It’s not hyperbole to suggest

that Carol Kaye is among the most prolific session musicians of all time. Though she began teaching and performing jazz gigs on guitar at age 14, she is best known as a bassist. Her career spans over 70 years and 10,000 studio recordings and film scores, playing with iconic artists from Stevie Wonder and The Temptations to Glen Campbell and The Beach Boys. How To Play The Electric Bass, the first of her instructional book and video series, has sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide. At age 85 she continues her work as an educator by offering bass lessons via Skype. Women in Sound was honored to spend an afternoon talking with Carol in late August to reflect on studio memories and passing on the musical legacy of her contemporaries to younger generations. 

for Women in Sound #8
October 30, 2020
interview by Madeleine Campbell
portrait by Maggie Negrete
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Let’s go back to 1949. You’re a 14-year-old girl, the daughter of two musicians. You started taking guitar lessons the year before and very quickly started gigging, taking on students yourself. Tell me about the culture of the big band and jazz clubs where you got your start.
I was born in 1935 in the thick of the Depression. Times were rough back then. Teaching and playing gigs at a young age was a financial necessity and music always made you feel good. It was a happy time for music. Everybody loved to dance and sing. As far as being a gigging musician, it’s funny — there wasn’t really such a thing as trying to be a star. It wasn’t about the individual. It was all about fitting in with other people. The beat had to be good. The music had to be tight. 

You once wrote that although you loved playing jazz, it didn’t pay particularly well and eventually studio session work was much more lucrative.
Correct.

I’m thinking of you as a 22-year-old mother of two young children on the day you took your first job as a session musician for an artist you had never heard of named Sam Cooke. Was it nerve-wracking to go down that new path or was it just another day as a professional musician? 
Just the first day felt nerve wracking. I only felt uptight on that first day. I didn’t know what to expect. If you’ve never seen a record made, you don’t know how it happens. After a date or two, the plan and general expectation becomes apparent. You have to be a top professional. They only hire the best. 

It was a different sound than I was used to. At first I thought, Hmm, maybe I have to dumb down a bit to play this music. I was there to play some fills and to do what the guy in the booth wanted. But I learned it wasn’t too far of a drop because I was still among such great musicians. I mean, you hear Sam Cooke start singing, “Darling, you send me…” and it’s just beautiful. And so many of the people I worked with in other genres were big jazz lovers, so they had an appreciation and respect for where I was coming from.

This conversation is reminding me of a huge shift that’s occurred over recent decades. It’s interesting to consider how being a studio musician was, for a long time, far more lucrative than going out and playing gigs. It’s a huge reversal from today’s music economy where album budgets have dwindled and so many artists make a bulk, if not all, of their income from touring. What a flip.
That’s true!

I’ve read a lot about that infamous recording session at Capitol Records in 1963 where the scheduled bass player didn’t show up and you were asked to fill in. What was your relationship, if any, to the bass before that?
Nothing! I never thought I’d ever play bass! One of the guitars I was asked to play was considered a bass guitar. It was of the guitar family, had six strings in the same tuning as a guitar but down an octave. It got a certain clicky sound. It was called a Dano, short for [the brand] Danelectro. It wasn’t really a bass. Back then the electric bass was actually called the Fender Bass. On some studio dates we would use an upright bass, a Dano and a Fender Bass. 

So I picked up the Fender Bass and started inventing lines and people loved it! I always thought bass should play a better role than bum-dee-bum, bum-dee-bum over and over. That gets boring after a while. I was always playing fills on guitar anyways, trying to fill up some holes. That’s what you do in jazz — you invent every line according to what’s happening around you. By comparison, rock ‘n’ roll music was made of simpler chords, simpler tunes, but it’s not always easy. It’s a real art to be able to create the outline for a tune and prop up the singer and the emotions behind it. You don’t need to fill every hole. Sometimes leaving things blank and showing restraint is the right idea.

Right. There’s a real balance there. 
It was also nice because I thought, Hey, this is not bad! I don’t have to carry in six different guitars. I can just focus on this one bass! I kind of just saw the future in bass and made it my goal to invent better lines and make things pop more.

It's important to remember that the musicians hired to play in the studios back then were from the jazz and big bands. Even if that’s not what the session called for, it had some effect on the musicianship of the players. Very few rock players were actually on the dates we did for rock ‘n’ roll albums.

Interesting! Yeah, that makes sense.
There were the guys who were great at their solos. Glen Campbell. Leon Russell was terrific on the piano. Dr. John was in on some of those dates too. We all got along well. And we would often record an album top to bottom in six hours!

Oh my gosh.
There were a few guys like Phil Spector and Brian Wilson who did a lot of takes for each tune but most of the time we did three or four takes and we’d have it. We’d get three to five tunes cut in three hours so six hours to cut a whole album. Easy. It was because you had the creativity and responsibility of the musicians from the big band and jazz clubs who were so happy to be there and make money to take care of their children. And there was the added benefit of not having to go on tour or deal with drunk people in nightclubs. The only thing missing was the audience. Our audience became the engineers in the booth.

So you were writing everything you were playing?
Yeah. When I started in the late ‘50s, there wasn’t really any written sheet music given to us. Maybe a lead sheet with chords on it, or maybe we’d have to write the chords down real quick from listening to the demos. Then they started bringing in the music arrangers, which made the process faster, but there were very few people who knew how to arrange rock ‘n’ roll for a while. For a while there were two unions for musicians — a black one and a white one. Eventually they merged, which was just wonderful. 

Can I ask you about a couple sessions in particular?
Sure. 

What was it like working with Phil Spector? The sound of The Ronettes is so legendary. 
Everything Phil did was exciting. He picked the right artists and the right tunes. I have to say, I was never a huge fan of rock ‘n’ roll so the sound of the ‘60s girl groups wasn’t what I was most drawn to, but he had a knack for it. And what really struck me was the Righteous Brothers. They were just wonderful. But anyways, Phil worked us hard to get a tune done. I mean dozens and dozens of takes without stopping. We’d cry for a break. 

I actually read a funny anecdote in which you were in the studio and pregnant and needed a bathroom break. Phil Spector was yelling at you, “Don’t touch anything! Don’t move the mics!” 
Oh yeah! I was eight or nine months pregnant and I said, Oh, he’s gonna give us a break, alright. The guys in the room with me were so happy. The women’s restroom at Gold Star [Studios] was very tall. The engineers ran the echo chamber through it. 

That’s amazing. I’m a big fan of Barry White and The Love Unlimited Orchestra, too. I listened to him a lot growing up but didn’t know you played with him until recently. 
Oh, Barry! He was great. He was a nice guy, too. The songs of his that I played on were produced by Bob Keane. 

Was that more of a sound that you were used to versus the emerging rock ‘n’ roll artists?
Yes. I’m very partial to soul music. I really enjoy it because it feels closer to jazz. I love The Isley Brothers. I did some of their early albums, too. 

In music literature that discusses you and your career, there’s a lot of talk about the Carol Kaye sound, especially in the context of producers wanting other players to emulate your musicianship and sonic qualities when you weren’t available for sessions. 
Ha! That did happen. 

Oh, it seems like it happened quite a lot. What I see mentioned most often is impeccable timing and hard picking — both in the sense of using a hard pick but also literally playing hard, playing with a lot of gusto. 
You gotta make it count! You can’t tiptoe on the bass. You’re providing the foundation. A good sense of timing was integral to playing jazz. You’re playing these fast patterns and your sense of timing better be there because you’ve got a lot of other people playing on the same beat. Can you imagine playing in a big band or if you’re on a film score call and everyone’s on a different beat? No way. Your timing has to be perfect. That’s what helped make the hit records. People will say Oh, I love that groove! It’s that groove! The groove is nothing but great time. Make sure your timing is there and invent a nice line that fits in yet doesn’t play the same line that the bass drum does —  never do that, do something opposite of what the drummer is doing — and don’t fill every part of the music. Leave some holes. This puts a framework around the singer. 

I didn’t see the bass doing these very simple rhythms: Bum-ba-bum. Bum-ba-bum. I heard the bass doing a lot more. I heard more intricacies and upbeats. A lot of bass players don’t know how to play upbeats, but it’s very important to learn. When I heard music growing up in the ‘40s, dance music and jazz, there were so many upbeats. You could dance to it. You knew what it felt like. Rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t create that many upbeats. You’ll hear it if you listen to Latin American music though, especially samba. 

“The groove is nothing but great time.”

So that timing helped you lay the foundation of these recordings. 
Yes. You have to be solid. 

It sounds like you really took things to the next level in terms of musicality, too. 
You have to do it with taste though. When I got on the [Barbra] Streisand dates, the conductor knew I was taking some liberties and he said, No. Read the part the way it is. So I did and we did 32 straight takes of bum-dee-bum. Bum-dee-bum. Bum-dee-bum. We got to the 33rd take and I said, Enough of this. I’m adding notes. The drummer Paul Humphrey looked at me and smiled. He started to play around a bit, too. And that was the take! That song, “The Way We Were,” became a big hit. 

Oh yeah!
I was always a bit sorry I disobeyed him because he was a terrific conductor. 

Sounds like it worked out OK, though.
It just needed that extra amount of notes, but I was careful to stay out of her way as she sang. That’s exactly what you do with jazz. You feature the soloist. 

I appreciate what you say about leaving space for everyone — not just the vocalist, but also the drummer. It’s important not to play on top of them. It’s a really beautiful balance of appropriate musical embellishment and restraint. 
Exactly. You know as a sound engineer there are so many pieces to the sound spectrum. Find your spot and work with it. Oh, I wanted to talk about muting too. 

Let’s talk muting! 
Most people played bass with a pick back then. That’s the sound they wanted, that punch of the pick sound. You also need to set your bass so you have some kind of felt muting taped on top of your strings to mute it slightly. This is because bass sometimes records kind of muddy. It’s not a definite sound. Putting some muting on the strings helps take away the extra low end and extra high end. It defines the sound better. Studio engineers sometimes did this on the strings if a piano and guitar player would put mutes on the back of their bridges, so that’s where I got the idea. Drummers would put handkerchiefs on their drum heads at first and then they learned to put wallets on the top to dampen the sound. Eventually there were mutes made for drums. Muting just helps define the sound more.

This is a common occurrence in sound checks at my job. A drummer might start hitting a snare drum so I can set gain levels and it will be really ringy and almost warbles. Then they’ll throw their wallet or a moon gel on top or a thick piece of tape on top and it immediately sounds tighter and more contained. 
Oh god, I can’t even imagine what you’ve witnessed! 

Ha! Well, I do think it’s helped me gain confidence in taking control and asking for what I need from the players as an engineer who is mixing their sound. 
There’s always that push and pull between the engineer and the player. I think the top pros will always know what you need. The musicians I was working with for many years were damn good players and the engineers I worked with were always quite friendly to me. I think it’s because I tried to make their job easy for them. I played in such a way that they didn’t have to do much to dial in my sound. Throw a mic on my amp, push the fader up and there’s my sound. 

But I did notice some trends as the years progressed. I moved back to Los Angeles in 1998 and did some dates in the studio. The first thing the engineer did was put all these EQs and limiters in the mix. I said, Why are you doing that? And they basically said, That’s what we do. And I said, You haven’t even heard my sound. Listen to me play flat first, without all of these extras! And they did and they’d be surprised. So much is lost when you EQ or squash a sound to death. I think the biggest sonic disappointments come when the musicians don’t know how to mute and don’t really define their sound and the engineers dump all kinds of unnecessary bells and whistles onto them. 

You’ve written that a lot of factors contribute to one’s bass sound, including the fingerboard, the pickups, the strings and the position of the wrist. You mentioned your preference for a rosewood fingerboard and for flat versus wound strings. Has your playing been at all affected by advances in instrument building and design?
Not exactly. Flat wound strings have a great sound and a great feeling to them, too. They last a long time and they’re easy to play on. They’re nice and warm. The core of flat wound strings has changed. They’ve been improved. The TI strings I use right now are greatly improved from the old Fender Bass strings I used to play. I don’t have to raise the strings ye high or play extra hard to get the sound that I want. Believe it or not, you can’t find a Fender Bass that’s got a Fender Bass sound anymore. You’d have to use Seymour Duncan pickups to get that Fender Bass sound. It’s strange. 

Another thing. Thank god a lot of companies have lightened up their basses. They’re not 15 pounds anymore. The electric bass is just that — electric. Most of the sound comes from the pickups and the strings, not the wood. They’re something more like six or eight pounds now and they sound good! If anything, I think they might sound better now. 

There are five-string basses now, too. I tried them. It’s interesting. You get used to the wider neck but it’s still a strain on your hand. I wasn’t too thrilled with the bottom string, but for some genres of music it’s very handy. If you’re in a Latin band, it’s great. If you’re in a praise band, it’s great. If you’re in a rock ‘n’ roll band, it’s great, but it’s a taboo for standards and jazz. The frequencies of the extra low string start fighting with the frequencies of the bass drum. 

Did you bring your own amp to studio sessions?
I had four of them. Most of the time I was doing three or four gigs a day, so that’s packing a lot into a small amount of hours. The cartage company carried them around and set my amps up. I’m one of the first people that charged the record companies for this. They said, Oh, we’re not paying for that, and I said, Well, if you don’t pay for my cartage then I won’t show up. So they did. It worked. The guitar players started to get cartage, too, because they’d have 12 or 13 instruments to carry around. 

Did you choose your amp based on the music you were playing? 
Yeah. The sound in the studio was different than playing on stage. I was never playing terribly loudly. It would leak into everyone else’s mics. The engineers would record the horn players with the rhythm section, so they’d put up some barriers between us for isolation. Phil Spector was one of the first to use those big, thick barriers, about a foot thick. 

So at a certain point you started to take on less rock ‘n’ roll albums and more film and TV scoring sessions. From the perspective of a studio musician, are there differences between working on a film score session and an album session?
Huge differences. For one, the movie companies did not like to pay the musicians a penny more than they had to. We had stricter schedules. The five minute break was five minutes. Not six. The record dates were more loose. So the film dates were a bit more uptight in certain ways, but the music was just gorgeous. We were working for primo composers. John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith and Quincy Jones. The top composers in the world went to Hollywood because the film companies were going out of business because of television in the ‘60s — they had to do something. They paid these composers and large orchestras to make film scores. We usually did one take per music cue. It was all cut with a click track. The cells of the film have to be in perfect time. 

Obviously you’re known for your prolific career in the studio, but you’re an equally prolific music educator. Around 1970 you started taking less frequent studio dates and began to turn your attention towards writing a series of books for people to learn how to play the bass. 
Thank you for saying that. A lot of people don’t know that. Yes, I had started writing my bass books around 1970. People would call me and ask how to do this and that. I said, I’ll write a book. You buy the book. I’ve gotta get my sleep! [laughs] I’m proud of the books I’ve written. I’m proud of the students I have taught. I’m proud that people have learned well from my books all throughout the world. We were shipping tens of thousands of books after they came out in 1970, 1971. And I did come back into the studio and do dates with Ray Charles and [Harry] Mancini and Glen Campbell and people that I really liked. 

So at that point, you were really able to pick and choose what sessions you wanted to do more? 
Exactly. I only wanted to play music I really enjoyed. 

And you continue to teach today?
Yes! Literally today I had students. I teach on Skype but I’m only teaching jazz at this point. Anybody can read my books and learn the funk and soul and Motown type lines, but jazz takes a different approach. I’m so happy to show rock players that it’s not hard to transition into jazz. I love to say, You can do it, too! Sometimes people show up and they’re nervous, but we get going with jazz theory and jazz lines and within two or three lessons, they’re really starting to take off. I get such a kick out of it. I love it. It’s a joy to see people learn and create their own lines and go on to play gigs. Most of the people I played jazz with are gone. That feels lonely sometimes. Those were my buddies. I’m so glad to pass along their work. That’s what makes me happy — passing this along. 

Do you feel like you still have room left to learn? I’m curious what learning looks like for someone with your level of mastery. 
Well, old age is just a different phase of life. I’m very grateful for it. I do think I’m learning how to teach more and more. I’m a better teacher now than I was when I was younger and full of energy. As far as creativity goes, I’m not as concerned with certain things. I don’t get that bug to go out and play gigs like I used to, but that’s just fine. I’ve written a lot of books. I’ve been a part of a lot of records. I’ve raised three kids. I’ve been able to help people learn this art in the process and that is more important to me now. I’ve divorced myself from being concerned with what others are doing or feeling a need to keep up. I guess I’m just trying to explain that being an old woman isn’t a bad thing at all.