YOUVE LOST THAT LOVIN FEELIN. Ray Pohlman was on elec. bass and Earl Palmer was on drums, with the Righteous Bros. singing right there in the main studio room of Gold Star Recording Studio . Tho they did move to the vocal booth for the pretend vocal-takes (see below about tracking fees). Larry Levine engineer at Gold Star. At first Phil Spector used Stan Ross, and then when Stan went on vacation, Phil got used to using Larry, and stuck with him. However, am sure they overdubbed the final vocals later - it was an actual tracking date (but paid as non-tracking, hence the singers were there - sometimes record cos got away with that, not paying us the double-fee required for tracking when it was a tracking date - by having the singers there then it looked like an ordinary record date). I was playing acoustic guitar rhythm on that one, on my Epiphone Emperor guitar. Phil Spector, the producer, put so much echo in our phones it was hard to play in good time together at first because of the huge amount of echo in the headphones - slow tempos are the hardest to groove in but youre supposed to be able to do it no problem if your sense of time is good - but with the addition of the echo in the phones I think it threw the rhythm section a little bit. Knowing Earl, you could always trust his sense of time - he was known for it, and wonderful to work with. So after adjustments in the earphones, we started playing and I dug in and played extra hard rhythm on my jazz box to help the rhy. section gel together and we finally did. Just another day of recording where everyone does their share to make things happen. Phil is the first one to start the use of headphones in the studios but he loved to put a lot of echo in the phones which drove us all nuts sometimes which is why you see pics with us with one headphone on one ear and off the other ear to hear what was going on in the room too for good unison. You hear me doubling on guitar, the bass notes part in the bridge, the slow montuno section (middle part), trying to keep the tempo from sagging down like it wanted to. Phil used the echo to double up my 8th-note rhythms, making them sound like 16ths, which blended well with the drums and encouraged everyone to keep the tempo imo even with the huge echo in the phones. Earl and I lock in well together anyway. I always liked playing with John Guerin and Paul Humphrey too and also recorded a lot with the great Shelly Manne, and other jazz drummers. Irv Cotler, Sinatras drummer was excellent as was Jack Sperling, Sharkey Hall, Jesse Sailes, and Jim Gordon... Earl brought the swamp beat boogaloo beat from New Orleans and started the double-time funky stuff in LA, which was called boogaloo then (now just called funk, the 8/8 stuff). Earl also started the use of the word funk a New Orleans term in the late 1940s -- talking about funky socks...he said thats when it was first used...in New Orleans. Drummers Sharkey Hall and Jesse Sailes had the drum work sewn up before Earl Palmer (and then Hal Blaine) began their run as first-call drummers, and Sharky recognized it for what it was at first when Earl first brought that funky playing to town. Sharky said its samba music, and we all adapted to playing double-time 16th notes as a more rhythmic way of playing rock, pop and funk. It got boring on some dates, so wed double up the time-sense w/Earl on his swamp beat, and yes, it was samba but no-one called it that -- there was so much prejudice against jazz musicians by the younger and up-coming A & R men in rock (now called producers, A & R stood for Artists and Repertoire back then) that we learned to not talk about latin or jazz - theyd think we couldnt record rock then, not knowing that it was mostly jazz studio musicians on the big rock hits anyway. So it was the new funky beat that we all contributed too which Earl started. Hal Blaine started many of the surf-rock commercial beats (Earl did some of that too tho). Earl and I always wound up paradiddling together on fills on the fade, looking at each other and laughing. He loved to play and so did I. When Id play the funky 16ths with him (on bass), it was a lot of fun to groove together, same with Paul Humphrey and others too, but Earl did it first! Anyway, with Youve Lost That Lovin Feelin, there were tons of people in the booth to watch the date at Gold Star Recorders. Also, there were lots of studio musicians recording in the big studio too. We instantly knew it would be a big hit for Phil. The tune was actually very good, the Righteous Bros. were wonderful singers (good guys too), and Phil had the fine studio musicians. (note: Gold Star burned down shortly after it was sold in the early 80s, and is now a mini-mall parking lot, southeast corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Vine St. in Hollywood). We all saw the romance of Sonny & Cher blossom before our eyes there at Gold Star as Sonny worked for Phil as an aide and promo man. Cher used to visit the Spector dates and sometimes sing in the background too....I wound up playing on practically every one of those Sonny & Cher dates. At first with Sonny & Cher, on elec. 12-string fills which was part of their sound, then elec. bass later on. Sonny was good to work for, excellent in his craft as producer, and Cher loved sitting in with the Percussion Section. They really never had fights, but an occasional disagreement, for really it was good between them. They manufactured their TV show personas- they were different, more themselves in the studio. Sonny got to produce some big hits, a sharp guy easy to work for. The Studio Musicians were cutting about 10-14 tunes every day and night back then, there was so much recording going on and it was hard to keep track of everyone who was on every date, but am glad I kept my Log and most of my Appointment Books. Ive recorded around 10,000 sessions, that comes out to about 40,000 songs, so of course you remember bits and pieces of some. This tune was memorable because it was a great song, and you remember some of the details of memorable music like that. Theres a couple of interview films in the can some of our group of studio musicians have cut already which will be shown on TV one of these years. Theyre still in the process of being added to, edited, etc., both very big projects -- No-one, well hardly anyone, gave us credits for our work on the backs of record albums in the 1960s. I feel that the producers and record co.s probably didnt want the buying public, young people, teenagers to know that studio musicians, non-rockers, as old as their parents were recording all the music they were buying, and especially being integrated too back in those early days of riots and assassinations of the 1960s. In 1973, Musicians Union began encouraging that session musicians names be printed on the backs of the record albums, hence, were not credited for the 1,000s of record dates we recorded in the 60s. The credits didnt really matter to us at that time. Just getting the record dates, and getting paid were what mattered for most of us who were family people, working hard for support of our kids. We were glad to get the work, and fame was not a part of our thinking at all. Its always been that way for Studio Musicians since the advent of Studio recordings of the 1920s. Little did we know tho that the public would get a phony view of who really recorded their favorite hits. Groups like the Monkees kept insisting they played on their own records all along and the Beach Boys didnt mind if the public thot they cut their own records, ditto for the rest of the groups who went on the road then and carried the secret along with them - they couldnt reveal that they didnt cut their own hits to their fans who would walk up to pay them compliments on their records. I believe in time, this all caused a phony impression with the public, something being corrected a little at a time right now, but its usually a shock that the publics favorite group never cut their own recordings. With a few of the surf-rock groups, wed cut the tracks and if they hit, then the record company would put a nice-looking bunch of young musicians together to be that group. Youth sold and of course the record companies didnt want the public to know that a group of coffee-guzzling straight-looking people as old as the baby-boomers parents who were very square and looking very intently (no Hollywood smiles, mostly jazz musicians), totally focused on work-at-hand were recording their favorite hit records, doing the music for their idolized young groups going out on tour. There were groups like the Marketts & T-Bones which were totally formed from our crew of studio musicians - the music came first and then they formed the group from the hit music. Im the bassist on Batman theme hit of the Marketts which they got us out of bed at 4AM in the morning to cut that hit-making copy of the TV theme. Such was the nature of our business. And the record cos seemed to list the vocal overdub dates as the recording times, never the track dates so you wont find hardly any accurate dates online for any of your fav hits either. We, the 50-60-70 of the busiest of the 350-400 studio musicians, were called the clique. We were all independent studio musicians, everyone worked with everyone else. There never was a set rhythm section at all as implied by some people. And not known by any name - except maybe the clique. Sometimes the record companies ran late in paying us (the check went to our Union where we paid work-dues first and then picked them up) so....to avoid the late-fee penalty, the record companies would simply change the record date date on the contracts, etc. Sometimes theyd forget a musicians name on a contract and put it on another contract they never played on just to pay him....but these glaring errors were few, the bulk of it all was correct on the Musicians Contracts which were never called Music Sheets or Studio Sheets btw, thats something else, just notes that dont mean anything and usually WRONG. If anyone says that, theyve never seen our Musicians Contracts which are kept locked up in a vault in Local 47. Except for the Motown scam, about 35-40% of 60s Motown hits were cut in LA (9 bass players being used from 1962 on throughout the 1960s when Motown had offices here in Hollywood during those years). Thats such a sham and we quietly did cash demo dates for them for far too long, and we knew it was a con when theyd play good-sounding demos cut in Detroit for us to cut more demos for in that style...you only cut hit recordings from demos, never more demos. Motown has been out here, had offices out here since 1962, 63 There were never any Motown Union contracts either for our work here nor for the Detroit crew either, until a few phony later-written contracts showed up later on. Phil always used Howard Roberts, Glen Campbell, Barney Kessel, and others like David Cohen, Bill Pitman, Bud Coleman, Billy Strange, Al Casey, Don Peake, Lou Morell, Tommy Tedesco, and some others occasionally like James Burton, who really didnt do a lot of studio work except for a short brief hot time before he went on the road w/Elvis. On that Lovin Feelin date, it had to be Don Randi, and probably another 2 keyboardists. Phil always liked to use Larry Knechtel, Mike Rubini, Mac Rebennac (usually on organ, now is Dr. John), Leon Russell, Al DeLory (altho Al left pretty early to go produce, he never liked session work on piano, but is a fine pianist), Gene Page pianist, did the arrangement, Larry Muhoberac (who now lives in Australia, another fine pianist), and sometimes Pete Jolly,thats about it. There were usually 2-3 pianists at the same time, one would be on organ, or some other keyboard. Phil always used 2 or 3 pianos at the same time. Percussion usually included: Julius Wechter (his band was the Baja Marimba band), Gene Estes, Alan Estes, Emil Richards, Gary Coleman, Frankie Capp (who is the drummer on The Beat Goes On), Victor Feldman, Curry Cjader (Cals brother). About 3-4 percussionist usually. And the horn men included on Phils dates were: Lew McCreary, Dave Wells trombone, Gail Martin bass trombone (maybe), Lou Blackburn trombone, Ollie Mitchell lead trumpet (he did a lot of Herb Alperts 2nd trpt overdubs), Ray Caton trumpet, even our Union pres. did some of Phils dates - Bill Peterson trumpet, Freddy Hill trumpet (now lives in Africa), Tony Terran did some on trumpet, and the fellow in the back of the band on SNL in NY, Billy something (I forget his last name, sorry) did some too as well as some done by Blue Mitchell or Ray Bryant (who had a great jazz band in South LA, was sure fun to play his Rays band...Ray was married to a singer back then.) Steve Douglas was the #1 rock sax soloist in LA (and probably the bulk of the rock type hits period) was always the sax player, nice guy, also gone now - Ray Pohlman is gone too, both wonderful people, Tommy Tedesco, Gene Estes, Al Casey, and Bud Coleman gone). Plas Johnson and Jay Migliori (Jay also is deceased now sadly), both very fine jazz men played sax on Phils dates too. Plas is still playing sometimes live jazz here also and did the Pink Panther theme and is by now the most-recorded sax-soloist. There was quite a group of people that Phil liked to use (never a band at all...all Studio Musicians were free-lance, totally independent of each other, producers used ones they wanted out of the pool of 350-400 Studio Musicians recording day/night back then), drummers were either Hal Blaine or Earl Palmer. He used Gayle Levant on harp. But thats about all I remember about the Lovin Feelin date. We didnt have to do much creatively with that one. The tune was so good and strong, and the initial arrangement by Gene Page very good and Righteous Brothers there singing live (tho Im sure they over-dubbed vocals later) it was easy to get the right feeling on the date. I personally loved the Righteous Bros....esp. Bill Medley, whose daughter is a bass player btw. With most recordings of the early 60s, we had to come up with head arrangements even on top of the arranged music -- that is, improvised arrangements, our own licks on skeleton arrangements or bare chord charts. This one was very good the way it was written and with our playing and the Righteous Brothers singing, its no wonder it was a huge hit that means so much to everyone, were all proud of that. Carol Kaye
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 07:27:35 +0000
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