What are you Listening To Right Now? - and more

Thanks, Lee. The posts concerning Jim Gordon and Richard Harris are both attributed to a book I'd recently read called THE WRECKING CREW by Kent Hartman. For anyone who loves the music of the mid 60's thru the early 70's, this is a must read. I thought I knew a lot about that period of music, but after reading this very well-written and researched book, I realized I didn't know that much.

One last thing that is too impressive to leave out. Hal Blaine, the main drummer for The Wrecking Crew and the one who is credited with giving them that name, has played drums on 40 #1 hits and 150 top 40 songs. According to his own documentation, Hal has played drums on 35,000 recorded tracks. Mr Blaine will turn 90 next February. No drummer in the history of recorded music has numbers like that.
 
Today's GW finds.
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My last piece of useless information for today. Songwriter Jimmy Webb had written a long composition called The Cantata. Bones Howe, after listening to Webb playing this on piano, told Webb that a band he was managing would probably love to have this composition as one side of their next album. Bones called the band to come listen to it and hear what they thought about it. The band I'm referring to was The Association. They were not impressed and told Webb that any two members of the band could write something better than this, plus it was too long. A couple of months later while playing the piano for a fund raiser in west LA, Jimmy was approached by Richard Harris. Harris was so impressed with Webb that he invited Webb to come to London and bring some songs with him. After playing a bunch of songs, none of which Harris was too fond of, Harris noticed the composition, The Cantata. "Please play that, Jimmy."
When Harris heard the lyrics about someone leaving a cake out in the rain, he said "I'll have that one." The rest is history and, of course, the music was provided by The Wrecking Crew.
Never "useless" information! I love these rock facts and really enjoy reading such stories. The stories of how the songs came about are sometimes better than the stories of what the songs are singin' about LOL
 
If you hang around the bass communities online you will learn that basswise... Carol Kaye was brought in to re record all the great lines.

She is credited for some great lines... but she claims to have come in after the fact to replace the other guys lines

Carol was the only female member of The Wrecking Crew. She came on board as an accomplished guitar player, but as time went by she was getting less work because of the big supply of guitar players. She made up her mind to switch to electric bass so she would get more calls for session work. Carol and Ray Pohlman became the most requested bass players. Ms Kaye is given credit for composing the opening bass lines for Sonny & Cher's THE BEAT GOES ON. Btw, most of the musicians in the early days of The Wrecking Crew, including Carol, were previously playing Jazz.
 
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My wife and I were just talking about that song the other day. Did you ever see the SCTV send-up of that? To me, hilarious. Maybe you like-a too, eh?




Yup. See Above.



According to Quincy Jones, it was probably "Some no-playing %#^+*€#¥€£*^!!!"

GJ

Thanks for posting that video. Absolutely hilarious. A very young Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas. Btw, I'm fortunate to have all episodes of SCTV on DVD.
 
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