Interview with Carol Kaye

Carol Kaye - Top Session Bassist & Jazz Guitar Player!

(One good question can take you very far, just as one Hit song can!)

George: Please tell us some of the highlights of your transition from Jazz musician (Guitarist) to Pop session player?

Carol Kaye: I never wanted to do studio work as it was quite well-known in the jazz world of the late 1950s of which I was a good part of then in LA, that anyone going to do studio work would not play jazz anymore....and partially they're right...you get so involved with the commercial sound, it's really nothing to do with the highly spontaneous creative jazz improv soloing.

But....as things go, I had (then) 2 kids and a mother to be the sole support of and when I took my first record date, playing backup guitar fills for Sam Cooke (immediately after his biggie hit of) Darling You Send Me in Dec. of '57. I made over twice as much money as the jazz gigs paid back then, plus I reasoned I could quit my day-job (was lucky to have a day-gig too) and just play music then....which I did...I made the choice and it was good to work for Sam Cooke for producer Bumps Blackwell -- the respect was tremendous...plus you NEVER saw any drugs in the studio work, it was very strict and I liked that. Plus the music wasn't jazz but it was good music.

I soon bought the elec. Fender guitar needed for studio work (with the doo-wacky thingamajig on it) and got a different Fender amp and started doing some lucrative rock dates...played guitar backup for Ritchie Valens, 12-string fills for Sonny & Cher, and guitar for the Righteous Bros, but switched to bass late 1963 when a bass player didn't show up at Capitol Records and found I liked that better. In 1962 I did turn down George Shearing wonderful offer to tour with him (Joe Pass did it then), but having traveled on the road, leaving my first child as a baby in 1954-55 I didn't want to leave my kids nor leave my spot in the studio work.

In 1965, I cut a multi-guitar album in an attempt to make a name commercially on guitar as I missed guitar (bass chops were beginning to take their toll on my hands for guitar which require more sensitivity for fine jazz playing), and I had some great musicians on that album (now called) Carol Kaye: 1965 Guitars..but the dumbest tune Ice Cream Rock got on the charts so I told them "pull that, I can't see myself playing that on guitar the rest of my life" and settled back down to do studio work thereafter on elec. bass, forgetting about guitar totally......until.....now.....years later, I can play jazz guitar again, and am doing jazz guitar gigs...you can't imagine how great I feel to do that..God is good!

But yes, I put my creativity in the elec .bass for the studio work, continuing what I had started in late 1963, and by 1964 I was No. 1 call....it was amazing how quickly in-demand I was..but it's nothing special. I got a great sound with my hard pick and dexterity (am a fast typist, that was my day gig work back in the 1950s) and the creative lines I was able to come up with on bass, they worked good....

they loved those boogaloo lines, actually derived from the latin music I loved to play on guitar and the soul-latin music in the jazz groups of the late 1950s too (guitar)...they're really conga and timbale type lines, and called "funk" but they're more latin....that's what I kept hearing that should have been on the bottom of the hits we were cutting (most of the rock recording musicians were fine jazz musicians) and inventing and so when I got the chance to play elec. bass, that's what I invented and played and it worked out good for hit records.

Was a heck of a lot more fun than the doop-do-wap-do-wap rock (and especially that boring surf stuff) I had to play on guitar and I only had to carry in one instrument: bass! So yes, that was fun...but you'd be surprised how much of the jazz influence there is in those 60s records we all invented lines and played hard on....it sure is fun to get back to playing live jazz again, some 44 years later.

George: Thank you very much for your time, musicianship & wonderful little story. My mother played a 'Kay' acoustic bass & electric guitar and was the vocalist w/ her band in the 50's to the 70's. I lost my mother in June 1998 by a hit & run car accident. She lived for 6 days in the hospital. My dad played drums in High School. I remember as a kid, I would hear music at 3:30 in the morning on a Saturday night & find our kitchen filled w/ musicians jamming all night.
This is what led me to be a musician myself. For me as a teenager in the 60's most of my musician friends were experimenting w/ drugs. I on the other hand was afraid of drugs. Still am....... never did them. Thank god. In march 1992 I was run over by a car as I was walking across the street. Could not play drums for a couple of years. It was a miracle to be alive!

Oh, by the way, I'm trying to set up a Q & A w/ Stanley Clarke.

Carol Kaye: Oh that's terrible to lose your mother....sounds like she was a wonderful person and musician, and same for your dad....

Best to Stanley btw, he's a very good soul...... yes, feels good to be back resuming my jazz guitar career, stopped about 40 years ago.....I played with Teddy Edwards, Jack Sheldon, Red Mitchell a lot...all the best in LA...it's was all mixed....

Take care, Best, Carol ........

Carol Kaye http://www.carolkaye.com

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