Carol Kaye's string changing method !

[two fingers]

She can say about anything she wants. She earned the right to. Oh and add to the fact she was a woman in a VERY mans world of the 60's and 70's and she can be as snarky as she wants as far as I'm concerned.

Soooooooooooo in your view (just to get this straight) being talented ALLOWS one to be a jerk????? Michael Jordan would be justified in being a douche? Fill in the blank with any talented person you can think of and that person is justified in being rude and snarky?

Sorry. I wasn't brought up that way at all. I was brought up in the whole "she puts her go go boots on one at a time just like me" school. She's not a god. She's a gun for hire musician who did an adequate job.

 

[Hahaha]

Good points. Still seems ridiculous to buy a new bass whenever you needed a string change.

So true. I know people who go to the dealership to have their air filters changed. Just think, there must be ten or so old Precision basses kicking around in the world that were used on many hit records, and nobody knows which ones. Perhaps someone contributing to this thread owns a bass played by Carol Kaye, and doesn't know it.

 

[two fingers]

When your multi-meter runs out of batteries do you buy a new one?

Ha! Nope. I was in construction. When my meter was stolen I bought a new one.

My apologies for getting way off topic everyone. I'll bow out and let the flock of Kaye followers have their way with the rest of it.

Carry on.

 

[MonkeyBass]

My recollection of this story is that she didn't have the time for new strings to break in for recording so that was why she would do that.

Here's an idea. Have two basses so that you can change the strings on one and let them stretch, and record with the other one.

 

[ggvicviper]

My recollection of this story is that she didn't have the time for new strings to break in for recording so that was why she would do that.

So instead of getting new strings, she got a.... new bass which has new strings?

 

[derg]

I'm just writing what I remember... I do suppose that even a new bass in a music store would have been played enough to get rid of that "new string" sound.

 

[Slough Feg Bass]

sometimes it is fun just to play the bass the studio has hanging on the wall!
I've done that a few times, and it usually works out great.

 

[MonkeyBass]

I'm just writing what I remember... I do suppose that even a new bass in a music store would have been played enough to get rid of that "new string" sound.

I'm not questioning the validity of what you remember. I'm just flabbergasted by CK's choices. Totally outside of my paradigm.

 

[ggvicviper]

I'm just writing what I remember... I do suppose that even a new bass in a music store would have been played enough to get rid of that "new string" sound.

Ya know, it's possible you're onto something there, but it's not like today where everyone goes to GC and plays basses on the walls. Bass guitar was not an instrument that was loved back then like it is today. I can imagine a handful of Fender Ps just sitting around, while Beatlemania let many electric guitars get stocked in the store.

 

[Hahaha]

Come to think of it, I've known people who bought new cars every two years, partly to avoid having to get new tires. I think it's more an excuse to get something new and shiny. Maybe there was a bit of that mentality involved in Carol Kaye's reasoning. "I'm sick of this color, oh, and I need new strings."

 

[SVTkid]

You know... I joined TB a while back and never really gave it a chance. But Wow!! This is good stuff here!

 

[Iridescentone]

Look, I'm an electrician. There's a heart center nearby here. I pretty much handled the electrical for the bottom floor which encompasses several OR, the cafeteria, and a pretty impressive lobby. The lighting is pretty awesome. Everything works flawlessly. Am I some sort of electrical God? Nope. I'm an electrician. I got some prints and I brought them to life. That's what Kaye did. She got blueprints and made a bass line out of them. Did she do it with the stroke of Michelangelo's brush? Nope, she did it just fine. The parts worked out great. She was a "good electrician". For a paycheck, she played the bass. She did it well,, showed up on time, and performed her job, so her pay went up. Welcome to America? I fail to see the divine intervention here. Shrug.

No one implying that she was a "god". But you're ignoring a key component in your Good Electrician analogy. Which is this....CK (along with some others) was an innovator, at a time when the sounds of electric bass, as applied in the recording industry, were still in development. She was there, she did it, and we weren't. She did more than just "a job". She lent a hand in creating a genre.

I'm sure you are a solid electrician. When you apply your skills to revolutionize the industry, you will deserve the commensurate accolades for your endeavors. Just like Carol does.

 

[High Camp]

Really? So, if most good players were somehow placed in that chair they would have simply put down the bass and ran out? Come on. What she did was good, but it wasn't a miracle. Half of this forum has written bass lines for songs. Sure, she did it on the fly. That's great. I have done that too. I do fill-in gigs all the time with nothing but a book of charts. And I have to do it LIVE! I get ONE TAKE to NAIL a bass line for a song I may have never heard before. And I'm nothing amazing myself. I'm just a bass player. It's what I do. So, when the song starts, I play a BASS LINE that sounds good, and I do it IMMEDIATELY. How many guys on this very forum have done that dozens or hundreds of times?

The bass line she played was good enough so they printed it. It's no different from my bass lines being good enough to get called back to fill in again with the same act. And, again, in no way am I putting myself on some sort of pedestal. I'm just taking her off of one (for me anyway). Meh. She was a musician who got paid to do her job and did it. She was not a musical God of some sort.

She was not a once-in-a-lifetime artist who single-handedly secured anything she played on a spot in the top ten. I would think the writers and vocalists had something to do with it too. Maybe I'm just nuts. :***: You give me a band like she recorded with, and songs writers like she worked with, and STARS like she worked with, and I'll give you a printable bass line every time. So would many others.

She adopted the "Fender" bass long before some of her male counterparts. In other words, that was a sound producers were looking for that few were willing to take on the task of creating. Her timing was great. She was willing to do something most wouldn't do. Many URB players looked down their noses at electric bass. She grabbed one and said "Heck yeah. Let's do it. Count it off." And a legend was born. She knew music theory up and down and was in the right place at the right time. Good for her. I'm happy for her. But I don't have a Kaye tat on my butt.

>> Please compare bassplaying to athletics: world record 100 metres today: 9.58 seconds. In 1964: 10.00 seconds.
Because we learn from our predecessors, we get better (on avarage) than our predecessors.
We have examples, even You Tube etc etc.
Is White Room's bassline by Jack Bruce playable? Very much so.
But it's a brilliant bassline and I'm sure in the 60's very impressive.
>> So look at Carol Kaye in the same way.
She is an easy target on TB, maybe true on some occasions, but she is still one of the few that paved the way.
IMO

 

[kdemello1980]

I don't change ink carts either. I just buy a new printer.

But that is actually cheaper than replacing just the ink.

 

[bassdrop]

I don't think you have to like anyone on a personal level to respect their contribution to music history.

 

[eddododo]

Just keep in mind that she knows more about bass playing and hit records than all of you put together.

hmmm...

ignoring the 'hit records' part, that is a bit like saying that Thomas Edison knows more about electricity than a modern electrical engineer...

CK deserves all the praise of an innovator, trendsetter, workhorse, and legend, but lets not get carried away on her bassplaying itself.. Shes a bad mother but thats just a silly sentiment

 

[Jared Lash]

She was working 12-16 hour days almost every day, didn't want to deal with it, and would make that kind of money in a couple hours back then. Besides, she traded it and got some money back for her previous bass so it's not like it cost her $240. And nobody had their own techs back then. I don't know if they even had cartage services back then.

I stand corrected. I know a lot of pros don't care at all about gear but it seemed a bit extreme to buy a new bass rather than take 10 minutes and change strings but hey, whatever works for you.

Carol Kaye doesn't do herself any favors with her attitude at times but really she was the Will Lee of her time, a first call session bassist who played on countless recordings and radio hits. I'll always tip my hat to her as a bassist.

 

[two fingers]

sometimes it is fun just to play the bass the studio has hanging on the wall!
I've done that a few times, and it usually works out great.

Me too. And I have run that bass into whatever compressor they had that went into whatever board they had. I could have grabbed a different bass and run it into a different compressor and nobody in the room would have blinked an eye.

I was in a studio once where there was a vintage Fender P bass on the wall. I played that and several of my basses. The engineer by far liked my Carvin LB76 better than anything else I played. (old school style soul music)

People act as though the studio is some sort of parallel universe where only gods go to play only perfect instruments run into perfect mics and recorded using perfect gear run by other gods behind the glass. Meh.

Especially back then, they grabbed whatever was laying around, plugged it into whatever they had, hit record and let her rip. The Muscle Shoals guys were not "professional musicians" of any kind. They were just good players who did their job (until they got a rep of course). The "raw" of that music is its charm to me. I dig the way over produced stuff of the late 70s and 80s too. But that's when studio guys started to sweat the small stuff too much. These days little local hack producers have 40 times the technology and "quality" of what they had in the 60s. And they go nuts over the tiniest little detail (such as which mic, which reverb patch to use, etc.). I used to sell Roland digital recorders at a dealer. I would always caution those who bought them by advising that they still use their ears. The little board I just sold them was far and away more advanced that Abbey Road, Muscle Shoals, Hitsville, and Studio B combined.

Wow. I keep plugging myself back into this. Sorry. It's a healthy discussion I suppose.

 

[lifeoffroadbass]

No worries, we'll be here when you get back. No promises that the thread still has anything to do with Carol Kaye, though....

Hahaha do they ever end on topic? That made me laugh in my sleep practically!

 

[lifeoffroadbass]

May I offer up this tasty jam....