Think about the songs that shaped a generation – the unforgettable melodies, the driving rhythms, the guitar solos that still make you tap your foot. For decades, a dedicated group of musical titans known as The Wrecking Crew quietly laid down the tracks for thousands of these beloved recordings. Among them was Tommy Tedesco, a guitarist extraordinaire whose hands shaped the sound of countless 1960s and 70s pop hits. Though you’ve undoubtedly enjoyed his playing on some of the biggest records ever made, Tommy and his fellow legendary studio musicians remained largely out of the spotlight, true hidden heroes behind the soundtrack of American music.
Now, prepare to finally hear their remarkable tale, thanks to Tommy’s son, filmmaker Denny Tedesco, whose acclaimed documentary The Wrecking Crew shines a much-deserved light on his father and these other iconic session players. This is a heartfelt tribute by a son to his dad, and a powerful celebration of the immense talent, tireless work, and diverse backgrounds that truly built the sound of American pop. Join us as we discover the inspiring story of these unsung musical legends, giving them the recognition they’ve always earned within Our American Stories.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 2: “…you’ve never heard of.”
Speaker 1: Tommy’s son, filmmaker Denny Tedesco, sought to fix this and made the movie The Wrecking Crew, a terrific documentary about his father and the other musicians who made up this remarkable band. Let’s begin with Denny Tedesco, a great tribute by a son to a father.
Speaker 3: In the 1960s, there were a group of studio musicians in Los Angeles that became known as The Wrecking Crew. Now, I call them the melting pot of America’s pop music. Italians, Jews, Irish, Black, classically trained jazz musicians, country musicians, hillbilly, and one woman. Now, together for a few years in the mid-1960s, they ruled the Billboard charts with their recordings. They were a hidden secret among music buyers and listeners, but they were revered by artists, producers, and engineers. If a pop artist recorded in L.A. in the 1960s, most likely many of these, if not all, these studio musicians were involved in the recording. They recorded with The Beach Boys, Elvis, (to mention) The Byrds, Jan and Dean, The Mamas and the Papas, The Monkees, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, Sam Cooke, The Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers, and so many more. Why am I telling you this story? Well, one of those Italian guitar players, Tommy Tedesco, was my father. My name is Denny Tedesco. Some of the other voices you will hear come from the documentary The Wrecking Crew. But before I tell you more about my father and his friends, you need to know what came before to lead up to their success. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the music scene was changing, and rock and roll couldn’t be ignored. As generations and cultures clashed, so did the music. In 1960, rock and roll was in its infancy, and there was doubt among the parents in the older generation that the music would even last. Even record companies would take their time putting their toes into the rock and roll pool. One of the first changes in the record world was in the 1950s. There was a transition from the 78 rpm record format to the 45 rpm, which really represented the pop recording. In 1958, the 45 disc replaced the 78 completely. The first time you’ll hear the term “top forty” is in 1960. Here, producer Snuff Garrett tells the story.
Speaker 4: Todd Storz is a day drinker, and he would sit in this local bar and sit there all day and drink. One day, after a year or so, he thought he was sitting there thinking about it: How many records are on that jukebox? Because everybody plays the same five or six records all the time, there were one hundred records in the jukebox. He thought: How, the one hundred records? Why do they keep playing those five or six all the time?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: And they figured that out and said, “Well, maybe people just want to hear the hits. They don’t want to hear this or that or whatever. They want to hear the same songs over numbers.” So he and Gordon McLendon talked on the phone and invented Top Forty radio.
Speaker 3: With radio featuring top hit singles, there was a demand for product, and record companies needed to supply that demand. Now, you have to realize the main commercial pop recordings were coming out of New York, Nashville, Detroit, London. In the late ’50s and early ’60s, L.A. had a very established recording business, but it was really overshadowed by the film business. Here is producer Lou Adler.
Speaker 2: Tell you more.
Speaker 5: I mean, they didn’t recognize what was happening in L.A. music to film people. It was much later that they started to even think, “This would be a good soundtrack to have.” You know, we can not only have a film that has good grosses; we can make money on the soundtrack. I think they didn’t respect the music business for a very long time, even when it was successful in L.A.
Speaker 3: The recording studio musicians of the time were keeping busy, but not so much by the pop scene. Movie and television soundtracks kept many employed, and the West Coast jazz scene came to be known as “the cool sound.” But things started to change when artists like Sam Cooke, Jan and Dean, The Beach Boys, and Phil Spector started to have hits in the early 1960s. Labels started to see the tide turn, so they started signing new acts. Like any business, you want to make sure you don’t overextend on a budget and put the odds of success in your favor. The music business at the time did exactly that. Many of the artists in the early 1960s were singers, so the labels would hire producers who turned around and hired session musicians to record the music. So, in came a generation of musicians that were hungry to break into the studio scene. As I said earlier, they came from all kinds of backgrounds. My father came from Niagara Falls, New York, with my mom and older brother in 1953. Here’s a clip of my mother telling this story.
Speaker 6: We went to the prom, and Ralph Marterie was playing the dance. He found out that their guitar player was leaving that night, and he tried out, auditioned, and was hired right then and there. It was on a Friday night and a Saturday night. He left for New York City.
Speaker 3: And, to tell the truth,
Speaker 6: Okay, you gotta let go. Marterie was going to get a guitar singer so that he could only pay for one guy. He decided he knew there was nothing there in Niagara Falls for him. He wanted to go to California.
Speaker 3: To play. Well,
Speaker 7: My father struggled to find work playing guitar. He had to make ends meet working in a warehouse. He always said it was the best job he ever had; he hated it so much it made him practice every day.
Speaker 6: I was told by two guys before we left, “He’s never going to make it.” So, after seven months of struggling here, Daddy wanted to go back, and I said there’s no way because I wasn’t giving him to those two guys. And that’s what Dad said, “My stubborn Sicilian wife.”
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Denny Tedesco tell the story of his father, Tommy Tedesco. We continue with this remarkable story and a remarkable tribute by a son to a father here on Our American Stories.
Speaker 1: Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we’re asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue with Our American Stories. And now, let’s return to Denny Tedesco.
Speaker 7: While my father struggled to find work playing guitar, he had to make ends meet working in a warehouse. He always said it was the best job he ever had; he hated it so much it made him practice every day.
Speaker 8: In fact, my wife was behind me 100 percent. Never complained. My wife accepted it. This was our living. Our whole family took it exactly that way. Everyone saw a musician’s wife would come and complain to her, and
Speaker 3: she’d talk to them.
Speaker 8: She’d say, “Well, look, that’s his living.”
Speaker 6: I was very jealous of the guitar when we were first dating and got engaged, and he paid a lot more attention to the guitar, I felt. So I gave him an ultimatum: “It’s me or the guitar!” And he said, “Honey, the guitar doesn’t have legs.”
Speaker 9: You do.
Speaker 6: You got so upset with him, I took my ring and I threw it at him, and I
Speaker 2: went looking for it.
Speaker 3: So, my father, who was a gambler, drove cross-country with his family with very little money in their pockets. It was the greatest gamble of his life that paid off. Many of the other musicians that became known as The Wrecking Crew were Hal Blaine, Earl Palmer, Jim Gordon on drums; Don Randy Leon, Russell Haldlauri, Larry NetTel on piano; on bass where Joe Osborne, Ray Polman, Carol Kay, Lyle Ritz. And other guitarists that sat alongside my father included Glen Campbell, Bill Pitman, Barney Kessel, Lou Morale, Billy Strange, and many others. The Wrecking Crew wasn’t a band, per se. Each individual was hired as individuals. Here are Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, and the engineers from Gold Star—Larry Levine, Dave Gold, and Stan Ross—talking about the genesis of the name.
Speaker 10: You know, all the guys that had been in the studios—God bless them all—for twenty, thirty years. They all wore the blue blazers and the neckties, and there was no talking, no smoking, and no nothing. And we came in there with Levi’s and T-shirts, smoking cigarettes, whatever weird. And the older guys were saying, “They’re going to wreck the business! You know, they are going to wreck the music business.” “Well, that’s how that whole Wrecking Crew thing came in.”
Speaker 7: Even though the term “The Wrecking Crew” gained popularity with rock historians, many of these musicians never heard the term until years later.
Speaker 3: There were a few reasons the older guys were putting it down. Remember, many of the established studio musicians were from the old-school big bands, and they were busy working in lucrative careers in soundtracks. When the labels started pushing some of the younger acts, they would create demos first. Now, the older musicians wanted to take a chance on taking a demo session because it was illegal, and the views of the Musicians’ Union. Why take a chance when you’re working on a movie for a three-hour gig that paid us? But for some of the younger guys, an opportunity to get involved with new producers and new artists. Once these guys became so in demand, from that point on, most of the recordings became legit union dates. One of the producers who hired these guys was Phil Spector. When he moved back to the West Coast, that seems to be the anchor that changed so much for the musicians as well as the music scene. Here are the voices of Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, Plas Johnson, and Cher talking about Phil Spector.
Speaker 6: Hello, let’s go, let’s make one.
Speaker 10: For, uh…
Speaker 11: Three… well.
Speaker 10: Well, all musicians… First of all, yeah, most people used the four-piece rhythm section. He had four guitars, or six or seven. There were four pianos; always one upright bass, one Fender bass. I mean, there’s only one drums. Usually 50 people playing percussion instruments in a very small room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a small room, but an average…
Speaker 10: one, and a huge echo chamber that Gold Star was famous for. That was the walls, ceramic walls.
Speaker 12: Philip was walking in a different universe than everybody else, and so in his mind, it was all him, you know, and the guys were just some sort of an extension of what he couldn’t do.
Speaker 3: Phil loved jazz guitarists. So, in the guitar section, he would have my father, Barney Kessel, Bill Pitman, Carol Kaye, Howard Roberts, and a few others. Phil could be hard to get along with for many, but my father seemed to be able to deal with him in his own way. Here’s my father talking about his first time working with Phil.
Speaker 8: Because the first time I’ve been here in Phil Spector’s name, with all the guys, I didn’t know anything about him.
Speaker 3: All I knows… ever we worked for him.
Speaker 2: So I went on this job.
Speaker 10: It was like group therapy, you know, and all of…
Speaker 8: A sudden… I worked for about a half hour, an hour. There was no break. Long, Finan says, “Hey, when we know, when do you take a break here?” Everybody looked at me like, “I’m not saying this—the film, you know.” I’m looking at film. “When do we take a break here?” When he says, “When I’m in New York, Kenny Brow never asked for, you know, time.” I said, “Oh, you’re starting in New York!”
Speaker 3: Yes, for life!
Speaker 8: But it was real funny, like I was the only one that ever must have talked to him like this. So after, “It’s okay, take a break!” And the next thing, you know, I was like a friend of his. I was doing. He said, “You want to go out for coffee?” He never asked…
Speaker 3: nobody for coffee. And I’m going with him and his bodyguard. Here’s the telegram that Phil sent my father in the mid-’60s, when Phil traveled to New York. I was in my New York hotel room changing channels when I came across The Lawrence Welk Show, and what do I see? Two beady Sicilian eyes in the band! What is a hip Hollywood guitar player doing on The Lawrence Welk Show? My father turned around and sent the telegram back. His response was, “What is a hip Hollywood producer watching The Lawrence Welk Show?” For the gravy train was moving fast, and you didn’t turn anything down. Many times, if a new band was going into the studio, the producer would still use these session musicians. They usually weren’t allowed to play on the album because studio time was expensive, and the producers had to make sure that they could get in and get out with the recording. Now, recording technology in the early ’60s didn’t allow for mistakes. If you had 10 to 15 players in a room, they all had to nail their parts. There were no computers helping you punch in. If you made a mistake, they would just start from the beginning and go for it. Glen Campbell described it like this: He said, “It was like playing with Michael Jordan, but everybody in the room was a Michael Jordan.” One of these groups that had their instruments stripped from them at the door were The Byrds when they recorded “Mister Tambree Man.” Here’s Roger McGuinn telling us the story.
Speaker 13: Kerry Melcher wanted to use session musicians for “Mister Tambree Man.” I’d been a studio musician in New York prior to being in The Byrds, so they let me play on it. So my feeling was, “Great, I get to play with this great and The Wrecking Crew!” Of course, the other guys—David Crosby, Michael Clarke, and Chris Hillman—were livid. They hated the idea because they didn’t get to play on their own record. We got a number one hit with it right off the back, but we knocked out two tracks in one three-hour session. To compare that with what happened when the rest of the band got to play, it took us 77 takes to get the band track for “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, which was also number one.
Speaker 3: Here are Carol Kaye and my father.
Speaker 14: Here’s the way that “The Beat Goes On” sounded when we first heard it. Let it d D down. We need to pull a rabbit at a hit for this one. It was our job to come up with riffs and stuff. So about the third line I came up with was, “Let down,” and Sonny loved it, and he gave it to Bob West, the bass player, to play it. And both of us are playing it throughout the tune, and without a good daysline, the tune doesn’t pop, you know, it doesn’t snap, you know, like a big hit record.
Speaker 8: I’ve always said, “They put notes on paper, they put notes on paper, but that’s not music.”
Speaker 2: You make the music. “What do you do with the notes? What do you do with the charts? What do you do with the parts?” “Oh, shoot, that’s right!”
Speaker 8: So it’s what you put into it, because how many days are, in fact, we’re all here…
Speaker 15: It’s what you put into it that’s not written.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, in fact, everybody, and they’re sitting here. I remember doing different things that weren’t ever even thought about, and then all of a sudden became part of the record, and part of it.
Speaker 10: Said, we all used to produce our own parts.
Speaker 2: It’s that simple.
Speaker 7: Make it pay.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I’ll never forget working with Gary Lewis and The Playboys, doing all the records. And I’ll never forget, I had one true, real, real hot lick on this one record—the Spanish stuff.
Speaker 2: All over the place!
Speaker 6: Yes, you could say, my love.
Speaker 8: And finally, his guitar player come up to me. He says, “Are you drove me crazy with that thing?” First of all, I can’t play it, so I don’t play it. And then everybody comes up to me, complimenting me on what I did.
Speaker 2: “On the day.” I said, “Well, just take the compliment and forget it.”
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Denny Tedesco celebrating and honoring his father. More of Tommy Tedesco’s story, brought to us by his son Denny, here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and Denny Tedesco’s story of his father. Guitarist Tommy Tedesco. Here’s Wrecking Crew bassist Carol Kaye to continue with this remarkable story.
Speaker 14: We learned how to play rock and roll right there on the job. “Hey, you know, if they want this, I can do it!”
Speaker 3: That’s Latin. That’s Latin music.
Speaker 14: That’s nothing. You can do that all day, day long.
Speaker 3: Here’s producer Bones Howe, Glen Campbell, Brian Wilson, Hal…
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