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

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.

That was Graydon, iirc, with Lukather. And I think the story was about them whipping up a hit for ... George Benson? Which is super funny, having Lukather, one of the most talented guitarists, playing piano for Graydon, one of the most talented guitarists, writing a song for Benson, one of the most talented guitarists.

Kortchmar & Co. AKA The Section:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-section-knights-of-soft-rock-233728/
Fave thing I remember from this: Carole King's junkie caveman hubbie (def post-Goffin) punching out DK,
who had just come off stage and gotten too much applause or sump'n.

Also-- much more recently, they had their own record & tour:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/immediate-family-session-veterans-cruel-twist-1012555/

Oh yeah, and they got back with Carole and James---I wrote this preview when they played Columbus OH, in 2010:
Carole King & James Taylor
Carole King & James Taylor performed at L.A.'s formidably hip
Troubadour club in 1969, when veteran songwriter King as was new to
the spotlight as Taylor. They returned in 2007 with the Section, the
backing band that helped define 70s soft rock. This warmly adept
concert, documented on Live At The Troubadour, inspired Tayor & King's
current tour with the Section and Cleveland's Arnold McCuller, whose
voice has accompanied Taylor's for thirty years.
05/30 @ The Schottenstein Center, 555 Arena Dr.
7:30 p.m.

Trying to remember the name of the unreleased project some of these guys did with Billy Cowsill.

Bridey Murphy. All the performing Cowsill brothers were involved, apparently, but only Billy ate the tape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh2KTuHuAxo

walls with sound

looololol

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