Thoughts On Tommy Tedesco and the Wrecking Crew

When I first picked up the guitar back in the ’70s, there was precious little information. I was delighted when I found out that there was a magazine, a whole magazine, dedicated to my obsession, Guitar Player. I would read every word, every interview, every ad, every letter to the editor, every month.

Guitar Player also featured monthly columnists that would get in to the nuts and bolts stuff, etudes, theory and what have you. I still use stuff that I learned in those columns every time I play.

Tommy Tedesco had a monthly column but, his was different. Tedesco was a L.A. session player and his page was set up like a journal of sorts. He would talk about a particular session, a T.V. show, movie soundtrack or an album for an artist. Right at the top of the page he listed the wages, hours worked and the instruments he played. He would tell about the date, some anecdotes and there were examples of the sheet music from the session.

To a kid, in rural Missouri, this was like a monthly post card from Mars. It seemed unreal that this guy could go in to a studio, play music for a Rockford Files episode and, over the course of an afternoon, get paid $348.00 or something. And, he would get paid double if he added a mandolin part. Double! That was some kind of a fantasy land.

To be honest, I really objected to the whole idea. My thinking was that studio musicians were only doing it for the money, not from the heart. The real players, the real musicians were the ones in bands, pouring their hearts into it, living on the road, getting screwed by the label but, giving their all for the fans. I thought that studio musicians were part of the system, part of the problem. I really did think that way, it’s embarrassing to say so.

But, I started to wise up. Reading Tommy Tedesco’s monthly wisdom opened my eyes. He was funny, warm and genuine. He was a family man. It was obvious that he deeply cared about his craft. His job was to deliver what the producer or conductor wanted to hear. That’s what he was getting paid for. He approached it like a job and did it with pride.

I would read the story each month then, I would play through the musical examples from the session. Sometimes they were simple but, Tommy would give the inside info; you have to be able to sight read this with tape rolling 3 minutes after it’s handed to you. Watch out for the eighth rest in bar seven, if you blow that, you blow the whole take and 32 musicians have to start all over again. So, knowing the context, the pressure that was involved, it was incredibly difficult to do. I knew right off the bat, that I wasn’t cut out for it. But, knowing what was expected of these guys was tremendous insight. It gave me respect for what they did. And, it also made me approach each opportunity to play music with a work ethic. To not give it my best would be disrespectful.

I have to mention a little bit about Tommy Tedesco’s sense of humor. He wrote about showing up at a Zappa session wearing Groucho Marx fake nose glasses, a Hawaiian shirt and a grass skirt. He played ukulele on a Gong Show episode.

And, another thing; Tedesco could really play. He played serious jazz. He was serious about his craft but, beyond that an artist. I bought an instructional book that he wrote, chord ideas and improv tips that had an accompanying tape where he demonstrated some picking techniques. He could play faster than you can hear but, that wasn’t what he was about. He could do that.

Sometimes you don’t realize what has an impact on you until much later. And, over the last couple of weeks, I was thinking about Tedesco and how he had that kind of impact, even though I never met him and, never went to a show he played. And, I was thinking that I need to write about that sometime because, there are a whole lot of people that probably never heard of the guy, even though he is the most recorded guitar player of all time.

Then, out of the blue, I heard about a documentary that Denny Tedesco (Tommy’s son) directed called “The Wrecking Crew” that is making the film festival rounds.

The Wrecking Crew were a group of Studio Musicians in Los Angeles in the 60s who played on hits for the “Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, Jan & Dean, The Monkees, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Mamas and Papas, Tijuana Brass, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Rivers and were Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. The amount of work that they were involved in was tremendous.

We’re talking about Tommy Tedesco, Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, Plas Johnson, Larry Knetchel, Earl Palmer, Jim Gordon, Ollie Michell and others that made up the L.A. studio scene.

These are the players whose influence reaches far further than their recognition. All of you have heard all of these musicians thousands of times. You are still hearing them. Turn on your T.V. tonight or, your radio on the drive to work and, they will be there.

It still exists because, it was genuine honest work. The music they did exists but, the scene doesn’t. There isn’t anything remotely resembling it anymore. The closest thing is Nashville but, it’s not the same. The handful of players that work on the handful of major label releases out of Nashville today and make a living at it, is a far cry from the amount and breadth of the work that players in New York, Detroit, Memphis, Muscle Shoals, L.A. and Nashville itself were involved with up until the late ’70’s.

Here’s the cold reality; every time there has been a major advance in technology that pertains to the recording or playing of music, it has put players out of work. Multi-track meant you could play that piano part yourself and punch in the sloppy parts instead of hiring a guy. Synthesizers; we don’t need horns or strings unless we are trying to win a Grammy. Drum machines; we don’t need to bring that guy in for a demo anymore. All the way to where we are now, with the availability and capability to record and edit digitally, we don’t need to hire any of those guys even the engineers.

If you don’t keep something active, it’s going to atrophy and pretty soon after that, just fade away.

The reason that a lot of music from the era of hiring top notch guys to make records and soundtracks is timeless is, that it’s real. Real humans playing music together, at the same time. It was recorded well and the interaction, in real time, was captured.

There are still great players and, every once in a while, some project has the budget in place to do it right, hire a good rhythm section, string section etc. And there’s good stuff being done but, here’s the thing; that rhythm section, those players aren’t working together every day, around the clock like the Wrecking Crew, the Funk Brothers, the Stax guys, the N.Y. bunch or the cats at Fame. So, it isn’t going to have the same amount of magic on a consistent basis. It’s a law of musical physics, if you want to sound the best as a team, you have to work as a team a lot.

I’m glad to see that Denny Tedesco made this movie, it had to be a true labor of love. I was glad to see the Funk Brothers film several years ago for that matter (“Standing In The Shadows Of Motown”). See, the studio guys were doing work for hire so, they took a pass on a lot of accolades. They deserve the recognition and, culturally it’s well worth taking a look at what was really behind the music that lives on.

Think about that, and next time you hear some catchy guitar lick on an old record, in some movie or, an old sitcom that turns your head for a minute, think about this guy.

There’s a fair chance that he’s the one playing it.

My dad was thrilled to be able to make a living at guitar. To make a living at an instrument puts you in a small minority. But to record as many hits as they did, they were even part of a smaller minority.

-Denny Tedesco

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Tags: Denny Tedesco, Guitar, session musicians, Tommy Tedesco