CAROL KAYE by P. Willis Pitts She not just a bass player: she is a major icon in the history of electric bass playing. In 50's and 60's Los Angeles, a select band of studio musicians was the driving force behind the bulk of pop hits being released. Carol, with her innovative style - taut, flat-wound strings; forceful pick strokes and felt damping - was so sought after that her bass lines literally shaped and directed a whole generation of pop music. Veteran of over 10,000 studio sessions, she has never lost her down-home integrity, her love of teaching, and a solid sense of ethics; qualities that served her well in an era infamous for its ephemeral values. Still going strong at 57, Carol shared with us some experiences and insights from her incredible life - P. Willis Pitts You were originally a guitarist. What started you, and how did you learn? There wasn't much around in those days in the way of formal tutors. I grew up very poor in Everett, Washington and then Wilmington, California, the third and last daughter to musician parents. After World War II ended, my mother divorced my father and soon I was working part-time scrubbing floors and cleaning apartments at the age of ten to help supplement our welfare income. It was kind of a tough childhood. I was also buck-toothed, ugly, shy and a very lonely kid, getting mostly A's in school, but I suffered socially, as I couldn't talk very well; I stuttered very badly. A travelling salesman came by with cheap music lessons and a cheap little steel guitar. My Mom encouraged me to take guitar lessons - later, from Horace Hatchett, who was then the teacher of Howard Roberts, Oscar Moore (Nat Cole's guitarist), John Gray, Reuben Quintero and other professionals. It was accidental, but Horace Hatchett was the finest teacher on the West Coast, and, within three to four months, I was advancing so fast, he hired me to work for him as his teaching assistant. This way, I was able to buy my Gibson Super 400. I used to transcribe Artie Shaw's great band recordings as well as all the Charlie Christian guitar stuff for both myself and my students, and I also played some casual gigs around Long Beach, 1949, aged fourteen. I finally got pregnant, married etc., and wound up on the road later with Henry Busse's Orchestra, with my first husband playing acoustic bass. In 1955 to 1956, I started to play really good jazz around Los Angeles. In 1956 to 1961 played bebop with Teddy Edwards, with Curtis Counce on bass; Billy Higgins on drums - he's the drummer you see in the movie Round Midnite. Also, I played with many other fine jazz groups, while working days as a tech typist at Bendix, typing manuals for parts. I got into studio work accidentally, playing guitar backgrounds for Sam Cooke and other soul artists, starting December 1957. You Send Me was very big at that time, but, being a jazzer, I was in another world and had never heard of Sam. Recording sessions with Sam Cooke got me in, and, gradually I was to become a very popular Los Angeles studio guitarist, about 4th-call. What made you progress on to the bass? An electric bassist didn't show up for a record date at Capitol one day in late 1963, and I just picked up the Fender 'P' Bass and started playing it the way I was always hearing it in my head - things that no one else was doing at that time - the way I thought the bass should sound on hit records. From 1955 to about 1963, Ray Pohlman was playing on most of the Fender Bass hits in Los Angeles' studios, and the electric-bass chair really opened up big when he quit playing to be the Musical Director of the Shindig TV show. Good bass lines were rare in those years; no parts were written down, and the bassist played very simply, which was good, but music was quickly evolving into double-time funk, and a boring bass line could sometimes doom a recording. As most models would've been jazz or orchestral at that time, and the electric bass was then a comparatively new instrument, how did you develop your 'pop' lines? Because we just had head charts (chord symbols), with, perhaps, some breaks and/or horn/band lines written out, I was free to create my own bass lines. I had played guitar on some Duane Eddy and Dick Dale solos, along with double-time 12-string fills, lines, rhythm, two and four beat splanks1 etc; sometimes reading at the more prestigious but sparse dates with Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Pat Boone, and so on. My early guitar work gave me good rhythmic chops for bass. I was very influenced by Latin Montuno lines, as well as jazz horn riffs and conga patterns, but not by acoustic bass. I never really listened to other bassists. Although I thought that James Jamerson's style was great, I never tried to sound like him. Past music experiences influenced my bass creativity. As arrangers began to hone their arranging crafts, they started to get creative, with bass lines derived from horn licks, drum rhythm licks, etc., like I first did. I used to laugh at arranger Gene Page, who would immediately write down lines and licks I'd improvise on the record dates for his future arrangements. Some dates, I'd go in and read my own previously-recorded lines - lines I had improvised weeks or months earlier. Fats Domino's drummer from New Orleans, the fine Earl Palmer, second only to Hal Blaine in the L.A. studios, had a double-time Swamp Beat; he got the samba-type 16th note paradiddles going, and we'd wind up playing the very same cross- time paradiddle fills together by accident. He was the most fun drummer to play bass along with. Other drummers I loved were Shelly Manne; Paul Humphrey; John Guerin, etc.. It seems obvious that you didn't just play on these records, but because of your own creativity and innovations on the bass, you helped form the actual structure of what we now call 60's music. When I started playing the Fender Bass, producers were using the Fender bass and acoustic bass together for a full, rich bass sound on recordings - sometimes with the Danelectro 6-string bass guitar. I had no intention of replacing the other bass players, but my style - down and up-beat picking with felt muting - gradually eliminated the need for the other two basses. I kept my flat- wound strings extra high so I could play very hard with the pick. Pretty soon, the few Fender bassists around were being asked to get the 'Carol Kaye' sound. In those years, it was not 'pick- sounding'; but with aged tapes, you can hear more of the high-end pick 'click' sound; a technical quirk. Also, largely because of my rhythms, everyone was increasingly required to read tough 16th note patterns. Arrangers like Gene Page would write two bass parts: a difficult one, especially for me; and an easier one, if they couldn't get me. You can hear the Latin, jazz and conga drum influences in my bass lines, but I never thought I was a 'great' bassist, just a good creative studio bassist whose job it was to help get hit 1 A semi-choked guitar chord on the 2nd or 4th beats records for the producers/arrangers/companies who hired me. About creating: I never categorized when creating lines, but played lines that would be appropriate for the artist, song and rest of the band. Usually the arranger's lines would be a little stiff, and I'd be asked to invent something of my own around their style - but I always had to read their lines first. Sometimes I accidentally did the right thing, trying to wake up a groove - as on Mel Torme's Games People Play. We all got sleepy or tired, in spite of the massive doses of coffee, and the very fine drummer on this date was evidently very tired - but I must add that we would always help each other out in these situations. Anyway, he was slowing us down quite a bit. Maybe it was my simple bass lines, I don't know, but the big band was staring at me, like "Carol, do something", completely unsuitable for the tune, while Mel so, I played a bass 16th note wall-to-wall concerto2 just crooned softly. They seemed to think it was exciting, but I apologized, saying, "please, it's too much bass, let's do it over!" feeling like I'd failed Mel. But they said it was great, and, would you know, that damn thing was a big hit, and I'm glad to say Mel made a good piece of change off that. So, you never know. Maybe sometimes playing off-the-wall stuff is good, too! It was obviously a very exciting and unique time. What made you move on? I worked a lot with the great drummer Hal Blaine, and we played on some early dates with H.B. Barnum and Phil Spector, Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys and so on. These dates were big hits. But, unfortunately, Hal and I later got onto some things with the Monkees, Dino-Desi-Billy, Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Buckinghams, and so on.