Carol Kaye
Born 1935 (85 years old)
“A note doesn’t have a sex to it. You either play it good or you don’t...some people can’t handle that. They want to think that it was a man that played the bass...but when you hear somebody with balls, that’s me.”
You may not know her name or even her face, but I guarantee you know her music. You’ve probably spent a great deal of time listening to her play. Carol Kaye has been playing guitar and bass longer than many people even live. Her career lasted over fifty years, and she has played on over 10,000 recordings.
Carol was born in Washington and grew up in a poor neighborhood. Her mom bought her a steel guitar from a traveling salesman for ten dollars when she was thirteen years old, and she was teaching lessons a year later. At fourteen, she was playing in jazz clubs. It was her club performances that eventually got her invited to record with Sam Cooke. There was a lot more money in session work, so she made a career out of it. Carol started as a guitarist, but when a bass player failed to show up to a gig, she picked up a bass and never looked back. And she played with EVERYONE.
Carol can be heard on recordings for the Righteous Brothers, The Beach Boys, Tina Turner, Simon and Garfunkel, Nancy Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Monkees, Frank Sinatra…seriously, the list keeps going on forever and ever. She was almost always the only woman in the room. She remembers some people as having a sexist attitude toward her, but from what I gathered today I just don’t think she cared much. She just wanted to play music.
In addition to a ridiculously impressive recording career, Carol also has written books on bass playing and is a lifelong teacher. I might be biased, but I think one of her greatest honors in life is that she has the cutest French Bulldog in the whole entire world named after her.
Thank you, Carol Kaye.
