The Peculiar Truth about the Queen of Bass Players
Published in
3 min readAug 22, 2023
- Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys called her “the greatest damn bass player in the world” and “ahead of her time.”
- She is Carole Kaye, and she played on countless recognizable hit songs throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
- Some of the titles include The Beach Boys Good Vibrations and California Girls; Ritchie Valens’ La Bamba; the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling; the themes to Mission: Impossible, The Addams Family, and Batman; Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s Something Stupid; Barbara Streisand’s The Way We Were; Feelin’ Alright by Joe Cocker; I Was Made to Love Her by Stevie Wonder; Suspicious Minds by Elvis Presley; Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme by Simon & Garfunkel; several songs by the Supremes, the Temptations, and the Four Tops; Danke Schoen by Wayne Newton; Candy Man by Sammy Davis, Jr.; I’m a Believer and Last Train to Clarksville by the Monkees; River Deep, Mountain High by Ike and Tina Turner; plus hundreds more.
- Carole invented the classic bass line for Sonny and Cher’s hit song The Beat Goes On.
- In a field overwhelmingly dominated by men, a woman bass player at that time was one of a kind. Her brilliant musical talent made her much sought after.
- Both of her parents were musicians, and her family was poor. In 1942, they moved from…
