The Smiley Smile Message Board

Has anyone heard the things Carol Kaye has been saying about the Wrecking Crew, Brian Wilson, Jan & Dean, etc...

Why is she lying so much??? There are a lot of things that are up for speculation, but the things she has been saying are crazy!
 ??? ??? ??? ???

New stuff - not the Love & Mercy hat bimbo stuff?
Do you have a link?

she's been doing this for awhile...do you have anything new? or is this just an overall question?  ;D

AGD could write you an entire book about the subject.

What's she saying now, and where ?

She was a tremendous musician who played on more great records than all us posters combined here I'm guessing.

Methinks it is funny to critisize this lady whenever the subject comes up, whereas absolutely fine to defend rocky pamplin & ask other posters, "Don't run him off". She at least has some credentials as a musician. He's just a nobody; plain Joe as it were.

She unquestionably did. It's the ones she didn't play on we find problematical.

Well said. She's maybe stubborn but she's never f***ed Brian or the Boys over like Rocky.

Yes, Kaye is an incredibly talented bassist and guitarist- that cannot be denied.

However, I was listening to this Hal Blaine interview, and let's just say he had some heated words for Carol. It's a great interview, but listen at around 13:15  to hear about Kaye

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us0nDMASZoM

Two words: James Jamerson.

Four words: Who gives a sh#t?  ::)

Are you really saying who cares about the accurate history of the band? I guess we can shut down the board.

Please don't quote OSD, it means I still get to see his drivel.  ;D

:lol I thought he'd stopped posting here!

Carol's a legendary musician, but as Hal put it, Carol's "become a saboteur". Hal even claims she wasn't an actual part of the WC, but rather an "augementer" who started as one of seven or so guitarists on the dates before being given a break by Phil, and someone who has gone on to take credit due not only to James Jamerson, but also to Ray Pohlman, as well as wreaking havoc among the survivors of Earl Palmer, that other bass players consider her a laughing stock, and that the courts are now tired of her BS. Hal spends a good 6 or 7 minutes on the topic of CK, and finishes by saying "That's our Carol - there's nothing you can do about it, but she's nuts."

Understood Craig. Watching the Wrecking Crew documentary though I got a sense of unease,nth at CK was very much a "woman in a man's world", and detected an element of male chauvinism/bigotry/sexist bullshit undercurrent that gave me a new respect for her. She probably had to desktop a few extra inches of hide to cope with that, instead of quitting in tears. She might have become confused over exactly what sessions she played on, and for who, but listen to TSS (edit: just paused to remember who I'm responding to!! :lol ), she's all over it. She might be nuts but she's earned the right to some respect and not just for her playing.

This is the ultimate problem. In her zeal to have session musicians recognized, Carol has ended up undermining then instead. It's a real shame.

(slips into a blissful reverie...)

Carol should be lauded for the many, many, many hits she played on, and the iconic TV themes... but her unquestionable achievements shouldn't afford her a free pass from lying about being on tracks she demonstrably wasn't. And she is lying, and worse, claiming the works of others as her own. That's indefensible.

The Wrecking Crew are way overrated in the 1st place, especially as compared to the Muscle Shoals or Stax session guys, who actually wrote, arranged, and produced the records.

Who, besides Leon Russell, Glen Campbell, Jim Gordon, and maybe Billy Strange, actually made important independent  contributions to the music of the day?

Al de Lory, by virtue of arranging Glen Campbell's early hits.

As noted, an unquestionably important part of music history.  But for me, it's the window into her personality that reveals possible issues. And I get this strictly from her Facebook posts. Everybody is against her; The Wrecking Crew, the Banks, Politicians, even her own Facebook friends.

Mac Rebennack. Larry Knechtel won a Grammy for arranging. P.F. Sloan if you count him as a member of the Crew. Harold Battiste. Barney Kessel.
I'd also argue that Earl Palmer, while he didn't write or produce, was so important as a drummer that he matches the contribution of pretty much anyone.

He produced "Wichita Lineman", which is one of my all time-top 10 songs.

With all due respect to Carol, it's highly possible that she is in fact not mentally well, and this may be the case for years during which time her wild claims started. I am truthfully not saying that as an insult, but as an outside observation. I feel bad for someone who has some apparent insatiable urge to steal credits from others, and alienating the vast majority of their peers in the process, because I think these are not actions of someone right in the head. I think Phil Spector has similarly not been well for years either, although of course "not well" manifests itself in very different actions from different people.

Yeah, man, I can't wait to learn what color shirt, what shoes, and socks he wore when he went to the restaurant last week.  But, with the obsessive compulsives on here, I won't have to wait too long. :p

Yes, and I and others get to see your unsavory vomit as well. WGRCR, Bub.  :smokin

Ms. Kaye had to prove herself in a male dominated environment. There is no question that she played on sessions yielding hundreds  of great  recordings. I don't think that her memory is as functional as it once was.  Despite the fiestiness that she has when  people challenge  her memory, I do not think she deliberately  confabulates  her history. As we get older, our memory is cloudy and our patience is shorter. She deserves the respect she demands, if only for the pioneering role she played in making female musicians  a reality in the Sixties.

I disagree. She has been making these claims publicly *at least* since 1987, when Allan Slutsky contacted her while he was writing his book about Jamerson. And he contacted her because he'd heard rumours that she'd been making the claims for years before that.
"She's old and her memory isn't what it was" is a perfectly reasonable excuse *now*, when she's eighty. But it doesn't explain the thirty-year (at least) history of fraudulently claiming many other people's work. Jamerson is just the most famous -- she also claims, for example, to have played on many Monkees hits, when she played on precisely two Monkees album tracks, widely considered the two worst tracks they ever recorded.
Now, *some* of her incorrect claims could, of course, be memory problems. I think anyone could be forgiven, for example, for the claim that she makes on her website about Love -- she says she played on "Alone Again Or" and "The Daily Planet" from Forever Changes. She did play on The Daily Planet, but the other track she played on was Andmoreagain. Confusing two tracks on the same album with very similar titles is the kind of mistake anyone could make. Similarly, if she thinks she played on a couple of early Beach Boys tracks she didn't, when she did play on many Beach Boys tracks and she played on contemporary cover versions of those songs, that makes sense. I can understand why she thinks she's on Good Vibrations, as she did play on some sessions for it, even if she's not on the final track.
But claiming another musician's *entire body of work*, as she does with Jamerson, is simply not something anyone does accidentally or innocently, especially when presented with the sheer volume of evidence that points the other way. Kaye has either been suffering from some sort of mental illness for at least thirty years, or (FAR more likely, in my opinion), she at least started lying in an attempt at financial gain.
And note that she makes these claims on the same website where she sells her bass lessons, books, and DVDs. She is, in my view, committing fraud by doing so. If you buy a tuition DVD believing it's by the person who played that fantastic bass part on "Bernadette" by the Four Tops, or on "Last Train To Clarksville" by the Monkees, and it isn't by either of those people, you have been defrauded.
If she stuck to just -- or even mostly -- claiming stuff she actually did, she'd deserve all the respect we could give her and more. But she has engaged in a thirty-year campaign to steal the credit for other people's work. That deserves only contempt.

Not yet, but it's on my Christmas wish list. ;D



Whoa, she fares worse than Mike! :o

She deserves respect for her accomplishments, and some sympathy for her age, but she deserves no deference for being unpleasant, ungracious, egocentric, arrogant, hostile and combative.  I know she is likely in a lot of psychic pain herself, but she has hurt people by her behavior, including some I care about, and it's simply not cool in my book.

Peter - I agree with you on this.  She was a rock and roll survivor and pioneer for her time.  I take my hat off to her.  But, it is too bad that the "who did what, and when" issues are unresolved because it taints her legacy.  She didn't have to "do it all" - but just the fact she was "in the game" in any capacity was a great thing and Brian does seem to really like her, so that is good enough for me.  ;)

That colorful description sounds exactly like some I've encountered here. Hmmm.  ;)

The biggest issue to me is that when confronted with factual evidence that she didn't play on certain cuts, she still defiantly insists that everyone else is wrong and she is right.  If she would graciously accept the facts, I don't think anyone would blame her for having a cloudy memory considering the fact that she played on endless sessions and probably didn't even know what the finished product sounded like in many cases.  So goes the life of a session musician in that time.  Lying in the face of the facts is unforgivable.

*Much* earlier. 1973. Rolling Stone interview:

"Carol Kaye is one of the few successful female session musicians, certainly one of Los Angeles' finest and busiest bassists. Her list of credits includes some surprises: Motown hits such as "Love Child," "I Was Made to Love Her," "Bernadette," "Get Ready," "Do The Jerk."

She's played bass for Ray Charles on every session since (and including) "I Don't Need No Doctor." In the rock genre she is heard on several Beach Boys records, including "Help Me Ronda," "Good Vibrations," "Heroes And Villains" and "Sloop John B." She played on Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound," Joe Cocker's "Feelin' Alright," Nancy Sinatra's bass-heavy "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman."
[...]
"Motown recorded about half here and half in Detroit," she said. "They were saving money because they were a new company, so we played for less than union scale. Hell, we thought they were demos, but when we heard them as hits we demanded scale.""

Rolling Stone, November 22, 1973. Page 26.

Indeed. Like how everyone was sucking up to Daro to listen to how apparently all Brian's best songs were actually about him and his wife, Marilyn is a "cow" etc. Just because you were "there" doesnt mean your memory isnt faulty or you dont have a bias/agenda to promote, or whatever else. I dont mind it held against Carol Kaye but it should then be held against EVERYONE spewing obvious BS

Not everyone. In fact, Daro was very controversial from the start.

Do I need to read the Rocky Pamplin thread? Wasn't drawn to the thread by its title.

I can't speak for any of the other bolded songs, but least with regards to Good Vibrations, I can't see how a statement made in 1973 that she was heard on that song is out of line. She did play on session(s) for it; nobody had done a forensic examination of the song at that point to know what portions were edited together, so I have no problem believing that SHE believed without a doubt that she played on the released version.

Years later in the face of heavily-researched forensic facts is a different matter of course.

I love Hal's quote, when Denny Tedesco told him Carol would be in the interview. "I said, 'Denny, I'll tell you something right now, I have nothing against Carol, but any question you ask any of us, she's going to answer."

Correct. He's basically a human septic tank, cause he's full for sh*t

An Australian would say, he's a "seppo". ;D

May I respectfully suggest you go back to that thread and check your statement ? Think you'll find that not "everyone" was...

Yes, Good Vibrations falls into the "reasonable doubt" category.

The Motown songs do not, and did not, however.

Indeed - she knew she was lying about "IWMTLH", and more to the point , while JJ was still alive. Despicable.

I'm trying to wrap my head around why she (or anyone) would do this. It's like trying to understand insanity from a logic standpoint, so it's not terribly easy to do. If she KNEW then that she was outright making false claims, I'm trying to understand how she thought she'd get away with it.  Greed and bitterness are one thing, but thinking one can actually get away with it in plain sight is quite another.

Granted, there was no internet back then. But was she/is she really so naive to think that she could just make false claims, and not have them challenged? Or is she looking to constantly fight, and SEEKING to be viciously arguing endlessly about said claims for decades to come, by both the actual musicians in question, as well as historians?

I just cannot wrap my head around someone intentionally lying that much, unless she actually THINKS she was on those songs through some lapse of memory/confusion, or is in a gigantic state of denial. Like, what would her lie detector readout say? Has she simply made herself believe falsehoods? It's so, so strange.

Ok, ok. I apologize. Poor choice of words, bad use of generalization.

Well actually seppo does mean septic tank but it's slang for yanks not full of sh*t. Although..... someone could be both :D

I used to buy Bass Player magazine regularly in the 90s and she was featured in an issue.
It was a great interview but I remember she said Brian's charts were a little amateurish or something like that.

Yes, that they were sometimes written incorrectly

She also brought up the subject in Beautiful Dreamer (I believe) and below (my italics):

"Brian brought in the hand-written charts and the charts were NOT copied
by some copyist as was usual in those days by that time (from about 1964
on)....the notes were on the wrong sides of the stem sometimes, sharps
and flats on wrong side, and the charts were writtin [sic] in sharp keys
instead of the usual flat keys (F# for instance instead of Gb) -- this
all belied a very crude and illiterate way of writing.  Sometimes the
charts were so badly written, we'd have to re-write them over, no
problem....we admired Brian so much we'd quickly do it and not say a
word about it....."

[Source (http://www.surfermoon.com/essays/owncharts.html)]

Inferring Brian is barely literate strikes me as a most... odd way of expressing your admiration for your (temporary) employer. Especially coming from someone whose own posts are hardly tiny gems of grammatical perfection.

"This all belied a very crude and illiterate way of writing." "Revealed," Carol, not "belied."

I found it for the most part flattering to Brian. I'm thinking by illiterate she meant not educated in the transcription of music, which is probably correct.
What caught my eye is that she miked her bidet (?!)

:police::Board gumshoe on overzealous patrol once again. When and where will the rudester strike again?  ::)

Perhaps John Cage had been a guest at one of Carol's "rare dinner hangout parties" and suggested it.  :smokin

Who hasn't?

The outtakes went down well

That's exactly what she meant.

I was a music major in another life (classically trained on the double bass).  There are rules about how sharps and flats are written, what side of the note the stem goes on, etc.  Music, especially hand-copied music, is actually easier to read when these are adhered to.  My impression is that Brian probably wrote his charts out very fast at the last minute.  A copyist would have corrected whatever errors Brian made.

Whatever Carol Kaye's faults, she has never put down Brian Wilson as a musician.

She played on "She's Movin' In With Rico"!!?

I know I've commented on my own observations, but just to sum it up, here's what I've seen from Carol:

- Shaming someone from posting a YouTube link on Facebook of the "Good Vibrations" session film that came out a few years ago, asking the poster how he could post a "phony tape," saying how it's fake, it's staged, the film doesn't represent what went down during recording sessions....seriously, the woman RANTED about how phony the film was. (Wonder if it's because she wasn't in it.)

- Saying some really nasty things about Melinda recently in a thread about L&M (really, someone needs to tell her and VDP that the movie IS NOT ABOUT THEM)

- Speaking of L&M...ranted about how she was portrayed as a "bimbo" and she never said anything to Brian about songs having different bass lines in different keys. (Oh...and she hadn't even seen the movie yet.) And how insulted she was that she was portrayed in the movie as wearing a fire hat during the "Fire" session. Funny thing: she highly praised the actress who played her in the An American Family made-for-TV movie. I don't remember if it was Probyn or Scott Bennett who posted a thread on Facebook. He's FB friends with both actresses who played Carol Kaye -- the one from L&M and the one from AAF -- and the AAF actress pubilcly complimented the L&M actress (sorry, don't remember their names, too lazy to IMDB them) when other people were talking about Carol's complaints about the movie. :)

- And years ago -- before she became REALLY crazy -- I was browsing her web site, and in the FAQ she recommended Spectra-Flex cables, so I bought a few of those that I still use to this day for my guitars and bass. (They are quite reliable indeed.) I had NEVER HEARD OF THIS BRAND before seeing her web site. I mentioned online once (don't remember where, but it wasn't Facebook) that I used Spectra-Flex based on the recommendation on her web site, and she chimed in and went on and on about how she NEVER recommended those cables and never would, they're terrible, and mentioned another brand that she said was excellent. (Don't remember that brand.)

- A friend of mine took private lessons with her a few years ago. He told me she actually produced documentation proving that she played on "Surfin' USA." I consulted with an expert that I have very high respect for but a lot of people here don't and said, "What do you make of that?" Said expert said, "I'll bet she did. It was probably for The Hot Doggers' version."

Now...on that last point....all these Beach Boys songs she claims to have played on -- well, and NON-Beach Boys songs as well, come to think of it -- there are AFM sheets proving she was NOT THERE. If she did indeed play on those sessions, then why the heck didn't she make damn sure that her union rep (Hal Blaine, no?) had her time logged on these sheets?? Didn't AFM use these sheets to determine pension fundage??? If she's indeed correct and we're all wrong, then man, she's probably owed a TON of money that she's not getting that she needs to investigate.

Looking on her site now, I see this:

"Frank Wilson 1965 Motown "Do I Love You" MP3 (with Carol Kaye bass, Earl Palmer drums, cut in Hollywood) This recording auctioned at record $41, 700, is UK soul hit.

Frank Wilson recent phone interview.

Carol was 1 of 9 bass players recording in Hollywood for Motown 1963 through 1968-69, as verified by Motown producers Frank Wilson, Hal Davis, and also by Pres. of Jobete, Lester Sill, others."

It's unclear to me what "This recording auctioned at record $41, 700" is supposed to mean, but I find it interesting that rather than post a well-known hit that she claims she played on (such as I Was Made To Love Her), she posts something that most people have probably never heard of.

FYI, I didn't see anything in the FAQ about Spectra-Flex cables, but you can view the archives here:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.carolkaye.com/www/library/faq.htm

That is, unless there was previously a different URL.

To be fair to Do I Love You, it's a great song and it is perhaps one of the most significant tracks for Mod culture enthusiasts where it plays a pretty big role in the mythology. The amount it received in the auction is a world record and its rarity as a disc makes it a highly sought after commodity, which is why the quote mentions it. So it has that going for it.

This was definitely in the late '90s when I saw the FAQ; the Wayback Machine's archive of her site doesn't go that far back.

The archive of her site goes back to 1997:

http://web.archive.org/web/19970101000000*/https://www.carolkaye.com/

The FAQ first shows up on her page sometime in mid-1999 (link down the page on the right):

http://web.archive.org/web/19991012111716/http://carolkaye.com/

Unfortunately the Wayback Machine doesn't have anything from the original URL (http://carolkaye.com/faq.htm) other than a 404.

The earliest version I can find is from from December 2000:

http://web.archive.org/web/20001213063200/http://carolkaye.com/pages/faq.html

No mention of cables though.

Still digging.

With all due respect etc etc, and departing from the BB's history for the moment, she did recently imply that session musicians played every note on the Buffalo Springfield's records, which is clearly complete balderdash, according to my ears and to the line-up notes on the Springfield box set. It does put people's backs up, whatever the memory problems and chauvinistic environment.

She does have a problem distinguishing between "I played on one song by this band" (in this case Expecting To Fly, which was originally cut for a Neil Young solo project before becoming a Springfield track) and "I played on everything by this band", doesn't she?

Where did she state that?