![]() ![]() By this time, Carol had switched to playing a Fender Precision Bass through her Super Reverb guitar amp. The drugs started to turn up in the ’70s and that’s when most of us quit the studio scene and started to concentrate more on movie work.”Ĭarol’s list of credits through the ’60s and into the ’70s is a veritable who’s-who of top‑level recording artists of the day: Ike and Tina, The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, Neil Young, The Monkees, to name just a few. Anyone turning up drunk or high would never get another session. “There were no drugs or booze allowed in the studios. Yes, it was boring a lot of the time, but you took care of business. “We would play several of these sessions every day! You drank a lot of coffee to stay awake, especially on those six-hour sessions where you’d have to first invent then record a whole album. You’d have to record three or four tunes in three hours ![]() Studio time was very expensive in those days. “The producers were there to make hit records and they booked the musicians that could deliver musically as well as be ultra professional on the record date. If you didn’t, you never got hired again. We’d never heard the music before and had to be able to invent our lines and make sure the music sounded good. ![]() You’d have to record three or four tunes in three hours. “Studio time was very expensive in those days. Having to adapt to whatever the session might throw their way, these studio giants had to be able to sight-read sheet music as well as be top-drawer improvisers, well accustomed to adapting to those times when they’d merely be given a chord chart. We’d never heard white singers sing like that before.” ![]() The tune was great and The Righteous Brothers were knocking our blocks off with the way they were singing. It worked! We knew that was going to be a big hit. “Phil heard that and liked it so much he put a double-time echo on it, making it sound like I was playing 16th notes. I had to bear down extra hard on my Epiphone, grinding away with rhythmic eighth notes, trying to congeal the rhythm together. Ultimately, these sessions generated such ‘Wall Of Sound’ masterpieces as The Crystals’ Then He Kissed Me and You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ by The Righteous Brothers, among many others.Ĭarol shares her experience of the sessions: “There was so much echo in the earphones on Lovin’ Feelin’ that no-one was playing well together. Phil Spector, a regular client of Gold Star, noticed what Kaye was capable of and wasted no time hiring her for his own sessions. In 1958 Carol played rhythm guitar on Ritchie Valen’s million-seller La Bamba at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. “It paid 10 times more than the jazz clubs paid and, by then, I had two children and a mother to support!” Creating a feeling “From then on I decided to focus more on studio work,” says Carol. The A-side You Send Me went to No 1 on the American R&B chart and, later, into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame as one of the 500 ‘Most Important Songs’ list. The track is underpinned by Kaye’s simple yet highly effective acoustic arpeggios on what sounds like her Emperor archtop. The song that Blackwell invited Carol to play on happened to be Sam Cooke’s classic version of the jazz standard Summertime. ![]()
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