. It wouldn’t really open up until the 1970s, but Kaye was way ahead of the curve.

“In the Heat of the Night” (1967, accompanying Ray Charles)

Another one Kaye names as one of her favorites. Here she has already established herself on the bass and is an innovator, using guitar effects on the bass — something that was still considered experimental. She says that normally, the bass player would focus on the other musicians in the band, but in this case, she keyed her approach entirely to Charles’ voice because it was so powerful.

Like all great instrumentalists, Kaye knows when to be subtle, just support the song, and when to step it up and set the tone. In the first two clips, she used a light touch. In the next one, she goes big, making all the difference.

One key to Kaye’s sound is that she uses a pick, while most electric bassists play fingerstyle. Some purists insist the pick is less “authentic,” but it gives the player more attack, which really comes through in this piece:

“A Taste of Honey” (1965, Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass)

“Whipped Cream and Other Delights” was the Tijuana Brass’ fourth album and their breakthrough. The album and three singles from it all charted, two becoming TV game show theme songs.

It was essential that the opening number on the album live up to the album cover, which was scandalous for its time. Kaye’s bass line delivers — it swings and seduces at the same time and is a big reason the song is so compelling. Over the years, whenever I’ve heard mention of Herb Alpert, this song automatically plays in my head.

Sources:

“Berklee Welcomes Legendary Studio Bassist Carol Kaye”, Berklee College of Music, 2000 https://web.archive.org/web/20060910211751/http://www.berklee.edu/opi/2000/1018.html

“Carol Kaye: Session Legend Interview,” The Snapshots Foundation, 2014 (If you want to check out one single reference on this list, this is the one.)

“Carol Kaye” Ley Vaughn, NBC 17, 2014

“Carol Kaye — Most Heard but Least Known”, Blueline Entertainment, 2015

“Carol Kaye about her famous (bass) guitar licks for Sam Cooke, Beach Boys and more,” Top 2000 a gogo, 2018

“Bass Legend Carol Kaye Blasts “Mrs. Maisel” Homage as Slander”, NY Post, 2020 https://nypost.com/2020/01/02/bass-legend-carol-kaye-blasts-mrs-maisel-homage-as-slander/

“Carol Kaye on her 10 Best Recordings”, Music Radar, March 2023 https://www.musicradar.com/news/carole-kaye-my-10-greatest-recordings

“Best Basslines: 20 Legendary Grooves”, Dig, January 2023 https://www.thisisdig.com/feature/best-basslines-20-legendary-grooves-you-cant-forget/

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