The ‘Wrecking Crew’ Movie - Documentary About L.A. Studio Musicians Of The Sixties

Denny Tedesco, son of the late studio guitar master Tommy Tedesco, made a movie called The Wrecking Crew about the great studio musicians of the sixties who worked in the Los Angeles music studios.

It features studio legends Carol Kaye, Plas Johnson, Hal Blaine, Don Randi and many more. Stars like Cher, Nancy Sinatra, and Micky Dolenz (the Monkees) are featured, too.

The documentary will be shown in March at the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival and at the SXSW in Austin, Texas. In April it will be shown at the Nashville Film Festival. You can find further information on the Wrecking Crew Movie Homepage.

See also:

• ‘Wrecking Crew’ Live Reunion in Los Angeles
• The Invisible Musicians Who Played On All The Sixties Hits
• Electric Bass Legend Carol Kaye: L.A. Studio Musicians Were Never Called ‘Wrecking Crew’
• Squelching Rumours About The Monkees

Bass Guitar? Electric Bass? Fender Bass? Danelectro Bass Guitar?

There’s some confusion about how to call the electric bass. Many people call it “bass guitar”. Let’s look at the basics: the electric bass is shaped like a guitar, has four strings and is tuned like a string bass. Nowadays there are also electric basses with five and six strings.

Until the late nineteen-sixties the electric bass was called by many “Fender bass”, because Fender was the first company to market electric basses on a large scale. During the late sixties the term “electric bass” became also common. The term “bass guitar” is a little bit confusing, because there’s also an instrument called “Danelectro bass guitar”, which is a six string guitar tuned one octave down.

In the fifties and sixties the Danelectro bass guitar was often used in combination with a string bass and was responsible for the “click” sound that you can hear on many country songs. For example on Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”. Usually the Danelectro doubled (playing unison) the string bass or the electric bass. The combination of string bass and electric bass was also popular in the sixties. A good example is “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’”. Chuck Berghofer is on string bass, Carol Kaye on electric bass.

There are at least two famous songs that use a Danelectro and on which Carol Kaye also played: on the Richie Valens hit “La Bamba” you can hear Rene Hall on the Danelectro, Carol Kaye played the rhythm guitar. On “Wichita Lineman”, Glen Campbell plays a wonderful solo on a Danelectro he borrowed from Carol Kaye, while Kaye herself played the electric bass. And you can hear Carol Kaye playing the Danelectro on “The Beat Goes On” by Sonny and Cher.

Jazz Musicians On The Beatles Song ‘Lady Madonna’

In the evening of February the 6th, Paul McCartney decided that he needed saxes for “Lady Madonna”. Phone calls were made immediately to find four sax players. Soon Harry Klein (baritone sax), Bill Jackman (baritone sax), Ronnie Scott (tenor sax) and Bill Povey (tenor sax) arrived at Abbey Road studios in London. According to Harry Klein there was no written music. They invented some riffs, wrote down a few notes, then they had to record their part 101 times. These musicians are all jazz musicians. It was typical for pop and rock recordings in the sixties to call in well trained jazz musicians, because they could invent interesting lines on the spot and were absolutely in command of their instruments. Ronnie Scott (1927-1996) is the co-founder of the famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London, by the way.

Source: Mark Lewisohn, “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions”, 1988, page 133