Carol Kaye

The best place to start understanding Carol Kaye's playing isn't the list of songs she played on. It's looking at how she herself described her hand — pick, wrist, mute, volume.

Still, tracing the credits with her name makes clear what that hand did. The Beach Boys' “Good Vibrations,” Glen Campbell's “Wichita Lineman,” Nancy Sinatra's “These Boots Are Made for Walkin',” Sonny & Cher's “The Beat Goes On,” and the theme songs for “Mission: Impossible” and “M*A*S*H” are all on that list. Born in 1935 in Everett, Washington. She started on guitar and became a key figure in the 1960s L.A. session scene, moving between multiple studios a day and recording thousands of songs. She wanted to be remembered less through the bundled name ‘Wrecking Crew’ and more through the judgment and hand of each individual session.

Quincy Jones, who often called her in for film sessions, later recalled that she “could outdo all the men and do anything.”

Carol Kaye's official materials preserve the specific methods she used in 1960s studio playing. She describes a hard pick, flatwound strings, a particular wrist angle and picking position, and muting as her technique.

What makes this material interesting is that it turns the abstract phrase ‘good bass sound’ into a bodily movement. Sound doesn't come straight out of the hand. It's made together by how the hand meets the instrument, where it touches the string, and the moment a note is cut off.

She explains that she picks from the wrist. It has to be the wrist moving, not the whole arm, if you're going to survive a session that runs all day. She plays near the end of the neck, and never turns the volume all the way up. A sound where the engineer only has to put a mic in front of the amp — that was the result she prepared with her hand.

The story that she ended up playing bass at a 1963 Capitol session because the scheduled bassist didn't show up also appears in Kaye's own recollections and official bio. Since this anecdote comes from her own account, it isn't treated at the same level as objective fact.

The most frequently disputed item on this list is “Good Vibrations.” Kaye says she took part in the session and recorded a fuzz bass part, but Beach Boys archivist Craig Slowinski's analysis holds that her take wasn't used on the final single. Both sides have grounds, and neither is fully settled — so this magazine treats the song as a contested case, not as one of her confirmed credits.

Even amid this dispute, she still speaks in her own voice. In 2025, Kaye publicly declined induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — saying the nickname ‘Wrecking Crew,’ used to lump session players together, defined her in an insulting way.

An attitude that separates the work of gathering names from the work a hand actually left behind. That's close to why this issue covers Kaye.

Kaye herself describes her picking and gear choices in great detail. This is primary material for understanding her playing philosophy.

Kaye's strongly worded claim that ‘this method is best for everyone’ is treated as her own view, not as objective fact.

The Pick

A pick doesn't replace the fingers. It's a very small interface that translates the hand's decisions into a different physics.

Carol Kaye's materials show that a hard pick wasn't a simple accessory but part of her playing system. The pick's stiffness, the angle it meets the string at, and the picking position all change a note's attack and length.

By her own account and her official store, the pick is a hard (thick) teardrop. She sells “Carol Kaye Picks” under her own brand, and in sessions she built attack with a weighty hard pick rather than a thin one. Japanese-language sources also describe her as favoring a thin, thick teardrop shape. The core of it isn't the brand name, but a system of playing from the wrist with a thick pick.

What matters isn't a claim that the pick itself has magic in it. Even with the same instrument, changing the relationship between hand and tool changes the start and end of the notes a player can choose.

That's why what Kaye left behind is closer to a system than a gear review. Pick thickness, string type, felt mute, picking position — none of these alone makes a ‘good sound.’ They're the conditions that let the hand pass through several sessions a day with the same judgment.

The specific combination she described is this: instead of a thin, soft pick, use one thicker than the hard type, and pair it with flatwound strings. Then, right in front of the bridge, tape a folded piece of felt onto the strings to suppress overtones and low end. With twenty-five cents' worth of material, she made a thick, clear tone close to an upright bass.

So when choosing good gear, it's more accurate to ask not ‘what's better’ but ‘what does this make me do differently.’ A tool doesn't make the result for you. It creates the conditions for a repeated movement.

Good Times

Chic's 1979 “Good Times.” Bernard Edwards's bassline moved beyond the low end of one song and into the memory of other music.

Bernard Edwards kept the groove locked down by staying in low positions, mainly on the E and A strings, holding a fat, thick sound. Space and repetition came before flashy phrases. He built the line in response to Nile Rodgers's guitar rhythm, then let the song stack up on top of it — closer to ‘where he didn't stand’ than to ‘who played more.’ As this line carried over into Sugarhill Gang's “Rapper's Delight,” it became one of the foundations of early hip-hop, and a later songwriting-credit settlement put Rodgers's and Edwards's names on the official record. It's also part of why it's often cited, including in Bass Player magazine polls, as one of the greatest basslines of all time.

The musical relationship between “Good Times” and “Rapper's Delight,” and the change in songwriting credits, is documented in Library of Congress materials.

Nile Rodgers's official site reports that “Good Times” was voted the greatest bassline of all time in Bass Player's 2026 poll. ‘Greatest’ is a poll result, not a determination of objective fact.

The Library of Congress describes Sugarhill Gang's “Rapper's Delight” as an early example of music sampling, recording that the song drew its bassline and other elements from Chic's “Good Times.” Following a later settlement, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were added to the songwriting credits for “Rapper's Delight.”

Edwards himself described his role on this song simply: holding the floor, keeping the groove tight and steady. Low positions, mainly the E and A strings, a fat, thick sound. Space came before flashy phrases.

Building the line in response to Nile Rodgers's guitar rhythm, then stacking the song on top of it — what Edwards left behind is closer to ‘where he didn't stand’ than ‘who played more.’ The reason “Good Times” has lasted this long is bound up with that restraint.

The Line
Came Back

One night, Nile Rodgers heard his own bassline being reborn inside a club.

According to the Library of Congress's expanded essay, Nile Rodgers was there the night “Rapper's Delight” had just started spreading at New York's Leviticus club. As soon as the song started, he recognized the bassline Bernard Edwards had written for “Good Times.” Rodgers went up to the DJ and asked where this track had come from.

When one bassline rings out again under a different name in a club, the question isn't only ‘who played it first.’ It's also how strongly that movement stays in memory, and who ends up putting that memory on the record.

The same source records that Rodgers and Edwards later raised this issue, and that after an out-of-court settlement, both of their names were added to the songwriting credits for “Rapper's Delight.”

We don't call this scene a ‘legend.’ We call it a record the Library of Congress left behind. Though it's also worth noting that this single piece of material doesn't independently prove every detail of that night.

The Session

A good studio performance isn't the result of one hand alone. It's also the result of a system that reads everyone's judgment quickly.

What matters in a session isn't only how skilled each player is. How tempo is shared, how quickly everyone understands the engineer's and producer's language, and how precisely each player leaves space for the other parts — all of this works together.

The actual way of working was concrete. Once a session started, a chord chart went up on the music stand. Players ran through the song once or twice to confirm the structure, then recorded the master take right away. Drummer Hal Blaine recalled the days of playing three or four three-hour sessions in a single day, and said that when a session ran late into the night, people would just lie down on the studio floor.

What let them survive that pace wasn't some glamorous backstory. By the accounts of people who were there, what mostly kept the studio running in those days was coffee and cigarettes — the deadline came before anything else, more than any drug.

So the history of a studio can't be explained by a gear list alone. What remains is a process: the same people meeting again and again, solving the same problems again, arriving at one musical judgment in a short span of time.

That's also why this issue talks about ‘the hand.’ A hand doesn't make music alone. A hand listens to other people's movement and responds to it.

For Vol.02: The Session Player's Touch. Like 1960s L.A. Studio Pop.

Things
We Keep.

What remains might not be a grand statement. The tool you pick up again, the one line you listen to again, and the angle a hand still remembers.

A small tool the hand remembers. Something you end up going back to no matter how many times you switch it out.

A movement you can still recognize even after it moves to a different song.

A story that's still interesting even after you've separated fact, recollection, and interpretation.