The Wrecking Crew! Page #5

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the first time you heard it?

Oh, I pulled my car

over to the side of the road,

said, "What am I

listening to here," you know?

I couldn't believe it.

I instantly wrote

Don't Worry Baby

after I heard that. Yeah.

I was so inspired.

I couldn't believe it.

By the time we got

to River deep - Mountain High,

we all thought that was gonna be

a giant of a hit.

It was another

wall of sound hit,

but it flopped.

It was a big hit in the U.K.,

but in the USA,

it was his first downer.

And it was like, "Okay,

that style is going then.

The wall of sound

was over then."

One of the boys.

One of the boys.

One of the guys, yeah.

If sexual harassment suits

were in there, she'd be

seven millionaires right now,

...after what we put

her through.

She'd have all the lawyers

working for... Against us.

I don't think anyone

ever really felt

that she was a woman-woman, and

I don't mean that detrimentally.

- No, we were musicians.

- Yeah.

Everything was music...

music, really.

- Yeah.

- Worse than that

would have been...

shutting her out

and not sharing the camaraderie.

And this is the only one

I had to really palm mute

to get the treble out.

So you can hear that.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's what I did, yeah.

And it's Earl Palmer

on drums on that one.

I heard music as a kid

because my mother was

a professional piano player.

She'd play in the back

of the silent movie houses.

And my dad was

a trombone player.

He played Dixieland bands,

things like that.

So I heard music all the time.

If they didn't fight,

they played music,

so you know... you knew

where it was coming from.

My mom and I were living

in this housing project.

But my mom saved up her pennies

and there was a steel guitar

salesman that came around.

And about three or four lessons

for ten bucks,

so she opted for that.

And I was about 13 then.

About that time, I started

playing gigs on guitar.

And little Latin things.

So it was a lot

of great experience, you know...

...that kind of stuff,

heavy-duty jazz.

And it was fun,

and I was playing

a lot in the black clubs.

And very accepted too,

by the way.

I had made a name for myself.

There were a lot of women around

that played jazz

and were in pop bands

of their own,

so it wasn't that unusual.

But most women

back in those days, in the '50s,

would play

until they got married.

it was more important to have

a "Mrs." in front of your name

than it was to have a career.

Then the chance came

to do studio work

in late 1957 for Sam Cooke.

And I'd never heard

of Sam Cooke,

but they were short

a guitar player.

As soon as I did

my first date with Sam Cooke,

I got more money

in three hours' work than I did

in a whole week's work

of my day job.

Except they've got

more than two dates a week.

They wanted

our particular group of people

to cut the hit records,

because we got good at it.

Ray Pohlman had a great sound.

He was the very first

electric bass player

playing hits from about '57 on.

I'd say that he did maybe

85% of the hit records.

But Ray Pohlman got to be

the musical conductor

for the Shindig show

about the same time

I accidentally got on bass,

so there was a big hole there.

People ask me all the time

about being a woman

in a man's world.

I felt equal

with the rest of the guys,

and they felt it too.

Sometimes they got

a little testy.

They'd say, "Oh, you play good

for a girl, Carol."

"Yeah, you play good

for a guy too."

I love musicians and the humor

and the way that they play.

And they all knew that.

And I think

it was like a sister...

having a sister there.

I had my two kids and my mom

to support by that time.

We would do

three, four dates a day,

and I'd manage to get home

to have dinner with the kids.

That's the only thing I regret,

is that I didn't

spend more time with the kids.

But they were

very well taken care of,

and they had good lives,

you know.

Most of... most of the time,

they were fine.

You know, after looking

at my father's work logs,

I came to realize

he wasn't around

as much as I thought he was.

But when he was home,

his focus was on his family.

He was one of the few

studio guys

who found a balance

between working crazy hours

and maintaining

a pretty decent home life.

The truth is,

I don't know how he did it.

Time was money,

and you wouldn't last long

in any studio

if you couldn't keep up.

The studio musicians

in this town

were really looked up to

and respected.

We were treated like...

"Our life depends on you guys."

Well, they were

real session players.

They were guys that were going

from gig to gig,

you know, playing

on all the good music.

Gosh, there were

so many things went on

and we were so busy.

I mean, we would go from one

to the other to the other.

We used to call

going from session to session

"dovetailing."

Jesus, when you leave the house

at 7:
00 in the morning,

and you're at Universal

at 9:
00 till noon.

Now you're at Capitol Records

at 1:
00,

you just got time to get there,

and then you got a jingle

at 4:
00,

and then we were on a date

with somebody at 8:00,

and then The Beach Boys

at midnight,

and you do that

five days a week...

Jeez, man, you get burned out.

At one time, we did an album

in a day, for Liberty Records.

Five, six weeks in a row,

we'd do an album a day...

six tunes in the morning

and six tunes in the evening.

When all the guys realized

that we were doing

most of the dates, said,

"We'll get scale,

or you'll get somebody else."

And, course, they didn't,

'cause that was

the tightest rhythm section

I believe I've ever played with.

I would not go in a studio

if I didn't have Tommy Tedesco,

Hal Blaine,

people of that nature.

I just wouldn't go into a studio

until they weren't busy.

But they were busy all the time.

No matter which producer

I worked with,

whether it was Lee Hazlewood

or Snuff Garrett,

they all used

the same musicians.

They were all just the best.

If they couldn't get the guys,

they didn't book the date.

They'd wait

until the guys were available.

Which was wonderful.

Of course, their wives

never saw them.

I don't know how those guys

could've worked any more,

unless they didn't sleep at all.

If you want to be successful

in this business,

you never say no until

you're too busy to say yes.

And I learned that

by watching guys

who talked themselves

out of careers

by saying,

"No, it's not good enough.

I'm gonna wait till

such-and-such and so-and-so."

Because if you wait at home

for the phone to ring, it won't.

If you're a freelance musician,

you can't turn nothing down,

because there's somebody

standing right behind you

who is salivating

to do this work.

One day, I get a call

from Ernie Freeman.

It was, like,

8:
00 in the morning.

"Hi, Tom, I need

a guitar player here at United.

How long will it take you

to get there?"

I said, "20 minutes,"

which, you know,

is a lie.

It's gonna take an hour.

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