Most prolific recording bassist

[kirkdickinson]

Gary Lunn has done a lot of recording. Probably not as much as Leland, but maybe as much as Pino.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/gary-lunn-mn0000739855/credits
Well, not quite as many credits as Pino after all.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/pino-palladino-mn0000292499/credits

Leland has as many credits as both Gary and Pino.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/leland-sklar-mn0000237873/credits

Bob Moore doesn't have as many credited appearances as the other three.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/bob-moore-mn0000066370/credits

Of course Studio guys a lot of time don't get anything except a pay check. No credit.

 

[MidWest Jeff D]

Wow. I can't believe how far into this thread I had to read before I came across the name Carol Kaye.

Carol was a member of the Wrecking Crew; one of the most prolific groups of studio musicians in all of recorded music. Not having seen Ken Burns documentary, I would have guessed her to have been thee most recorded bassist of all time. I know she is thought to have been the bassist on over 10,000 recordings.

Nothing against Geddy Lee (or any of the other suggestions of bassists who were members of famous bands), but those are ridiculous answers to the question of "the most prolific recording bassist." There are a number of studio bassists who would likely make more recordings in a year than bassists like Geddy Lee, or John Entwistle, or any other bassist whose name you are more likely to recognize would make in their lifetimes. Probably multiplied by 100. That doesn't make the studio bassists better. It's just a function of what they do.

 

[tim gueguen]

As I've said on other threads like this I suspect the real answer might be someone involved in the Indian recording industry given the gigantic number of recordings some Indian singers are credited with.

 

[Matt-J2]

Wow. I can't believe how far into this thread I had to read before I came across the name Carol Kaye.

She was mentioned in the very first post. Geddy wasn't mentioned at all.

 

[J Wilson]

Nashville session musician Charlie McCoy tells a story in the documentary that he was hired to go to New York to play guitar on Desolation Row from Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited session. He says they did the number once to get the sound, and then recorded it in one take. As he was leaving, McCoy overheard the producer (I think it was) say to Dylan, "see? that's how they do it in Nashville".

Not surprising then, when the Blonde on Blonde sessions in New York stalled, they moved it to Nashville where the musicians there got it done. Then of course he recorded his next couple of great albums there too. But anyway my point is that Nashville session men were prolific and probably cut many tracks a day, so I suppose that is possible.

A new-in-town and scratchin' young guitarist got called as a sub on Dylan's Blonde on Blonde dates.

At the end of the day, he was packing up to leave, and Dylan asked the producer, 'hey, where's he going?'. The producer told him he was in as a sub just for the day, the contracted guy would be back tomorrow. He looks at the producer and tells him to cancel the contracted guy, he wanted this other guy back for the rest of the project, starting tomorrow, period.

Charlie Daniels was instantly a made man, and of course went on to have a very long career, doing all of Dylan's succeeding Nashville albums.

I also worked for a little while in Tut and Mark Taylor's shop, and one day Bob Moore brought THE upright in for a little work. Mark walked me over to it and wanted be sure I knew just how much Nashville history was on that workbench. We were all star struck.

And once, when I was at Gibson, Carlene Carter walked in with her grandmother's Gibson non-cutaway, non-pickup, Loar-signed L5. This was Mother Maybelle Carter's L5 she played in The Carter Family and for many years after. Beyond priceless.

The Carter Family: Maybelle, AP, and Sarah Carter.

After AP and Sarah went their separate ways, Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, Anita on upright, and June cutting up as usual. Maybelle put her foot down and would not let the act perform on a famous radio show UNTIL they would book her with her new hotshot kid guitar player, some kid from East Tennessee named Atkins. You may have heard of him, here with the girls on the Opry.

 

[Big Fat O]

Lee Sklar is right with Ron Carter. He’s well past >2000+ songs. He started session work in the early 70s with James Taylor and still going strong.

I would love him to write a book. He could easily wrote 2 books and not even scratch the surface on who he’s played with.

 

[buldog5151bass]

Don't forget, back in the heyday of the studio musicians, they probably would often do 4-5 sessions a day, jingle sessions would be short, and they often had multiple sessions in the same studio in the same day. These weren't exactly all albums.

 

[foal30]

She was mentioned in the very first post. Geddy wasn't mentioned at all.

I have collected some straw.