Veteran session bassist and 2025 Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame inductee Carol Kaye mentioned she will not be attending this yr’s ceremony, claiming that it does not mirror “the work that studio musicians do and did within the golden period of the Sixties.”
Kaye was inducted into the Corridor this yr by way of the Musical Excellence class. The 90-year-old bassist has performed on an estimated 10,000 recordings, together with works by the Seaside Boys, Simon & Garfunkel and Frank Zappa, and was a part of the Los Angeles-based musical collective the Wrecking Crew.
The pioneering bassist revealed her determination to not attend the Rock Corridor ceremony in a Fb publish, which you’ll learn beneath.
Why Is Carol Kaye Declining the 2025 Rock Corridor Ceremony?
“Folks have been asking: NO I will not be there,” Kaye wrote. “I’m declining the RRHOF awards present … turning it down as a result of it wasn’t one thing that displays the work that studio musicians do and did within the golden period of the Sixties recording hits.”
Kaye mentioned she additionally declined the “Denny Tedesco course of,” referring to the director of the 2008 documentary The Wrecking Crew, which featured her. Regardless of being part of the collective, Kaye mentioned they weren’t recognized by that title whereas they had been lively, and that drummer Hal Blaine got here up with it years later.
“You might be at all times a part of a TEAM, not a solo artist in any respect,” she continued. There have been at all times 350-400 studio musicians (AFM Native 47 Hollywood) working within the busy Sixties, and referred to as that ONLY. Since Nineteen Thirties, I used to be by no means a ‘wrecker’ in any respect — that is a horrible insulting title.”
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Kaye then detailed how she switched from guitar to bass out of necessity and have become one of the prolific recording artists to ever choose up the instrument.
“Simply so you realize, as a working jazz musician (soloing jazz guitar work) within the Nineteen Fifties working since 1949, I used to be by accident requested to document information by producer Bumps Blackwell in 1957, bought into recording good music with Sam Cooke, different artists after which by accident positioned on Fender Precision Bass mid-1963 when somebody did not present,” she defined.
“I by no means performed bass in my life, however being an skilled recording guitarist, it was plain to see that three bass gamers employed to play ‘dum-de-dum’ on document dates wasn’t getting it. It was straightforward for me to invent good bass traces. As a jazz musician, you invent each observe you play, and so they used a variety of jazz musicians (and former big-band skilled musicians on all these rock and pop dates too).”
Kaye mentioned that in the end, she feels the Rock Corridor ceremony does not correctly acknowledge the group contributions of the myriad periods musicians with whom she labored. “I refuse to be a part of a course of that’s one thing else somewhat than what I consider in, for others’ profit and never reflecting on the reality,” she wrote. “All of us loved working with EACH OTHER. Thanks for understanding.”
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These exclusions are significantly egregious.
Gallery Credit score: Bryan Rolli
