The Wrecking Crew (6 page)

Billy Strange sat back in his chair, stupefied.

Figuring there obviously had been some kind of accounting mistake or mailing error, Strange allowed himself the luxury of enjoying the check for a few minutes, dreaming of what all it could buy. Then, with reality setting in, he decided he had better put in a call to BMI. No use keeping what isn't yours.

“Hey there, this is Billy Strange. I'm a songwriter registered with your company and I've got a check here from you guys for sixty-three thousand dollars that I'm sure isn't really mine. Can you look into it for me?”

After Strange held the line for a couple of minutes, the BMI rep came back with just one question.

“Are you the same Billy Strange that wrote a song called ‘Monotonous Melody'?”

“That would be me.”

“Well, your song was recorded under the name ‘Limbo Rock' by the Champs, and then again by Chubby Checker. Both versions were hits, especially the one by Checker. The money is all yours.”

Billy Strange simply could not believe his sheer dumb luck. Here he was gratefully playing his guitar for practically anyone who would pay, and suddenly a huge sum of money appears from nowhere—all because of some silly-assed throwaway song he wrote one night when he was drunk.

But the success of “Limbo Rock,” as big as it was, would soon pale in comparison to another piece of good fortune that was about to befall him. For Strange, along with Glen Campbell, Carol Smith, Hal Belsky—now going by the professional name of Hal Blaine—and several other top session players, were all unwittingly just one pint-sized, oddly talented, egomaniacal Svengali away from a coalescence that would put them in position as
the
must-hire musicians in rock and roll.

3

He's a Rebel

Do you think I have a future as a jazz guitarist?

—P
HIL
S
PECTOR

As thirty-seven-year-old professional studio guitarist Bill Pitman peered warily through the venetian blinds on his small San Fernando Valley home's living room window, he noticed a short, slightly built, dark-haired high school boy slowly making his way up the front walk.

In one hand the kid carried a large black guitar case almost as big as he was. In the other hand he held an expensive-looking leather attaché case. Dressed to the nines, the teenager had on a sport coat, a necktie, and neatly pressed slacks, topped off by a pair of wraparound sunglasses. Looking like some kind of unusually tiny junior executive on the make who had probably read Sloan Wilson's novel
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
one too many times, the strange and incongruent sight gave Pitman pause. What in the world had he gotten himself into?

Several days earlier, Pitman's wife, Mildred, had received a phone call out of the blue from some woman by the name of Bertha, practically begging for her son to be allowed to take jazz guitar lessons from “the great Bill Pitman.” All of which sounded quite flattering and reasonable on its face, except for one thing: Bill Pitman didn't give guitar lessons. To anyone.

After spending the better part of two decades honing his talents in more touring Big Bands and combos than he could count, Pitman had finally become, by the mid-Fifties, a first-call guitarist in Los Angeles. In a profession where strong skills and showing up on time were paramount, producers and arrangers loved Pitman's exceptional versatility and rock-solid dependability. He played on radio and TV shows (
The Rusty Draper Show, I Love Lucy
). He played major jazz dates (Tony Bennett, Mel Tormé). And Pitman became, for over three years, the singer Peggy Lee's principal road and studio guitarist, a plum gig with a world-class artist. Sometimes he even sat in on bass or banjo during recording dates, whatever those in charge needed him to do. Pitman wore many hats in the music business and wore them all well. But teaching was decidedly not one of them.

Despite some gentle hinting from Pitman's wife, however, the determined woman with the Bronx accent on the other end of the telephone line had simply refused to take no for an answer.

“Please, just a few lessons, then?”

Whether out of pity or perhaps out of just plain exhaustion, Mildred Pitman—herself a mother of three—felt her resolve begin to crumble. When a child is in need, the shared bond between two mothers can quickly become a force majeure. The next thing she knew she heard herself agreeing to the request, as did her incredulous husband, sitting nearby.

“Mim, you know I don't want to teach,” he said as she hung up the phone. “I work all week long in the studios. On weekends, I just want to cool it.”

“But she seemed so desperate, Bill.”

Pitman thought for a moment. If he had learned anything as a married man it was when to pick his battles. And this was definitely not one of those times. The look on his wife's face said as much. That was a domestic lesson
he
had learned.

“Okay, I'll do it,” Pitman replied, sighing. “What's this kid's name anyway?”

“His mother said it was Phillip something.” She paused. “Phillip Spector, I think.”

*   *   *

By the time the early Fifties rolled around, Carol Smith knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted to keep playing guitar.

Her mentor and teacher, Horace Hatchett, had helped her pick up some local work around the Long Beach area, and she had flourished. His connections made the difference in getting her in with a number of local musicians who needed a solid guitarist to play in all sorts of configurations, from trios to combos to Big Bands. Though her knees were shaking during her first gig (as part of a small jazz outfit at a private party), she fortunately knew most of the tunes of the day—standards like “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Flying Home,” and “Tea for Two”—and managed to play just fine.

Starting with an average of about one booking a week at the almost unprecedented age of only fourteen, Smith rapidly gained acceptance during her high school years among the area's veteran players. She soon found herself in regular demand for live work at a variety of dances, parties, and nightclubs in the South Bay region. Still lacking proper equipment, Carol also had to routinely borrow one of Hatchett's guitars for two full years in order to save enough money to buy her own, top-of-the-line Gibson Super 400. Always versatile, she even found work as a part-time teacher at places like Morey's Music Store in nearby Lakewood.

As the money started to come in, Smith also began to feel a sense of empowerment. She found the ability to finally buy a few things for herself, help her mother with the bills, and enjoy her work, all at the same time. A heady trifecta for the ambitious teenager. And in doing so, she sat side by side on any given night of the week with a bunch of grown men in an era when women in the American workplace commonly limited their employment pursuits to nonthreatening “female” jobs such as nursing, teaching, and secretarial services.

Never satisfied with the status quo, the independent Smith took additional steps on her own to further her musical education by frequently taking the short train ride up to Los Angeles to see acts like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and many of the popular Big Bands of the era. It was in watching these kinds of top-flight pros that Smith began to imagine herself being a part of their world. The sort of world where only the best of the best were able to dwell. Where jazz wasn't just a style of music but a supremely expressive and nuanced art form all its own. A virtual way of life among its most dedicated practitioners. And she felt particularly drawn to the faster tempo of bebop, where improvisational chops mattered and the ability to really
swing it
mattered even more.

Just after high school, Carol caught on for a couple of years with the popular Henry Busse Orchestra, with whom she traveled the country playing dances and other events. She also ended up marrying Al Kaye, the band's string bass player, permanently taking his last name. Soon thereafter came a son and a daughter.

However, by 1957, with the Big Band gig having come to a close sometime earlier (Busse had fallen over dead from a massive heart attack during, of all things, an undertakers' convention), Carol Kaye found herself at a crossroads. Despite her best efforts, her short marriage had not worked out, due in large part to a considerable age difference and her husband's penchant for drinking a little too much wine. Kaye was also no longer on the road making regular money, either. And she now had two kids
and
a mother to support, all on a single income.

Deciding she needed to be practical, Kaye found a day job as a high-speed technical typist within the avionics division of the giant Bendix Corporation. Though the pay was good, she simultaneously moonlighted on guitar sometimes five or six nights a week in the local jazz clubs around Los Angeles. An exhausting schedule for anyone, let alone a working mother of two. But laying down some bebop fed Carol Kaye's musical soul; there was no way to shake that. And the more she played, the more her reputation grew within the higher echelons of the West Coast jazz world.

Unfortunately for Kaye, however, with rock and roll's popularity on the rise in the late Fifties, the number of Southern California clubs catering solely to jazz patrons began to dwindle in direct proportion. It made it almost impossible for an up-and-comer like Kaye to earn a living playing full-time, which had always been her dream. But she persevered, creating the music she loved by night, hoping for the best by day.

One evening, while Kaye took a short break from laying down her inventive lead guitar fills (now on an Epiphone Emperor) as part of the saxophonist Teddy Edwards's combo at the Beverly Caverns nightclub, a man she had never seen before approached her with a very unexpected question.

“Carol, my name is Bumps Blackwell,” he said, extending his hand. “I'm a producer here in LA. I've been watching you play tonight and I like your style. I could use you on some record dates. Interested?”

A more-than-surprised Kaye looked at Blackwell and then at her bandmates, not sure what to think, say, or do. She had certainly heard all the rumors that taking on nonjazz recording studio work would be the kiss of death for someone trying to make a career out of playing live bebop. Once someone left, they tended to never come back. And true jazzers tended to look down on those who played what they sometimes referred to as “people's music.” It took time to build a name in the clubs, too. But Kaye also knew she needed to get away from her job at Bendix as soon as possible. She had grown to dislike it. Maybe going into studio work would be a chance to finally establish a solid, well-paying career playing music full-time.

With a deep breath, a hesitant Kaye agreed to take the plunge.

“He's a new singer out of Mississippi that I just started producing,” Blackwell continued, delighted that she was interested in coming aboard.

“His name is Sam Cooke.”

*   *   *

After her serendipitous encounter with the ambitious Bumps Blackwell, Carol Kaye did indeed start working studio dates for his protégé Sam Cooke. And the mental transition on her part in moving from dedicated jazzer to rock-and-roll guitarist proved to be smoother than she expected. Though Kaye had at first never heard of Cooke (few had at the time), she found herself enthused by the caliber of musicians hired to play alongside her. As she gracefully slid into her new role, her particular specialty became adding tasteful and appropriate guitar fills at important points during the songs.

To Kaye's surprise, playing on Cooke's hits at the turn of the decade like “Summertime (Part 2)” and “Wonderful World” didn't seem all that different from playing live in the clubs, either. A quality song was a quality song. And her work began to lead directly to additional offers from other well-known producers and arrangers, including Bob Keane (“La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens), H. B. Barnum (“Pink Shoelaces” by Dodie Stevens), and Jim Lee (“Let's Dance” by Chris Montez). Word habitually traveled quickly between recording studios whenever a hot new player arrived on the scene. The comparatively lucrative studio pay also proved to be a godsend for Kaye. She soon found herself earning a steady enough income at union scale to finally quit her suffocating day job for good.

As for Glen Campbell, his touring work with the Champs began to wind its way down after a year or so, putting him in a precarious financial position. Without any further hits on the radio, the band had seen its live following diminish accordingly. But that was okay with Campbell. He was tired of the road anyway and wanted to quit. Though he needed the money, he desperately missed his wife and child back home, especially on the nights when he had to sleep five guys to a room in some fleabag motel halfway across the country. At least this time around, though, he was living in Los Angeles, where music jobs seemed more plentiful. And he still had his ace in the hole, Jerry Fuller.

With an unshakeable belief in his own songwriting abilities, Fuller was ever a man on the move. One day in early 1961, on a hunch, he decided to take his latest tune over to a new publishing company on Hollywood Boulevard he had heard about. It's the door you didn't knock on that might have been the one to hire you, he always figured.

Dropping off a demo of his song at SAR, Inc.—owned by none other than the now seemingly ubiquitous Sam Cooke, along with his business partner J. W. Alexander—Fuller hoped to entice the star into recording it. Fuller felt it was the perfect vehicle for Cooke's sublimely smooth singing style.

But when Alexander later played the demo in his small office on the phonograph kept handy for just such purposes, he didn't hear a hit. In fact, he didn't hear anything he liked about the song at all. It was just some tune about a bunch of far-off places like China, Berlin, and Waikiki. Something called “Travelin' Man.” Cooke's fans wanted heartfelt love songs they could identify with, not a world atlas.