They don’t spend their lives on tour bus­es, per­form­ing for hun­dreds or thou­sands of fans. They don’t make music videos or appear on album cov­ers and late-night TV show couches—all the things musi­cians are sup­posed to do in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. But they con­stant­ly com­pose, play, and record music. And their work may get heard far more than that of most aspir­ing stars, though we may nev­er know their names.

They are ses­sion musi­cians, the sea­soned play­ers that song­writ­ers, singers, and pro­duc­ers call on when it’s time to get into the stu­dio and get seri­ous. And Car­ol Kaye may be the most pro­lif­ic of them all, “with a career span­ning more than half a cen­tu­ry and appear­ances on an esti­mat­ed 10,000 record­ings,” as the Poly­phon­ic video pro­file above notes.

Name a clas­sic rock, pop, R&B, or soul album and there’s a very good chance Kaye’s bass appears on it. The Beach Boys, Neil Young, Frank Zap­pa, Lou Rawls, Ike & Tina Turn­er, Dusty Spring­field, Love, The Mon­kees, Ray Charles, The Right­eous Broth­ers, Wayne New­ton, and on and on.

She start­ed as a gui­tar prodi­gy at the age of 13. Soon, she was teach­ing the instru­ment and play­ing jazz clubs at night. At 25, she caught the atten­tion of band­leader “Bumps” Black­well, who recruit­ed her for her debut ses­sion gig, play­ing on Sam Cooke’s “Sum­mer­time.” Her rhythm gui­tar work can also be heard on Richie Valens’ “La Bam­ba” and sev­er­al Son­ny & Cher hits.

But it’s Kaye’s work on the bass that made her most renowned, the result of a “hap­py acci­dent” when the bass play­er in a record­ing ses­sion failed to show up. Kaye took over and loved it so much that she stuck with the instru­ment, say­ing in one inter­view that she found in the bass “my own lit­tle spot. I knew what to do and what to invent.”

Invent she did, on both gui­tar and bass, con­tribut­ing her taste­ful play­ing to so many clas­sics that the his­to­ry of mod­ern music can­not be told with­out her. She has influ­enced count­less bass play­ers, from Gene Sim­mons to Tina Wey­mouth and writ­ten some of the most icon­ic grooves of all time. How’s that for a musi­cian who nev­er made a video?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Car­ol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

Car­ol Kaye, 81-Year-Old Pio­neer of Rock, Gives Kiss’ Gene Sim­mons a Bass Les­son

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The best part about watch­ing videos of my favorite musi­cians talk­ing about their play­ing is the moment they reveal that cer­tain styl­is­tic quirks–the ones that made them who they are–came about more-or-less by acci­dent. Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mas­cis, for exam­ple, well-known for his huge, open chords as well as his long, expres­sive solos, recent­ly told Matt Sweeney that he only learned to palm-mute (damp­en the strings to muf­fle exces­sive ring­ing) a cou­ple years ago. Maybe he was jok­ing, but the idea that an essen­tial ele­ment of his mas­sive sound emerged because he didn’t know anoth­er way to play fills me with joy.

Anoth­er of my favorite play­ers is also a self-con­fessed “com­plete auto­di­dact,” Tina Wey­mouth of Talk­ing Heads and Tom Tom Club. As dis­tinc­tive a play­er as Mas­cis, it’s impos­si­ble to mis­take her style for any­one else’s. “I was only play­ing bass for five months when the band first played [live],” she told an audi­ence in 2014 at the Red Bull Music Acad­e­my in Tokyo. “I did not take a les­son. Nobody taught me.” But unlike many of her self-taught male coun­ter­parts with roots in punk and a decades-long asso­ci­a­tion with a band that defined an era, Wey­mouth, argues Car­rie Couro­gen at PAPER, has been trag­i­cal­ly under-rec­og­nized.

Yet “with­out her there would be no ‘Psy­cho Killer,’ no ‘Burn­ing Down the House,’ no ‘Once in a Lifetime,’—grooves which are imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able.” It takes noth­ing away from the smarts of David Byrne’s song­writ­ing to point out that Talk­ing Heads was just as much a prod­uct of its top-notch rhythm sec­tion. Weymouth’s “basslines became the pulse of the band,” writes Couro­gen, “infus­ing down­town punk with a new sound: a dance­able com­bi­na­tion of the soul­ful, funky jams of Par­lia­ment and James Brown with the rock steadi­ness of Car­ol Kaye.” In the video above from Reverb.com, our host Jere­my walks us through the ele­ments of Wey­mouth’s play­ing

As Jere­my points out, unlike many play­ers, Weymouth’s sound was not defined by one par­tic­u­lar instru­ment: through­out her long career, she played Fend­er Mus­tang and Jazz bass­es, a Hofn­er Club, and sev­er­al cus­tom bass­es. “She real­ly used what she need­ed,” he says, “to fit the sound to the tune.” Jere­my him­self demon­strates her basslines on a Fend­er Mus­tang. He gives her high praise indeed by com­par­ing her sim­ple yet melod­ic lines to those of greats Don­ald “Duck” Dunn and James Jamerson—long con­sid­ered two of the best play­ers in funk and soul. It’s a well-deserved com­par­i­son, and Wey­mouth has men­tioned both as influ­ences.

That she took their Motown and Mem­phis sounds and turned them into angu­lar art-rock makes her all the more inter­est­ing a play­er to study, and a rea­son for her major influ­ence on gen­er­a­tions of bassists who draw as much from clas­sic funk as from 80s New Wave. There may be no more per­fect fusion of the two than in Weymouth’s playing—and in her song­writ­ing too, as Tom Tom Club’s 1981 “Genius of Love” made abun­dant­ly clear. Jere­my cov­ers this one as well, and if you’re a bass play­er, you should too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

What Makes Flea Such an Amaz­ing Bass Play­er? A Video Essay Breaks Down His Style

What Made John Entwistle One of the Great Rock Bassists? Hear Iso­lat­ed Tracks from “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Baba O’Riley” & “Pin­ball Wiz­ard”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

As we get old­er, fam­i­ly and friends may pass away or leave us some­how, but for many of us cre­ativ­i­ty can be our solace. (Yes, it could also make us immor­tal, like Bach or Shake­speare, but we won’t be around to find out.) In the case of nona­ge­nar­i­an Inge Gins­berg that has been the case in the unlike­li­est of out­lets: death met­al.

This charm­ing New York Times doc­u­men­tary by Leah Galant details the unlike­ly team-up between Ginsberg–who spends her time between Switzer­land and New York City–and the young musi­cians who became her friends and got her into per­form­ing her poems live with full death met­al accom­pa­ni­ment.

Half earnest and half good-natured stunt, the cen­ter of it all is Ginsberg’s poems, which she has been writ­ing for years, and only a tiny glimpse of which we get to hear. The poems take on heavy sub­jects of mor­tal­i­ty, our destruc­tion of the earth, lone­li­ness. At one point Gins­berg was writ­ing these with no audi­ence, and, as she says in the doc, soci­ety is not inter­est­ed in hear­ing from the elder­ly (espe­cial­ly when it’s this dark.) It took her younger friends to make the con­nec­tion between her poems and the usu­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of death met­al and insist Gins­berg per­form them in that hec­tor­ing, doom laden-style of the genre. She was game.

Galant’s mini doc rewinds his­to­ry halfway through to explain Ginsberg’s upbring­ing: a “Jew­ish princess” who sur­vived the Holo­caust, fled to Amer­i­ca, and wound up writ­ing songs with her hus­band (Dean Martin’s “Try Me” was one of their hits). Tired of the war, they moved back to Zurich, and, well, fast for­ward three hus­bands and sev­er­al decades lat­er, Gins­berg was back in the spot­light, per­form­ing on the Swiss ver­sion of America’s Got Tal­ent.

We won’t spoil the end­ing of the doc, as the band try to get Gins­berg to try out for the actu­al America’s Got Tal­ent, because we’ve already said enough. But we’ll leave you with this quote from the singer her­self: “My con­cept of heav­en and hell is that in the moment of death you real­ize your life was full and good–that is heav­en. And if you think, ‘Oh, I should have done this or that,’ I think that’s hell.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Bat­tle-Scarred Heavy Met­al Musi­cians Play Rock ‘n’ Roll Clas­sics on Hel­lo Kit­ty Instru­ments

John Cage’s Silent, Avant-Garde Piece 4’33” Gets Cov­ered by a Death Met­al Band

The Physics of Play­ing a Gui­tar Visu­al­ized: Metallica’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” Viewed from Inside the Gui­tar

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Joni Mitchell, Kei­th Richards, Robert John­son, Ani DiFran­co, and Bob Dylan. What do they have in com­mon? For one, they’ve exper­i­ment­ed with alter­nate gui­tar tun­ings, going beyond the stan­dard EADGBE tun­ing most com­mon­ly used by musi­cians. Kei­th Richards used the Open G tun­ing (GDGBD) to write some of the Stones’ clas­sic tracks–“Honky Tonk Woman,” “Brown Sug­ar,” “Beast of Bur­den,” “Gimme Shel­ter,” “Hap­py,” and “Start Me Up.” Try play­ing them in a stan­dard tun­ing and they’ll nev­er sound quite right.

If you’re a gui­tarist look­ing for a dif­fer­ent sound, spend some time with War­ren Allen’s Ency­clo­pe­dia of Alter­nate Gui­tar Tun­ings. It’s a handy resource. First cre­at­ed in 1997, this vin­tage web page presents a library of uncon­ven­tion­al tun­ings, com­plete with a list of songs where they were artis­ti­cal­ly put to use. Enter the Ency­clo­pe­dia here.

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via @dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Some of rock’s great­est singers have cat­a­logs that stretch for miles, with B‑sides and deep cuts as plen­ti­ful as the well-known favorites. We could rat­tle off hand­fuls of names that fit the descrip­tion. But there’s a small­er, more select group—a rar­i­fied com­pa­ny brought into being almost by acci­dent, whose list of hits con­sists of just one song.

But it’s one hell of a song.

Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky”… try and imag­ine it with­out Claire Torry’s word­less gospel break­down. Or bet­ter yet hear it for your­self. It’s okay. I mean it’s real­ly good. I mean, it’s great, really—as a Richard Wright show­case, and David Gilmour’s slide gui­tar is heav­en­ly. But it’s no “Great Gig in the Sky,” if you know what I mean.

Dit­to the Rolling Stone’s “Gimme Shel­ter.” Kei­th real­ly shines, with that “freaky, tremo­lo-drenched riff like some­thing straight out of the future—or at least a very chill­ing alter­nate present,” as Gui­tar World so apt­ly puts it. It would take anoth­er fif­teen years before the effect was put to such mem­o­rable use. The cav­ernous reverb of the whole pro­duc­tion con­jures spir­its, though Jagger’s vocal is typ­i­cal­ly muf­fled.

But take out Mer­ry Clayton’s wail and what have you got? A pret­ty good Stones tune, grant­ed, but it’s no “Gimme Shel­ter.” Her con­tri­bu­tions make this an uncan­ni­ly haunt­ing song, a warn­ing from some ancient trag­ic cho­rus, a fren­zied Sibylline prophe­cy, and I think I’m under­selling it. How did she come to haunt this song? Hear her tell it in the video at the top, an excerpt from, 20 Feet from Star­dom, the doc­u­men­tary that gives unsung back­ing singers some long-over­due expo­sure.

We’ve heard Jag­ger tell the sto­ry before, in an inter­view we pre­vi­ous­ly high­light­ed here. “We ran­dom­ly phoned up this poor lady in the mid­dle of the night,” he says, “and she arrived in her curlers and pro­ceed­ed to do that in one or two takes, which is pret­ty amaz­ing. She came in and knocked off this rather odd lyric. It’s not the sort of lyric you give anyone—‘Rape, murder/It’s just a shot away’—but she real­ly got into it, as you can hear on the record.”

Boy, did she. She was in curlers, as she remem­bers it, and also silk paja­mas, a mink coat, and a Chanel scarf. Preg­nant and get­ting ready for bed before she got the call from pro­duc­er Jack Nitzsche, Clay­ton, who had no idea who the Stones were, almost refused until her hus­band said “Hon­ey, you know, you real­ly should go and do this date.” It was fate. “Clay­ton sang with such emo­tion­al force that her voice cracked,” notes Mike Springer in our pre­vi­ous post. “In the iso­lat­ed track above, you can hear the oth­ers in the stu­dio shout­ing in amaze­ment.”

And in the rec­ol­lec­tion almost forty years lat­er, Clay­ton and Jag­ger still shake their heads in amaze­ment. Asked if she want­ed to do a sec­ond take, she remem­bers, “I said to myself, I’m gonna do anoth­er one… blow them out of this room.” Unspo­ken in her remem­brance is what the effort may have cost her. “Despite giv­ing what would become the most famous per­for­mance of her career,” writes Springer, “it turned out to be a trag­ic night for Clay­ton. Short­ly after leav­ing the stu­dio, she lost her baby in a mis­car­riage…. For many years Clay­ton found the song too painful to hear, let alone sing.”

In live per­for­mances, Lisa Fis­ch­er and oth­er singers have tak­en on Clayton’s vocal, with admirable results. But it would nev­er have exist­ed with­out her will­ing­ness to take a chance, in the mid­dle of the night, preg­nant and in paja­mas, on an unknown (to her) British band. She lent the track the full force of her per­son­al­i­ty, turn­ing a pret­ty good song into a 20th cen­tu­ry clas­sic.

Read more of Clayton’s sto­ry at Mike Springer’s post here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Hear How Clare Torry’s Vocals on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky” Made the Song Go from Pret­ty Good to Down­right Great

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness