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It looks like poor Carol Kaye doesn't understand the internet

#441
Carol was pretty good, but Jamerson she is not- much of what Carol played was written out NOTE-For Note- ALA beach Boys, all the weird movie soundtrack things.
Jamerson, came in 90% of the time with nothing other than some chords writtend down and BURNED HARD! Case closed.

I am also sure being a relatively cute young girl (relatively being the key word), didn't hurt her getting gigs. Gigs that were full of dudes who may have wanted something/anything to look at other than other dudes.
 
#442
Just like Jaco-a lot of people don't get Carol because they weren't born yet when all this was going down....
A lot of the Motown lines were written out as well. James read a lot of lines, and he also interpreted a lot of them. A lot of the Beach Boys and Phil Spector stuff that Carol did wasn't written out. They weren't making history, they were just trying to make a living.
A lot of Pro Players who came into their own in the 70s wouldn't be playing without her bass methods, myself included. For that alone she'd be noteworthy. Carol has always been good at marketing and promoting herself which is no sin. James Jamerson was being brilliant in the moment of being a Studio Bassist, but because he was not a self-promoter very few knew about him until he was gone.
I hold Carol, James, Joe Osborne, Larry Knechtel, Bob Moore, Tommy Cogbill, Jerry Jemmott and Bob Babbitt in high reverence and regard. They opened the door the rest of us got to walk through.
 
#446
I have been following Carol on Facebook for a good while. In 2010, like a lot of Americans she was in the process of losing her house because she had the misfortune to get a Junk Mortgage (like two of my friends here in Nashville did). She was doubtless scrambling to get every penny to put out the fire (the Musicians Union pension, Special Payments fund and Social Security don't necessarily fund a Millionaire Lifestyle). Bit torrent sites were everywhere, and she was doing what she could to protect her Educational Materials (we've done the same with Teach Me Bass Guitar) and her intellectual property. She has since lost her house, and bit torrent sites have been replaced by streaming sites. A lot of people have modified their educational materials to streaming technologies because it's less vulnerable to piracy. I'm not sure what happened to the lawsuit, but I do know Pirate Bay and other sites were initially prosecuted by their home governments.
What's really been the game changer is Youtube. If you can access millions of Educational Videos for free, why pay? The problem is that the quality of Youtube is all over the map and it's hard to weed through everything.
We used to worry about MP3 piracy, now everything is on Grooveshark and Spotify if not Youtube and the Artists get a fraction of the royalties they once did, if anything. Some people like Janek Gwizdala have even started giving away albums and allowing the fans to pay what they want. This new business model was outlined very well at this Bass Player Live event:
http://www.bassplayer.com/article/m...gwizdala-juan-alderete--damian-erskine/150894
So, the short answer is it's a totally different playing field for everyone concerned even after 3 years.
 
#447
Carol Kaye got screwed because of her naivete and lack of knowledge about the cut-throat world of the music biz JUST LIKE A THOUSAND OTHER FINE ARTISTS BACK THEN, including Jamerson, so to put her down for bitching about it is foolish. she has a right to complain. as for being a woman, it worked against her more than anything else. ****, do you know how many gigs she played and how many albums she cut? she was a bad-ass jazz player, could read like a monster. who else was playing all those double stops and everything back then? there was a reason Q called her first time, every time.
 
#455
obimark said:
Carol was pretty good, but Jamerson she is not- much of what Carol played was written out NOTE-For Note- ALA beach Boys, all the weird movie soundtrack things.
Jamerson, came in 90% of the time with nothing other than some chords writtend down and BURNED HARD! Case closed.

I am also sure being a relatively cute young girl (relatively being the key word), didn't hurt her getting gigs. Gigs that were full of dudes who may have wanted something/anything to look at other than other dudes.
Click to expand...
100% wrong on all counts. If Carol couldn't hang, she wouldn't have been there. Period.
 
#456
giacomini said:
I can't hear anything else about the senile lady.

Before TB I didn't know who she was. Then some TB threads made me pity her...
Click to expand...
Listen, Carol is no day at the beach, but she's far from senile and she'll kick your ass on the bass any day of the week. I find comments like this to come from a really angry place. She did more for bass in a typical year during the 60's than most of us will do in our whole lives. Including you and me.
 
#458
I have a small suspicion that if Carol was male she would be getting a much better treatment on this forum. 'How dare a female ever be compared to Jamerson' seems to be the order of a few posters in here. She must have been good to have been let anywhere near a recording studio as a blonde, young female in the '60s in a capacity other than 'you know where the kettle is?'. Hell, I doubt the story is much different now.
 
#459
JimmyM said:
Listen, Carol is no day at the beach, but she's far from senile and she'll kick your ass on the bass any day of the week. I find comments like this to come from a really angry place. She did more for bass in a typical year during the 60's than most of us will do in our whole lives. Including you and me.
Click to expand...

That's true, and having taken some lessons from her in the mid-80s and brought her to Belmont for a Bass Clinic, I can tell you she can still hang. The last time I heard her play was 2000 and she was great.
If you go to her site you'll see me listed as a student along with David Hungate, Rennie Priess (Neil Diamond's bass guy for over 30 years) and a slew of LA Bass Royalty. More of us learned from her books.
It's a bit like Tal Wilkenfeld. Anyone who trashes Tal should download the "Cause We've Ended as Lovers" transcription on No Treble and learn it well enough to play along with the clip. That will likely stop some clattering on the keyboards here....
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f28/tal-wilkenfeld-transcription-notreble-983247/
While I'm thinking about it, buy some of Carol's books and do the same thing. No TAB, and the lines are very challenging!:bassist:
 

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