Greatest Session Musicians
Session musicians are musicians hired to perform in recording sessions or live performances. Session musicians are usually not permanent members of a musical ensemble or band. They work behind the scenes and rarely achieve individual fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders. However, top session musicians are well known within the music industry, and some have become publicly recognized, such as the Wrecking Crew and Motown’s The Funk Brothers.
Many session musicians specialize in playing common instruments such as guitar, piano, bass, or drums. Others are specialists, and play brass, woodwinds, and strings. Many session musicians play multiple instruments, which lets them play in a wider range of musical situations, genres and styles. Examples of “doubling” include double bass and electric bass; acoustic guitar and mandolin; piano and accordion; and saxophone and other woodwind instruments.
Session musicians are used when musical skills are needed on a short-term basis. Typically session musicians are used by recording studios to provide backing tracks for other musicians for recording sessions and live performances; recording music for advertising, film, television, and theater. In the 2000s, the terms “session musician” and “studio musician” are synonymous, though in past decades, “studio musician” meant a musician associated with a single record company, recording studio or entertainment agency.
Hal Blaine
Was an American drummer and session musician estimated to be among the most recorded studio drummers in the history of the music industry, claiming over 35,000 sessions and 6,000 singles. His drumming is featured on 150 US top 10 hits, 40 of which went to number one, as well as many film and television soundtracks.
Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Blaine moved with his family to California in 1943 and subsequently began playing jazz and big band music before taking up rock and roll session work. He became one of the regular players in Phil Spector’s de facto house band, which Blaine nicknamed “the Wrecking Crew”. Some of the records Blaine played on include the Ronettes’ single “Be My Baby” (1963), which contained a drum beat that became widely imitated, as well as works by popular artists such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, and the Byrds.
Blaine’s workload declined from the 1980s onwards as recording and musical practices changed. In 2000, he was among the inaugural “sidemen” inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2018 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Chet Atkins
was an American musician, occasional vocalist, songwriter, and record producer, who along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, among others, created the country music style that came to be known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country music’s appeal to adult pop music fans. He was primarily known as a guitarist. He also played the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and ukulele.
Atkins’s signature picking style was inspired by Merle Travis. Other major guitar influences were Django Reinhardt, George Barnes, Les Paul, and, later, Jerry Reed.[1] His distinctive picking style and musicianship brought him admirers inside and outside the country scene, both in the United States and abroad. Atkins spent most of his career at RCA Victor and produced records for the Browns, Hank Snow, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Perry Como, Floyd Cramer, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Waylon Jennings, and many others.
Scotty Moore
was an American guitarist and recording engineer. He is best known for backing Elvis Presley in the first part of his career, between 1954 and the beginning of Elvis’s Hollywood years.
Bill Black
was an American musician and bandleader who is noted as one of the pioneers of rock and roll. He was the bassist in Elvis Presley’s early trio. Black later formed Bill Black’s Combo.
DJ Fontana
was an American musician best known as the drummer for Elvis Presley for 14 years. In October 1954 he was hired to play drums for Presley, which marked the beginning of a fifteen-year relationship. He played on over 460 RCA cuts with Elvis.
King Curtis
was an American saxophonist known for rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, blues, funk and soul jazz. Variously a bandleader, band member, and session musician, he was also a musical director and record producer. Adept at tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, he played riffs and solos on such hit singles as “Respect” by Aretha Franklin, and “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters (the latter of which later became the inspiration for Boots Randolph’s “Yakety Sax”) and his own “Memphis Soul Stew”.
Floyd Cramer
was an American Hall of Fame pianist who was one of the architects of the Nashville sound. He was known for his “slip note” piano style, in which an out-of-key note slides into the correct note.
James Burton
is an American guitarist. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since, Burton has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum. Critic Mark Demming writes that “Burton has a well-deserved reputation as one of the finest guitar pickers in either country or rock … Burton is one of the best guitar players to ever touch a fretboard.” He is ranked number 19 in Rolling Stones’ list of 100 Greatest Guitarists.
Since the 1950s, Burton has recorded and performed with an array of notable singers, including Bob Luman, Dale Hawkins, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley (and leader of Presley’s TCB Band), The Everly Brothers,[4] Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Glen Campbell, John Denver, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Judy Collins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Claude King, Elvis Costello, Joe Osborn, Roy Orbison, Joni Mitchell, Hoyt Axton, Townes Van Zandt,[5] Steve Young, Vince Gill, Suzi Quatro and Allen “Puddler” Harris.
Earl Palmer
Was an American rock and roll and rhythm-and-blues drummer.[1] He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[2]
Palmer played on many recordings, including Little Richard’s first few albums and many other well-known rock and roll records. According to one obituary, “his list of credits read like a Who’s Who of American popular music of the last 60 years.”
E Street Band
is an American rock band, and has been musician Bruce Springsteen’s primary backing band since 1972. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.
The band members have also performed and recorded (both individually and as a band) with a wide range of other artists including Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Meat Loaf, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Dire Straits, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Nicks, Tom Morello, Sting, Ian Hunter, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Ray Davies, Ronnie Spector, Gary U.S. Bonds, Darlene Love, Southside Johnny, The Grateful Dead, Santana, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Tracy Chapman, Lady Gaga, Aretha Franklin, and Bob Seger.
When not working with Springsteen, members of the band have recorded solo material and have pursued successful careers as session musicians, record producers, songwriters, actors and other roles in entertainment.
Dick Dale
was an American rock guitarist. He was a pioneer of surf music, drawing on Middle Eastern music scales and experimenting with reverberation. Dale was known as “The King of the Surf Guitar”, which was also the title given to his second studio album.
Dale worked closely with the manufacturer Fender to produce custom-made amplifiers[1] including the first-ever 100-watt guitar amplifier.[2] He pushed the limits of electric amplification technology, helping to develop equipment that was capable of producing a louder guitar sound without sacrificing reliability.
Buddy Harman
was an American country music session musician.
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Harman played drums on over 18,000 sessions for artists such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Songwriter Larry Petree, Martha Carson,[2] Dolly Parton, Brenda Lee, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Roy Orbison, Connie Francis, Chet Atkins, Marty Robbins, Ray Price, Roger Miller, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Kenny Rogers, Barbara Mandrell, Eddy Arnold, Perry Como, Merle Haggard, Reba McEntire, Gillian Welch and many more.
Harman appeared on almost all of Patsy Cline’s Decca sessions from her first in November 1960 to her last in February 1962, during which time he backed her on songs.
The Wrecking Crew
was a loose collective of session musicians based in Los Angeles whose services were employed for thousands of studio recordings in the 1960s and early 1970s, including several hundred Top 40 hits. The musicians were not publicly recognized in their era, but were viewed with reverence by industry insiders. They are now considered one of the most successful and prolific session recording units in music history.
Most of the players associated with the Wrecking Crew had formal backgrounds in jazz or classical music. The group had no official name in its active years, and it remains a subject of contention whether or not they were referred to as “the Wrecking Crew” at the time. Drummer Hal Blaine popularized the name in his 1990 memoir, attributing it to older musicians who felt that the group’s embrace of rock and roll was going to “wreck” the music industry.[1] Some of Blaine’s colleagues corroborated his account, while guitarist/bassist Carol Kaye contended that they were called “The Clique“. Another unofficial name was “The First Call Gang”, sometimes used in the 1950s for an early version of the group headed by bassist Ray Pohlman which featured some of the same musicians.
The unit coalesced in the early 1960s as the de facto house band for Phil Spector and helped realize his Wall of Sound production style.[2] They subsequently became the most requested session musicians in Los Angeles, playing behind many popular recording artists such as Jan & Dean, Sonny & Cher, the Mamas & the Papas, the 5th Dimension, Frank Sinatra, and Nancy Sinatra. The musicians were sometimes used as “ghost players” on recordings credited to rock groups, such as the Byrds’ debut rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” (1965), the first two albums by the Monkees, and the Beach Boys’ 1966 album Pet Sounds.
The Wrecking Crew’s contributions to so many hit recordings went largely unnoticed until the publication of Blaine’s memoir and the attention that followed. Keyboardist Leon Russell and guitarist Glen Campbell were members who became popular solo acts, while Blaine is reputed to have played on more than 140 top-ten hits, including approximately 40 number-one hits. Other musicians who formed the unit’s ranks were drummer Earl Palmer, saxophonist Steve Douglas, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, and keyboardist Larry Knechtel, who became a member of Bread. Blaine and Palmer were among the inaugural “sidemen” inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and the entire Wrecking Crew was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007. In 2008, they were the subject of the documentary The Wrecking Crew.
Leon Russell
was an American musician and songwriter who was involved with numerous bestselling pop music records during his 60-year career. His genres included pop, country, rock, folk, gospel, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, folk rock, blues rock, surf, standards, and Tulsa Sound.[2]
His collaborations rank as some of the most successful in music history, and as a touring musician he performed with hundreds of notable artists.[3] He recorded 33 albums[4] and at least 430 songs.[5] He wrote “Delta Lady”, recorded by Joe Cocker, and organized and performed with Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour in 1970.[6] His “A Song for You”, added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018,[7] has been recorded by more than 200 artists, and his “This Masquerade” by more than 75.[8][9][10]
As a pianist, he played in his early years on albums by The Beach Boys, Dick Dale and Jan and Dean. On his first album, Leon Russell, in 1970, the musicians included Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison. One of his biggest early fans,[11][12] Elton John, said Russell was a “mentor” and an “inspiration”. They recorded their album The Union in 2010,[13] which earned them a Grammy nomination.[14]
Russell produced and played in recording sessions for, among others Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Ike & Tina Turner, and The Rolling Stones. He wrote and recorded the hits “Tight Rope” and “Lady Blue”. He performed at The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 along with Harrison, Dylan, and Clapton, for which he earned a Grammy Award.
His recordings earned six gold records. He received two Grammy awards from seven nominations. In 2011, he was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The Funk Brothers
Were a group of Detroit-based session musicians who performed the backing to most Motown recordings from 1959 until the company moved to Los Angeles in 1972.
They are considered one of the most successful groups of studio musicians in music history. The Funk Brothers played on Motown hits such as “My Girl”, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”, “Baby Love”, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours”, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”, “The Tears of a Clown”, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, and “Heat Wave”.
