Battle of the LA Session Musos: the Wrecking Crew vs. the LA Mafia

xxp lol haha, yeah got those mixed up. but yr right, it's crazy to be the actual drummer who played on like a million clssics and still be like: "fuck you, i'm the drummer for the beatles!"

"Ringo doesn't even know what a fucking aeolian cadence even is!"

my eyebrows did go up at the scene w Blaine, Kaye and some of the others where they were talking about how she was just "one of the guys" in the same breath as saying "if there were sexual harrassment suits back then she would be millionaire"

― Οὖτις, Thursday, September 17, 2015 1:11 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Similarly the weird tension btw Plas Johnson and I think Tedesco on getting credit for the work, that was almost a storyline that could have gone somewhere

He has completely slandered me, changing his story why I "don't like his film" with all his showings, and lying about a supposedly funny but demeaning incident in the film about me, which NEVER took place, as well as using US to raise money and saying it takes "millions" to license recordings (not true - where is the money going while he burns it in expensive-taste spendings on limousines, and parties etc.? the non-profit status doesn't mean Denny is not getting the money at all) and soon the other musicians found out like I did, and are angry also - they all know now it's a scam too, that we were ALL USED as a backdrop for Tommy and Hal Blaine....imo, this is a continuation of the lowlife and limited jealousy viewpoints of Tommy Tedesco and also of Hal Blaine who Denny calls his "dad" (he said he never really knew his dad Tommy) -- this is the Hal Blaine-Tommy Tedesco story not about us at all and is totally skewered.

those carol kaye rants are insane! did she watch the same movie i did? she was all over it! and it wasn't slanderous toward her at all. and i didn't notice any leaning toward hal blaine. i guess i only watched about 3/5th of it, maybe the last section was all about blaine or something? wtf

Carol's Amazon review of a Wrecking Crew book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RG9T6V6WQF98O/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1250030463#RG9T6V6WQF98O

summary : avoid the revisionism and just enjoy the grooves.

Yeah, I didn't initially notice that the review resulted in 17 pages of discussion.

a little bit of david lindley and waddy wachtel sprinkled in there.

― tylerw, Thursday, September 17, 2015 12:14 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wish there was a solo album called A Soupçon of Watchell so I could post it in the i got my own album to do thread

lol seems like he should have a solo album just called WAD. think of the cover art potential.

i like carol's solo album fwiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pk2qea3ReY

Waddy Watchell - Shootin' My Wad (cover is him holding a Strat like a rifle)

James Taylor's discography seems really dominated by these guys

Waddy Watchell - Shootin' My Wad (cover is him holding a Strat like a rifle)
it is a crime that this album doesn't exist

I could watch this all day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOWdp1sOxvA

Given his past legal issues, it might be ill-advised.

xp

If we're going by discographies, Wrecking Crew gets the nod easy - a session band is only as good as the music it's given, or the producer/arranger that directs it. Still, I'd certainly choose the mellow mafia's a-team if I were making my own record - the latter actually honed their chops on rock and funk and soul. Most of the Wrecking Crew guys honed their chops on big-band jazz, and the difference in feel is pretty stark - you can hear why so many of them were confined to Carpenters records and TV show themes after James Brown transformed the sound of the rhythm section forever.

Interesting that Glen Campbell is the only hotshot among them that made it out of the studio and as a solo acti.

Nilsson?

dunno if he counts really

leon russelll for sure

yeah that was gonna be my other one but I wasn't sure how huge of a star he really was (not glenn campbell level I would think?)

Dr. John is sometimes mentioned as a member of the Wrecking Crew, too, but I'm not sure what sessions he actually played on. He doesn't play on any Beach Boys stuff that I'm aware of, for instance.

are you thinking of Leon Russell?

i get those two hoodoo voodoo beardo weirdos confused sometimes

Dr. John def did LA session work with the Wrecking Crew

he talks about it in "Under a Hoodoo Moon" although iirc details were scant on particular songs/sessions - primarily R&B stuff I would imagine

feels like i have a better handle on the ~sound~ of the LA Mafia as opposed to the Wrecking Crew. I would guess that the Wrecking Crew were on a greater quantity of classic records though. Or at least had the better good/crap ratio.

Songfacts: I want to ask you about your time as a session musician. You played on some incredible recordings. Are there any that stand out in your mind as favorite experiences?

Dr. John: I remember Aretha [Franklin], some of her sessions. And doing some of Dolly Parton's sessions and doing some different people that was always interesting to do. And some of the sessions with Ray Charles, with different people that I like, anyway. But I always liked doing stuff with Marvin Gaye and Joe Tex, but I didn't do any records with them. I worked on the road with them, and it was a lot of fun.

Songfacts: Were there some sessions where you felt like you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, like, 'What am I doing here?'

Dr. John: That was tons of sessions. That wasn't some. When I got to California, Phil Spector had a real reputation for doing his 'walls with sound.' I just looked at it like, 'Walls with sound?' It's just padding the payroll.

Songfacts: Were you on some of those Phil Spector recordings?

Dr. John: Yeah. Lots of them. I used to be with this band, they call them a name and I didn't even know they did [Mac might be referring to "The Wrecking Crew," which Carol Kaye tells us they were never known as]. I was in another planet then.

dr john is on some sonny & cher records, think that's kinda the backstory to how gris gris got made.
lol at "walls with sound"

feels like i have a better handle on the ~sound~ of the LA Mafia as opposed to the Wrecking Crew. I would guess that the Wrecking Crew were on a greater quantity of classic records though. Or at least had the better good/crap ratio.

― brimstead, Thursday, September 17, 2015 4:10 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, the Wrecking Crew didn't have a particularly distinctive/identifiable sound (though a handful of its musicians did, at times), which was the point.

Interesting very unofficial 4CD Wrecking Crew compilation here.

Recommended. Had it a few months and listening to it right now

think that's kinda the backstory to how gris gris got made.

right - wasn't Gris Gris recorded in LA? I want to say it was done during downtime between those sonny and cher sessions but I don't have his bio to hand

xpost Nothing from Nesmith's "The Wichita Train Whistle Sings"?

xp - yeah, from the liners:
In fact Gris-Gris was recorded surreptitiously, but not in some New Orleans house of sin. It was laid down in the famed Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, where Phil Spector had cut many of his classics. It might have never come to pass at all had Dr. John and his co-conspirators not managed to wrangle some free studio time that had been originally earmarked for Sonny & Cher sessions.

kinda explains the nusto reverb on that record

nutso even

yeah! makes sense, but it's gotta be one of the weirdest records to ever be recorded there.

It's worth noting that, just like Dr. John, the most prominent players on that record were New Orleans natives who'd relocated to L.A. for studio work.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

me in high school / early 20s would have voted Wrecking Crew easy but somewhere in my mid-twenties I really developed a taste for that slick LA sound...something about how these dudes sound like they really wanna showboat but always (usually) rein it in just enough

which crew will win?????

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

xp I think that's the mark of a quality session pro; the ability to find that balance. I said before that the sound of the wrecking crew was hard to identify.. Thinking about it, I don't think I could necessarily distinguish the mafia from their 70s sessioneer peers (although I suspect they wrote the book w/r/t that sound).

I had another totally brilliant thing to say but I lost it

don't think I'd ever seen this before - in-studio footage of Lee Hazlewood recording with the Wrecking Crew including James Burton and Hal Blaine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDW2K4zxkXw

mellow mafia was basically just Danny Kortchmar, Craig Doerge, Leland Sklar, and Russ Kunkel, right? that's what wiki tells me, with a little bit of david lindley and waddy wachtel sprinkled in there.

Not sure about the others, but Russ Kunkel played on “(Listen To The) Flower People” and was the drummer in that scene.

Where do Graydon, hey, and dacosta fit in ?

Not sure about the others, but Russ Kunkel played on “(Listen To The) Flower People” and was the drummer in that scene.

There's a great scene in the Hired Gun doc where Graydon and one of the Toto guys breaks down Graydon's guitar solo for Steely Dan's "Peg". My big takeaway was that one of the guys (the Toto guy, I think) copped to being so anally repressive that they couldn't take a shit without first removing all their clothes.

This interview with Danny Kortchmar I watched earlier this summer I thought was interesting and had alot of background on many classic records. If you have seen that one session musician documentary and the Billy Joel guys barking on getting fired, there is a bit later on in that with on how that gone down from a different angle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ngEhoa9fJU

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=267362992039629

Concerning the mystery of who played drums on “These Boots.”