The Wrecking Crew - Wichita Lineman - Glen Campbell

Released in October of 1968, this was a hit written by Jimmy Webb for a former member of the Wrecking Crew, Glen Campbell.

Players on this track include Glen Campbell, James Burton and Al Casey on guitar, Carol Kaye on bass and Jim Gordon on drums.

The Wrecking Crew Movie site

The Wrecking Crew Wikipedia page

Taking That First Step

The first step in making your dream a reality is to take that "first step."

It sounds obvious and it is.  The saying "once begun, half done" applies to some degree.  But for the sake of this post I'm going to define the "First Step" as the first BIG step.  That step that if not taken your dream would only remain a dream.

In my case it was moving from Indianapolis to Los Angeles to become a session musician.  I would be moving away from the safety of the home I grew up in and the security of the abundant work I had as a musician already.

At the time I left Indy, I had about 40 students (20 hours a week) and gig playing in a top-40 band on the weekends.  Not to mention I was beginning to get a lot of calls to play with other groups in the area.  I should have been satisfied but I wasn't.  There was this dream.  The dream to rub elbows with Tommy Tedesco, Steve Lukather, Lee Ritenour, Jeff Porcaro and all the other LA musicians that populated the credits of all the albums I bought.  I bought some pretty awful records just because one of my favorite SoCal guitarists were listed in the linear notes.  Many of these players also played in movies and on TV shows.

I was 15 when I decided that I wanted to be a Los Angeles session musician.  A quite random and yet specific desire.  Much of my daily rituals were focused on these goal.  I developed a varied and rigorous practice regimen of up to 8 hours a day. This was a step, but not the First Step.  Predictably my grades suffered.  Except in the music classes that my very arts progressive high school offered.

I graduated high school early, missing out on a lot of the senior year fun, so that I could concentrate on my goal.  Thinking I was done with school I set out to become somewhat self sufficient.  This wasn't happening at this point so I enrolled last minute at Butler University.  I majored in…. yes, music.  This was same year that I started teaching at Phelan's Music in Carmel and started playing with Malachi, that top-40 band.  Both of those jobs grew me as a musician (part of the plan) but made it difficult to continue my college education.  So in order to save my mom some money and spend more time practicing I quit Butler after the first year and concentrated on moving to California.

That step was harder than I thought.  It was becoming clear that this would be the First Step.  It was quite daunting.  I didn't have the courage.  I kept delaying it 6 months.  "I'll go after my birthday in July."  "I'll go after Christmas in December."  Hmmm, I guess I was expecting some cool gifts.  I turned 19.  I turned 20.  21 was fast approaching.  Would I ever leave?  I'd never been West of Illinois, let alone all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  No doubt my friends and family doubted I would ever summon the courage to leave the Mid West.  I was wondering this myself.

Then I had an epiphany.  As my 21st birthday approached I thought I'd take a smaller step first.  After turning 21 I would fly to LA and check it out for a week.  If I didn't like it I would stay put.  It was kind of an out.  An excuse.  The month after turning 21 I flew to Vegas (it was cheaper), rented a car and drove to Riverside to stay with friends of friends.  Every day for a week I drove to LA.  To the guitar stores on Hollywood Blvd., and to clubs to hopefully see musicians I "idolized" from afar, and generally just drive around and soak up all things "LA".

I went to the famous Baked Potato.  I went to a place called Dantes to see Russell Ferrante, who's group The Yellowjackets I loved.  Russell spoke with me for an hour afterwards.  He encouraged me to  pursue my dreams.  I went a club called At My Place in Santa Monica and saw saxophonist Richard Elliot.  His guitarist, Carl Verheyen, blew me away.  I met him afterwards and set up a lesson while I was in town.  He gave me some great tips.  I saw Koinonia at The Flying Jib.  Saw some inspiring music the whole week I was in Los Angeles.  It was an exhausting and humbling week.  I flew home.

I did it.  I went to LA.  I could say "it wasn't for me."  I could stay put and continue my career path in the Hoosier state.

But I couldn't.  I loved LA.  I couldn't see myself anywhere else.  That "little" first step gave me the courage to take that big First Step.  It was now a forgone conclusion.  Less than six months later I was living in Pasadena, where I still live.  Yes it was difficult to pack all my earthly possessions in my Gran Prix and drive 2000 miles to a place where I knew not one soul. But I no longer had a choice.  It was destiny.

That was my First Step.  I've never had to make another so difficult since.  A career is generally a series of small decisions, some with little consequence and some with great consequence.  But none of it starts without that first step.  Looking back I see lots of first steps.  From moving to LA, to visiting LA, even something as simple as getting up everyday and putting in the work to grow as a musician.

What was or will be that step for you?

Practically Toto - "Breakdown Dead Ahead" - Boz Scaggs

I've been posting YouTube videos of pop songs that were recorded by members of the Wrecking Crew.  The "Wrecking Crew" was a group of studio musicians in Los Angeles who played on many of the hits in the 60's and 70's.  Musicians like Tommy Tedesco, Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye and dozens of others laid the foundation tracks for a diverse group of artists like The Beach Boys, The Mamas and Papas, Sonny and Cher, John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel, The Monkees, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, The Carpenters, Nancy Sinatra and many others.  Hal Blaine (who coined the group's name) alone played on six consecutive Grammy Records of the Year.  That's a record that will never be broken.

Towards the end of the 70's a new group of musicians started getting the top calls for major label record dates. A few of them, Steve Lukather, David Paich, Jeff Porcaro, Steve Porcaro and David Hungate went on to form the band Toto. They had several hits in the late 70's and throughout the 80's.  As many hits as they had they went on to play on even more hits for other artists.

This "Practically Toto" series will concentrate on songs that had two or more Toto band members on the recording.

Lukather, Jeff Porcaro and Hungate contributed to almost every track on Boz Scaggs "Middle Man" album. This song, "Breakdown Dead Ahead" features Luke and Hungate.

Neither Hungate nor Luke are in this video.

The Wrecking Crew - Twistin' the Night Away - Sam Cooke

This Sam Cooke classic was recorded 52 years ago on December 18th, 1961. Some of the musician's include Tommy Tedesco and Earl Palmer.

The Wrecking Crew Movie site

The Wrecking Crew Wikipedia page

The Wrecking Crew - MacArthur Park - Richard Harris

Released May 11th 1968, 45 years ago today.

The epic seven plus minute song features the best musicians in LA at the time, including but not limited to Tommy Tedesco, Hal Blaine, Al Casey, Larry Knechtel and the young writer Jimmy Webb.

The Wrecking Crew Movie site

The Wrecking Crew Wikipedia page

The Wrecking Crew - Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys

The Wrecking Crew played all the instruments on the Pet Sounds record by the Beach Boys. The most well known track is "Good Vibrations"recorded on this date 45 years ago...

Check out the Wrecking Crew.

The AFM contract here.

Rare footage here...

The Wrecking Crew - California Dreamin' - The Mamas & The Papas

Another song from the Golden Era of the LA session scene.

Featuring Wrecking Crew mates Hal Blaine on drums, Joe Osborn on bass, pianist Larry Knechtal and acoustic guitars by P. F. Sloan who came up the picked intro. An important skill to have as a session musician is creativity. The ability to create a great part will make you very valuable.

See the union contract here.

The Wrecking Crew - The Lonely Bull - Herb Alpert

This was a track recorded by the Wrecking Crew by Herb Alpert. When he did the session at Conway Recorders in Hollywood (where I record "Turn To You" with Justin Bieber) 50 years ago on this date, he didn't have a lot of money he paid the sessions musicians $15 each. A few months later when the song had become a big hit, Herb went to the union and paid the fines and paid the musicians full union wages.

Check out The Wrecking Crew.

Greats of the Studio - Tommy Tedesco

Gibson presents Tommy Tedesco

Reading in the Studio

By themselves some charts can look very simple. Until one gets to the job of making it music.

The chart below was for a cartoon, a genre whose cues sometimes make no sense until you see it with picture. Within this cue we "quote" the Beach Boys, Shaft, Eddie Cochran, Motown, Let's Go To The Hop and then into a cool beatnik jazz thing. Easy right? Pulling off a "simple" 45 second overview of the music of the fifties and sixties isn't so elementary.

Sonically the individual sections are quite simple - first, pull out the strat, clean bright electric tone for the first three (not four) bars, kick on the wah for two and a half bars of late 60's funk, back to a clean sound for two and a half bars of syncopated bar chords, to the neck pickup for "Stop in the Name of Love", then back to the bridge pickup for a pick up into the fifties "Hop" classic and lastly change to the neck again and roll off a little tone for some cool coffee shop jazz.

All this to click and with feeling.

Note the key and tempo change at bar 16. As well as the clef change in the middle of bar 11.

The other musicians on the session were more than qualified and the drummer in particular was the one who really made the transitions work.

I think I would've made Tommy Tedesco proud on this one.

Tommy Tedesco - Confessions of a Guitar Player

Tommy Tedesco - For Guitar Players Only

Books to Help Sight Reading

Here are some books that can help you work on your sight-reading chops...


A Modern Method for Guitar - Volumes 1, 2, 3 Complete - This is good one for beginners at reading.  But it progresses pretty quick - stacked triads on page five!


Advanced Reading Studies for Guitar: Guitar Technique (Advanced Reading: Guitar) - more of the same


Melodic Rhythms for Guitar - This is a great book as it teaches you new rhythmic figures on one pitch and then uses them in realistic melodies.


Contemporary Jazz/Rock Rhythms for Treble Clef Instruments - Heres another good one.


For Guitar Players Only - By Tommy Tedesco the most recorded guitarist in history.  I had this book.  The exercises are a little random, which can make for good sight reading in it's unpredictability.  Worth it for the stories.  All true.  And for the real session charts from the 70's and 80's in the back.


Also check out trumpet and clarinet study books.  Flute is good for reading ledger lines. You might be able to find them at used book stores or thrift stores. I've never payed more than a dollar for one.


Practice your reading with another guitarist.  Maybe someone better than you. Like playing tennis with a better player it forces you to rise to the occasion.


Here's the thing, if you are not likely to use it you are not likely to retain it. See if you can fine some reading bands, often swing bands or big bands that don't perform so much as practice. The Wire Choir here in LA is an example of one such opportunity. Also start writing music out. Write practice pieces for yourself that emphasize your weaknesses.

I worked it when I was in HS and college because I wanted to move to LA to be a session guitarist. Which I now am. Still surprised how rarely I need it. Read more cocktail napkins than bona-fide charts.

Guitar or Sword?

Don't sweat those dings on your axes.  In fact embrace the ones with stories behind them.

"It's not like it use to be"

There is one thing that is constant in the entertainment business and that is change.

Take movies - Silent films, then talkies, then color, 3D, then video, then DVD, then digital distribution.  All within a hundred years. Less.

Television - B & W, Color, VHS/Beta, cable, satellite.  All in less than 60 years.

Music - 78's, 33's, 45's, 8-track, cassette, CD, digital.

Every time a major change happens we are told this is the end of the business as we know it.  Of course it is.  And this is a good thing.  That is if you are adaptable.  In fact change provides great opportunities for those have the foresight to get ahead of the curve and take a chance.  Change gives you a chance. If you were the first in town to buy a 24-track tape machine in the 70's or the first digital editing bay in the 80's, or the first ProTools rig in the 90's you probably still have a career today, if you kept being first.  No one is going to intentionally surrender their business to you.  You have to find that gap.  That entrance.  That service that no one is providing.  Not just once, but the smart ones do it throughout their careers.  Adapt or die.  It's very Darwinian.  I believe it as applied here.

When cassettes came about the record companies worried that people would stop buying records.  That kind of happened.  But then digital CD's came out, and everybody, including myself, bought replacement copies of many of their albums.  You can't hardly find cassettes any more.  The giants in the industry, ie. the labels, could control the medium and create the next "need".  But now that digital exists, it's gotten much more difficult for the majors to affect technological sea changes.  We still don't know the  ultimate result of that yet.  Won't for a while.  But it's opened many opportunities for even hobbyists to get their music made and out there.  I, as a session player, work for a lot of hobbyists.  Truth be told, they sometimes have more money.

I've been told for almost thirty years, regarding session work in LA, "it's not like it use to be". I understand that there are some guys hurting because they were making a lot more in the seventies and eighties then today.  Though to some degree I say, "thank God it's not the same!"

In the sixties there were basically three networks.  Today there are over 500 cable channels. Smart players built a studio and started writing.  More back end income in writing too.

In the sixties the "Wrecking Crew" did a majority of the good work.  Who's the Wrecking Crew?  They were a group of about 30 musicians, Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, Carol Kaye, among many others who played on a majority of the major records produced in LA.  Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas, The Monkees, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, The Partridge Family, Phil Spector records, and many others.  I heard Hal Blaine say in an interview that at one point he was doing six "three hour" sessions a day!  They had cots in the studios for the "crew" members to sleep on between gigs.  Aside from being unhealthy, it's just not fair.

There is an excellent documentary about the Wrecking Crew.  If you can get a chance to see it I highly recommend it.  It's interesting, when I saw it, my wife and I had two very different emotional reactions afterwards.  I opined for such days filled with cool work with great players... the "old" days.  She was just proud of me that I made a living doing what I do.

A large part of why I moved to LA was because of Wrecking Crew member Tommy Tedesco's monthly column in Guitar Player magazine in the 70's call "Studio Log".  He would humorously talk about a film, TV or record date he had recently done, include a bit of a chart and tick off the instruments played, the leader, the time and most importantly the pay.

My career has morphed from a fledgling one into an embryonic one, mainly out of necessity, sometimes by choice and occasionally by force.  But I keep my musical and creative tendons limber enough to change directions when the seas "suggest" it.  My career has been on a slow arc.

Some resources...
Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew: The Story of the World's Most Recorded Musician (Book)
Backbeat: Earl Palmer's Story
Tommy Tedesco - Confessions of a Guitar Player
For Guitar Players Only
Tommy Tedesco: Anatomy of a Guitar Player
Carol Kaye Bass DVD Course

Cool Tools - Mandolin and Dulcimer

A couple of links to check out...

Applecreek PKACD150K Hourglass Shaped Dulcimer with Case

Fender FM-53S Mandolin, Sunburst

Introduction

D35 Acoustic Guitar