The Wrecking Crew-is there a definitive list of their sessions

Just wondering if there is a definitive list anywhere on the Internet of all the sessions these great Los Angeles musicians played, from the famous to the obscure.

 

I'm trying to remember, but I'm thinking the documentary on them might've had something in it. Not sure if I'm remembering right or not and if I am I'm not sure it's "definitive".

 

Not definitive
The Wrecking Crew | Music Documentary | About the Film

 

Carol Kaye's official site with links and clips
The Official Carol Kaye Website - Library

 

There is a 'Wrecking Crew' Spotify playlist with hundreds of songs including those in the list above so check that out.

 

Saw it on Netflix, but I believe the DVD has more stuff on it, so who knows????

On this site you can: Contact Us. Perhaps they have the answer?

 

I remember there were efforts to try and compile a definitive list of appearances by "Wrecking Crew" members on just records by The Beach Boys over at the Smiley Smile Message Board a few years back, which quickly descended into chaos when it was suggested that Carol Kaye had wrongfully taken credit for playing on tracks where circulating AFM session paperwork indicates she was not involved. I'd suggest being very careful, as she's active online and has previously been quite outspoken against her critics... Even the makers of that 2008 documentary were advised to keep away from bringing up this subject, instead concentrating on the songs where the involvement of certain musicians can be absolutely verified.

 

Carol Kaye. The tormented genius of the Motown bass.

 

Yeah, I was kinda wondering how much we can trust anything on her site when she's obviously mistaken about a number of those Motown records.

 

A pretty good book on the Wrecking Crew was published in 2013 - "The Wrecking crew - The Inside story of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret", by Kent Hartman. Extensive notes and bibliography.

 

Thanks!

 

There is one, but it's not online:
Billboard Hot 100 Charts - The Sixties: Joel Whitburn: 9780898200744: Amazon.com: Books
That's probably the most accurate...!

 

Got it.

 

The album "Cosmic Sounds" by The Zodiac is an early psychedelic concept album based on the 12 astrological signs for each month of the calendar year. This album had contributions from the Wrecking Crew and is quite amazing if you like these kind of Moog albums with weird instrumentation and narration plus sitar among other odd instruments. The CD originally came out on Water records and then went OOP and fetched high prices for a while on the used market. Then a repress was done and it was available again for a short time at a reasonable price. It's going to be reissued again, this time by Esoteric/Cherry Red records in the near future. I bought this CD for the Mort Garson and Paul Beaver connection but the instrumentation goes beyond just the electronics. If you like mystical hippy dippy type stuff than this is for you:

 

A virtually complete list could be compiled if someone went through and cross referenced the AFM Union report pages. Everyone who officially worked and was paid on each session was noted in Union worksheets that are kept on file by the Union forever.

 

Saw a piece about her on tv (the Dutch Top 2000 A Go Go show) in which she got denied access to the Capitol Records studios, which she helped make big. Stupid, respectless, misinformed nitwits in charge there...

 

Not enough room for her and her ego.

 

First you would need a definitive list of the Wrecking Crew. Really it is just a term applied (mostly in retrospect) to a large and amorphous group of LA session players. Unlike, say, The Section, which came along later and consisted of specific players like Kunkel, Sklar, Kortchmat and Doerge, it isn't even clear who we are talking about when we say the Wrecking Crew. There are like a dozen keyboard players alone.

Hal Blaine seems to have promoted the modern use of the term in his book, but nobody used it until well after he fact. There were great players in LA who played on some great records, but it wasn't like you could say, "get me the Wrecking Crew" in 1968 and have anybody know who was supposed to show up. The drummer could be Blaine, or Jim Gordon or Jim Keltner or Earl Palmer. The keyboardist Don Randi or Leon or Larry Knechtel or 10 other guys.

It is just a list of the the regularly working session guys in LA. It was a (sort of ) small community and Hal Blaine gave them the name in order to tell the story better.

 

EDIT: @Tom Daniels beat the clock before I posted.

I think this is perhaps the closest you could come and even this would be a Herculean task - or Sisyphean, depending on your outlook. In large part, the pushing-a-rock-up-a-hill aspect stems from the fact that the term "Wrecking Crew" encompasses an amorphous number of musicians. For every Hal Blaine - clearly a central pillar of the Crew - there is, e.g., Gerry McGee, one of the guitarists in Boyce & Hart's Monkees session band who also later played in sessions largely composed of Wrecking Crew stalwarts. What determines whether someone is "in" or "out?" What determines the cut-off point? Does it count if, say, two members only were involved in a single session in 1971?

The level of commitment to undertake this effort would be, in Beatles circles, Lewisohnian. Or, in Monkees circles, Sandovalian. I would love for it happen as much as the next self-respecting Sixties pop fan but if ever a matter of rock scholarship was "river deep, mountain high" (if you will), this would be it.

 

Saw this on PBS, dam interesting

 

Why not just look at each member’s credits page on Discogs?

 

Because looking at just Larry Knechtel's entry alone there are, literally, dozens of omissions...

 

I couldn’t post a comment to the larry knechtel thread, but besides his great work with simon and garfunkel, especially bridge over troubled water’s piano and their touring, i really love his work on johnny rivers’ Realization album. His piano on Rivers take on whiter shade of pale rivals bridge over troubled waters.

 

My feeling is that there can never be a definitive list of WC sessions because there is no definitive definition of what a WC session is. Some stuff is obvious, but how many WC members does it take on a session to be considered a WC session? Presumedly more than one, but, two? Three? Everyone in the room? And then there is that sticky question as to who exactly is in the WC. I have been tracking down two guitar players, both of whom claim to be members, but I wonder. Vinnie Bell and Bill Aken. And there is more.

 

Could you take a more subjective approach? Create a list of the known members of the WC. Limit that to perhaps 25. Then list recordings (singles and lp) that include at least three from that list.....even if they don't appear simultaneously. This would be enough to start a playlist. Tweak the numbers as needed. RIP Hal.