Monday, June 7, 2021

Remembering Joe Long - Bass Guitar Player For Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons

 

Joseph L. LaBracio
 aka Joe Long

Joseph Louis LaBracio was better known to his family and fans as Joe Long. For over a decade he was the bass guitarist for the group Frankie Valli and The  Four Seasons. Mr. Long passed away on April 21st of this year, 2021 due to effects of the Covid virus. 

Sadly Mr. Long was the second member of the group to pass away as a result of this insidious disease. The Season's original guitarist, Tommy DeVito died on September 21st of last year from the Covid virus. 

I know that some of you may not have been around in 1962, but I certainly was and remember that year when The Four Seasons came out with a huge hit song called Sherry. There were certainly a lot of great songs that came out that year, but for me Sherry stands out as one of the best.  

I can recall those days when my friends and I were out on the school playground were belting out, "Sherry, Sherry Baby..." in our little squeaky voices.

The Four Seasons had developed a unique style of combining East Coast Doo-Wop harmony with 1960's Rock and Roll. They were at the top of charts during the early 1960's. Not too long after Sherry, The Four Seasons had another hit record with their song Big Girls Don’t Cry. And their hits kept on  coming.

Jersey Boys
You may have seen the musical Jersey Boys, or even watched the movie. If so then you are aware that The Four Seasons were far from being an over night sensation. This group of guys had been making music together more than 10 years by working in clubs, bars, and even playing music bowling alleys before they became an "overnight sensation."

Their success and constant touring brought about numerous personal and family problems and tensions.  This eventually caused their guitar player, Tommy DeVito, and bass player, Nick Massi to quit the band. 

Nick Masi

The first one to leave was Nick Massi in 1965. He was tired of touring.  Massi (Nicholas Macioci) in addition to playing bass, he been the original vocal arranger and bass singer for The Four Seasons.  After leaving The Seasons he went on to arrange vocal harmony for some other well known groups and worked as a recording studio engineer.


Tommy DeVito

Tommy DeVito, the original guitar player and baritone vocalist, stayed on through 1970 when financial and personal problems lead him to leave the band. This left only Bob Guadio, the guy that wrote most of the songs, and Frankie Valli to ride out the group's success. 

Though Valli was experiencing a lot of success as a solo artist, The Four Seasons still had contractual obligations to their record company and to their fan base. They needed a band.

The Four Season’s arranger for instrumental parts and vocal parts was Charles Calello. He stepped in briefly as their bass guitarist, but Calello was a very busy man who had his own career arranging music for other projects.  So it was Calello that hired Joe Long. 




Joe Long
Joe Long, aka Joseph LaBracio, was a genuine Jersey Boy from the town of Elizabeth.  He was a classically trained string bass player and pianist who studied with Alfonse Strazza, the principal bassist for the New York Philharmonic. 

However Long sustained a severe right hand injury with a machine during his day job at The Singer Sewing Machine Factory. This forced him to give up his dreams of playing symphonic classical bass viol. 

To keep up with his musical career, he switched to playing electric bass and he was able to make a modest living playing in clubs in New Jersey and New York area.

Joe Long with Frankie Valli
 and The Four Seasons
 
In a 2018 interview, Long spoke about joining the group: “At the time, I was aware of the Seasons, because they were having all those hits, and they were a Jersey group. I can’t say that I was a big fan, because I was not a big fan of rock ‘n’ roll music. I was playing with show groups in the area, which played rock ‘n’ roll, but mostly played rhythm and blues, which is more associated to jazz … you know, Fats Domino and that era, where the roots were right out of jazz music, jazz-blues.” 

In an earlier 2004 interview, Long said that when he first joined the band, “I was hired as Nicky’s replacement. "I had a booking agent at the time, a guy named Frankie Fame. He also booked the Four Seasons when they would play locally. When Nick Massi left the band, my agent told the group that he thought he had just the right guy for them, a guy that also played bass and had the same vocal range." 

"Frankie (Fame) took me to meet Tommy DeVito. We had a chat. He liked what I had to offer. Then they arranged a meeting with Frankie (Valli), Bobby (Guadio) and then another with Tommy a couple of days later. Bobby Gaudio laid out a few charts and said, 'Sing this, sing that.' They liked me. They hired me on the spot. That was early 1965."

Joe Long went on to say, "Before I did anything on stage (with the Four Seasons), "I got a call from Tommy. He said, 'Be at the airport. We're flying to California.'  So three or four days after I was hired, we did a string of TV shows. I had never done that. It was crazy." Long recalls that his first actual live show with the Four Seasons took place at West Virginia University in front of about 6,000 people." 


Prior to the show, Long was told he would rehearse with Calello, the Four Seasons' Newark-born arranger. "Charlie was supposed to rehearse me on singing parts and bass guitar parts," 



Long went on to reminisce, "I kept attempting to make appointments. He'd say, 'Be at the house tomorrow at 8 o'clock.' I'd show up, but he wouldn't be there. He had so much going on. Charlie was one of the most successful arrangers and producers at at that time. He worked on hundreds of hits. He really didn't have time to train me." 

Joe Long
"Gaudio, Valli and DeVito didn't know that I still hadn't had a single rehearsal. Finally, the night of  a West Virginia concert, I had to go on without a single rehearsal
. He went on to say, "That's when fear set in. I was well trained -- I studied music, I played a lot of shows -- but none of that helped when I had to go in front of 6,000 people without a rehearsal. I had to go on my gut feeling. I had to figure out what parts to sing, what to play on bass." 

 "I found myself going from obscurity to being in the No. 1 band in the world." 

He continued by saying that within a year he was MC’ing the bands shows, and was conducting the musicians whenever we used an augmented orchestra. He was going out doing promotions and actually doing more than what Nick had been doing.  

I personally was fortunate to see Frankie Valli and The Four Season four times during the 1970's when the group had undergone some personnel changes. Joe Long was the bass player at all those concerts and Lee Shapiro was the music director. Gerry Polci was playing drums, and Demetri Callas was playing guitar at the first concerts, then John Paiva was on guitar and vocals in 1975. 


All the shows were great, especially the last time I saw the group at a small venue in a supper club. And yes, Joe Long was introducing Frankie and some of the songs. It was one of the best and the loudest concerts that I ever attended.  

Joe always looked happy when he was performing. His demeanor put me in my of the guys in Louis Prima's band, Sam Butera and The Witnesses.  Those guys were always smiling and appeared to be having a great time when they were on. That's the image I have of Mr. Long when he was with the group.

Genuine Imitation Life Gazette
As time went on Joe Long said that he was not a fan of the new direction in which the group was headed. He said, “My biggest disappointment was Genuine Imitation Life Gazette because that should have been a hit if only because for no other reason that there was some great writing and some great performances,”  This album came out during a period when other groups had released concept albums such as Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds, Tommy and others. 

In a radio interview he stated his favorite remembrance of  being a member of The Four Seasons was traveling with and performing for Frank Sinatra. 


The original members of The Four Seasons had done a favor for Sinatra’s mother by putting on a free performance for a charity she supported. Frank Sinatra never forgot their generosity, and he was later very gracious to the group. 

In 1975, after being a member of the group for more than a decade he left. This event occurred shortly after the release of their song, "Who Loves You."

Joe Long

After leaving The Four Seasons in 1975, Joe put together a rock band called "LaBracio" and then a jazz group called " Jersey Bounce." He later became an insurance agent. He also did computer work for the financial firm, Dunn and Brandstreet.




In 2014, as a tribute the city council of Elizabeth New Jersey renamed a section of High Street to Joe Long Way as a way to honor their favorite son. He lived in a section called Petersburg.



Joe Long was recently remember in comments and tributes by his friends Frankie Valli, Gerry Polci, Lee Shapiro, and Robby Robinson as a wonderful and gracious man, who was a talented singer and bass player, a terrific musician, and a good friend.  

Joe Long with The Four Seasons
Joe Long was a left handed player
who had a very interesting style of playing bass that probably was a result of the years of playing the string bass as his primary instrument. I have to say he always looked like he was having a good time when he was on stage. 

I have read that once Paul McCartney met Joe Long and declared, "It's Joe Long, the second best left-handed bass player in Rock and Roll." Always quick with a comeback Joe replied, "What do you mean second best? Come on now!"

Long with Hagstrom F-400 bass 
Long seemed fond of the Fender Jazz Bass, but he also played a couple of other unique bass guitars.  In one appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show he played a white 1966 Hagstrom F-400 bass guitar. This was an instrument from a Swedish manufacturer. 


In other performances he used an Ampeg AEB-1. This instrument was more like a string bass than anything out there at the time, but it was played like a bass guitar. 





Ampeg AEB-1 bass (R) 
The instrument had a scroll head similar to that on a string bass, a pickup that consisted of two magnets and two large coils – nested in a block of epoxy which would translate the acoustic vibrations of the strings, bridge, and diaphragm into electrical impulses for amplification. It also had F-shaped cuts in the body, reminiscent of those on an upright bass. This bass also came in a fretless model.  The Ampeg Company headquarters was in Linden, New Jersey which just is a short drive from Elizabeth, New Jersey, Long's home town.

Joe's Jazz Bass

However Joe Long usually played his vintage 1960 white Fender Jazz Bass that had 'stacked knobs' which came on the first generation of J-Basses to control the twin pickups. The upper knobs were to control volume, while the lower knob controlled the tone and EQ. Joe generally left the metal hand rest and string cover on his Fender bass guitars. 




In later years Long played a sunburst 1970's Fender Jazz Bass with a bound neck and block pearloid inlays. This bass had the two volume, one tone control panel. 



In most images of Joe Long playing bass guitar in Four Season's concerts he can be seen using an Ampeg SVT bass amplifier. 

Joe Long was a terrific bass player, singer and musician. He was a gentleman and a class act, and he is forever etched in the history of one of the 20th Century's most iconic bands.

Click on the links under the pictures for sources. Click on the links in the text for further information.
©UniqueGuitar Publications 2021 (text only)












Saturday, April 24, 2021

Rusty Young - Member Of Poco Passed Away On April 14th, 2021

 

Rusty Young in 2018
Rusty Young was born and raised in Colorado. He began playing lap steel guitar at age 6, and taught guitar and steel guitar lessons during his high school years.  As a child his parents took him to country music bars that they loved. This is where he was captivated by the sound of steel guitar players. 

It only made sense that as a teen, he began playing country music in those late night bars.  



After finishing school Young played in a well known Denver psychedelic rock band "Boenzee Cryque". 







Buffalo Springfield
By the late 1960's one of Rusty's former guitar students became the road manager for Buffalo Springfield. Richie Furay and Jim Messina needed a steel guitarist for the Furay's song "Kind Woman". He suggested that they hire Young.

  

The group must have liked him because after Buffalo Springfield disbanded in 1968  Rusty Young became a founding member of Poco in 1968 along with Richie Furay and Jim Messina, 

The Troubadour
Drummer George Grantham and bass player Randy Meisner rounded out the original Poco lineup. The group Poco was initially put together to perform at a high-profile show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. 

But they had such a great sound, and really cliched as a group. 


The band's membership fluctuated over the years. When Furay left the group, Young took on more song writing responsibility, along with Paul Cotton and Timothy B. Schmit.  





Rusty with pedal steel,
banjo, and dobro
Rusty Young was the band's steel guitar player, although through the years he played a variety of other stringed instruments including banjo, dobro, and mandolin. 

Young’s pedal steel work along with the group’s rustic signature sound and helped create a prominent place for the steel guitar among roots-conscious California rock bands. 

In a 2014 interview with Goldmine magazine, referring to Mr. Furay’s compositions:

“I added color to Richie’s country-rock songs, and that was the whole idea, to use country-sounding instruments. I pushed the envelope on steel guitar, playing it with a fuzz tone, because nobody was doing that.  I played the pedal steel through a Leslie speaker, much as a Hammond B3 organist would, causing some listeners to assume he was indeed playing an organ." 


After Jim Messina, and Richie Furay left the group Rusty Young emerged as one of the group’s frontmen, along with the newcomer Paul Cotton.



Rusty Young - Crazy Love
Mr. Young would go on to write and sing the lead vocal on his best known and most popular song “Crazy Love,”  This became the band’s biggest hit, and reached No. 1 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart and No. 17 on the pop chart in 1979.. 

Rusty Young also wrote and sang lead on “Rose of Cimarron,” another of Poco’s more enduring recordings from the ’70s, and orchestrated the 1989 reunion of the group’s original members for the album “Legacy,” which, like the 1978 platinum-selling “Legend,” yielded a pair of Top 40 singles.

2013 - Steel Guitar Hall of Fame 

In 2013 he was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. He announced his retirement that same year,  but it turned out to be short lived.  



Poco - Legend LP

A few shows were booked into 2014 including three farewell shows in Florida. One of those shows was a performance in a recording studio in front of a live audience for a DVD document of the band's live show. Young said there could be some one-offs in the future after that, but the band would not be actively touring as before. 

Young and Nashville bass player Jack Sundrud wrote and recorded music for children's story videos as the "Session Cats". 


Waitin' For The Sun 

Young continued to do guest performances with former members of Poco and other country rock artists. Young released his first solo album in 2017 on Blue Élan Records, Waitin' For The Sun. 

In 2019 Rusty Young released his first new music since Waitin' for the Sun. 



The new tune, "Listen to Your Heart", was released digitally and benefited a local Steelville, Missouri animal charity, Santana's Hope for Paws (Friends of Steelville, MO Pound) Animal Shelter. 




Norman Russell Young, better know to the world as Rusty, one of the founding member's of Poco,  beloved by his fans, died of a heart attack on April 14, 2021 at the age of  75 years old. 

Click on the links under the pictures for sources. Click on the links in the text for further information.
©UniqueGuitar Publications 2021 (Text Only)











Sunday, April 11, 2021

Miss Carol Kaye - The Most Heard Bass Guitar Player That Most Of Us Never Heard Of Turned 85

 

1960's Artists



For those of us who grew up listening to the music of the 1960’s and ‘70’s there are a few consistencies that we may not be aware of. 







One of those was the fact that most of the recorded music of that era featured a group of professional session players that recorded the instrumental music for the popular singers of the day. 




Though recording took place in New York City, Detroit, Nashville and Memphis, much of the hit recordings of this era were done in several Los Angeles studios by a group of talented musicians nicknamed “The Wrecking Crew”. 

Carol Kaye
The other fact is that many of those songs featured a pretty young blonde woman named Carol Kaye, who played the bass guitar on almost 10,000 of those recordings.  Many of these songs became hit records. 

Carol Kaye is indeed a legend and an American treasure. You may have never heard her name but I guarantee that you have heard her distinct bass guitar lines. Ms. Kaye recently celebrated her 85th birthday. 

Carol Kaye In The Studio
Carol Kaye can be heard on such diverse recordings as "Soul Reggae" (Charles Kynard),"Homeward Bound" (Simon and Garfunkel), "California Girls", "Sloop John B", "Help Me, Rhonda", "Heroes and Villains" (The Beach Boys), "Natural Man" (Lou Rawls), 

Carol playing a
Fender Jazzmaster
"Come Together" (Count Basie), "Feelin' Alright" (Joe Cocker), "I Think He's Hiding" (Randy Newman), "Games People Play" (Mel Tormé), "Goin' Out Of My Head/Can't Take My Eyes Off You" (The Lettermen), "Little Honda" (The Hondells), "Hikky Burr" (Quincy Jones & Bill Cosby & TV theme), 

Kaye Playing a 12 String Guild 
"I'm a Believer" (The Monkees), "Indian Reservation" (Paul Revere & the Raiders), "In the Heat of the Night", "I Don't Need No Doctor", "America The Beautiful", "Understanding" (Ray Charles), "It Must Be Him" (Vikki Carr), "Little Green Apples" (O.C. Smith), "Midnight Confessions" (The Grass Roots),

Carol Kaye

"Mission: Impossible Theme" (Lalo Schifrin), "Mannix Theme" (Lalo Schifrin), "Out of This World" (Nancy Wilson), "Wichita Lineman" "Galveston" "Rhinestone Cowboy" (Glen Campbell), "River Deep - Mountain High" (Ike & Tina Turner),"Scarborough Fair/Canticle" (Simon and Garfunkel), "Sixteen Tons" (Tennessee Ernie Ford), "Somethin' Stupid" (Frank and Nancy Sinatra), "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" (Nancy Sinatra), "This Diamond Ring" (Gary Lewis & the Playboys), "The Twelfth of Never" (Johnny Mathis), 

Kaye With A MusicMan
Bass and Amplifier
 
"The Way We Were" (Barbra Streisand) "Soul & Inspiration" on which she played bass, and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" on which she played guitar (The Righteous Brothers), "Carry On" (JJ Cale), she played on many of the songs from Pet Sounds (The Beach Boys, 1966). 

Carol Kaye played on The Neil Young album and was featured on the LP Music from Mission: Impossible (Lalo Schifrin, 1967). She backed up Frank Sinatra on many of his later hit songs. 

Playing A Fender
 Precision Bass

Other TV themes that feature her bass guitar lines include Cannon, The Streets of San Francisco, Mission: Impossible, M*A*S*H, Kojak, Get Smart, Hogan's Heroes, The Love Boat, McCloud, Mannix, It Takes a Thief, Peyton Place and the previously mentioned Cosby Show. She is credited with performing on the soundtracks of Hawaii Five-O, The Addams Family and The Brady Bunch along with Ironside, Room 222, Bonanza, Wonder Woman, Alias Smith & Jones, Run for Your Life and Barnaby Jones. 

Carol Kaye played 12-string guitar on several Sonny and Cher hits, as well as on Frank Zappa's album Freak Out! 

Carol Smith nee Kaye was born on March 24, 1935. Her career as a musician has spanned 50 years. 

Carol Kaye Through The Years 
She began playing guitar in her early teens and after some time as a guitar teacher, began to perform regularly on the Los Angeles jazz and big band circuit. She started session work in 1957, and through a connection at Gold Star Studios. 

She began working as a guitar player for producers Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. After a bassist failed to turn up to a session in 1963, she switched to that instrument, quickly making a name for herself as one of the most in-demand session players of the 1960s. into playing on film soundtracks in the late 1960s, particularly for Quincy Jones and Lalo Schifrin. Carol Kaye authored a series of tutoring books such as How To Play The Electric Bass. She became less active towards the end of the 1970s, but has continued her career until retiring in her 70's.

How To Play The
 Electric Bass by Carol Kaye
She also taught guitar and bass and gave lessons to thousands of students, including notable players John Clayton, Mike Porcaro, Alf Clausen, David Hughes, Tony Sales, Karl E. H. Seigfried, Roy Vogt and David Hungate. 

During an interview she was asked if she was ever upset by being a ‘no-name’ background player, and not enjoying the fame acquired by the big name bands and singers that she backed up. Her reply was no. She got to be home, and enjoy her family, raise her children, and not have to travel. 


She was born in Everett, Washington, to professional musicians Clyde and Dot Smith. Her father was a jazz trombonist who played in big bands. In 1942, he sold a piano in order to finance a move to Wilmington, California. Her parents moved, but divorced soon afterwards when she was young. Music was the one thing the that united their family. When she was 13 Carol received a steel string guitar as a gift from her mother and she quickly took to the instrument. So much so that she began teaching professionally the following year. 

In the 1950’s Kaye played bebop jazz guitar with several groups on the Los Angeles club circuit, including Bob Neal's group, Jack Sheldon backing Lenny Bruce, Teddy Edwards and Billy Higgins. 


She played with the Henry Busse Orchestra in the mid-1950s, and toured the US with them. 

It was in 1957 that record producer Robert "Bumps" Blackwell heard her play and invited her to do a recording session for Sam Cooke's arrangement of "Summertime" on which she played guitar. This was a wake up call. She realized that she could make significantly more money with session work than playing in jazz clubs, so she decided session work was going to be her full-time career. 



1959 Tommy Dee With
 Carol Kaye and The Teen Aires
 
Then in 1958, she played acoustic rhythm guitar on Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba", which was recorded at Gold Star Studios, Hollywood. Through Gold Star, she began to work with producer Phil Spector, playing electric guitar on Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans' "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" and The Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me", and acoustic guitar on The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". 


Along with several other musicians including drummer Hal Blaine and guitarist Glen Campbell, her work with Spector attracted the attention of other record producers and she found herself in demand as a regular session player. In 1963, when a bass player failed to show for a session at Capitol Records in Hollywood, she was asked to fill in on the instrument. 

She quickly discovered that she preferred playing bass, and found it was a key component of a backing track and allowed her to play more inventively than the relatively simpler guitar parts she had been playing until then. From a pragmatic viewpoint, it was easier to carry a single bass to sessions instead of carrying and swapping between the three or four guitars that session players had to carry with them depending on the song.  

After Wrecking Crew bassist Ray Pohlman left studio work to become a musical director, Carol Kaye became the most in-demand session bassist in Los Angeles. This was all during a time when session work was considered to be an all ‘boys club’. So it was it unusual for women to be experienced session players. However she is remembered by players at those sessions being generally good humored and united by the music. 

Kaye At A Brian Wilson
Recording Session For Smile
Through her work with Phil Spector Carol Kaye caught the attention of The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, who used her on several sessions, including the albums Beach Boys Today, Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!), Pet Sounds and Smile. Working with him was unlike other sessions, since she was free to work out her own bass lines, Wilson always came in with a very specific idea of what she should play. By Pet Sounds, Wilson was asking musicians such as Kaye to play far more takes than typical sessions, often running over ten passes of a song, with sessions stretching well into the night. 

Kaye is often credited for creating the bass line on the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" single, although it is not her bass heard on the recording.

Brian Wilson remembers Kaye as one of the session players hired for the many sessions devoted to the song: "The bass part was important to the overall sound. I wanted Carol Kaye to play not so much a Motown thing, but a Beach Boys-Phil Spector riff". 


By 1969 Kaye said she was exhausted and had become disillusioned from doing session work, saying that the music had "started to sound like cardboard". At the same time, many newer rock bands disapproved of using session players, preferring to play the instruments themselves. 


So Carol set about reinvented herself by writing books and performing mostly soundtrack work for films and television. She regularly collaborated with Quincy Jones. 

In the early 1970s, she toured with Joe Pass and Hampton Hawes, and continued to do sessions. In 1973, she played on Barbra Streisand's single "The Way We Were", which was cut live.  

In 1976, she was involved in a car accident, and semi-retired from music. In 1994, Kaye underwent corrective surgery to fix injuries stemming from the accident, and resumed playing and recording.  

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Carol Kaye
Carol Kaye is a little miffed that a popular TV series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's character, 'Carol Keen'  seems to have captured her image. In an interview last year she said, "I am not a cartoon!"

She collaborated with Fender to produce a lighter version of the Precision Bass that reduced strain on her back and made it more comfortable to play. In 1997, she collaborated with Brian Wilson again, playing on his daughters' album, The Wilsons, while in 2006, Frank Black asked her to play on his album Fast Man Raider Man. 

Carol Kaye's Equipment
Through most of her early career Kaye's main instrument was the Fender Precision Bass, though she also used the four and six Danelectro basses on occasion. 

By the 1970s, she sometimes used the Gibson Ripper Bass.


It was lighter, and featured twin humbucking pickups as well as a 3 band active preamp/EQ.  


Kaye with Ibanez
Bass and Guitar
She uses Thomastik-Infeld JF344 flatwound strings with a high action and preferred to use guitar amplifiers in the studio when playing bass, including a Fender Super Reverb (to get more treble), an older Fender Bassman with 4 ten inch speakers, a brown Fender Deluxe amp, and a Versatone Pan-O-Flex amplifier. 

Kaye primarily uses a pick, or plectrum, on both guitar and bass, rather than plucking the strings with her fingers. During her peak recording years Carol put a piece of felt between the strings behind the bridge on her Precision bass to enhance the sound and reduce unwanted overtones and undertones.  

If you view the videos below you will note that she puts masking tape on her Ibanez bass for this same purpose.

Kaye with 1946
Epiphone Emperor

She also played an Ibanez RG321 guitar as well as an Ibanez RT150. Very Early in her career Carol Kaye used as series of Jazz style guitars including a 1946 Epiphone Emperor, a 1955 Gibson ES-175, and many other instruments.




Click on the links under the pictures for sources. Click on the links in the text for further reading.
©UniqueGuitar Publishing 2021 (Text Only)