Hal Blaine

And I caught the very end of that.

Guys like Don Randy and Hal Blaine and stuff, they took me in like a nephew.

It wasn't like a grandson.

It

Because we didn't have time to get a drum sound.

So everything was real kind of dead and down.

Hal Blaine had these big cloth things.

I mean, he'd carry the drums in these cloth bags and then put the cloth bags over the drum for the session.

They played on so many hit records during this time.

There was the drummer, Hal Blaine.

He played with the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel.

There was Joe Osborne.

That name, Carole Kay, bassist Carole Kay, takes great umbrage with that name.

She hates the name Wrecking Crew and said that, I think Hal Blaine, drummer Hal Blaine, made it up just to sell books.

She hates it.

However, regardless, shout out Carole Kay.

And, and to me, uh, what you're hearing there is somebody who, uh...

You know, I used to, uh, watch Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer and those guys talk about restraint.

Mm-hmm.

Those were real guys.

I wanted to be a real professional.

That's, those are the guys that I admire.

Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, those guys were huge in my life, uh, in that world, and I wanted to do things the way they did them.

Mm-hmm.

So this song came out in 1968 and was written originally by the team of composer Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David.

This is a case where the details on which members of the Wrecking Crew are here are somewhat fuzzy, but according to a Google AI summary of a broken Facebook link, because this is 2026, the song features Hal Blaine on drums and percussion, because he's always there, Carol Kaye on bass, Larry Knechtel on piano and keyboards, Tommy Tedesco on guitar, and Julius Wechter on percussion.

And it is notable as one of the rare Herb Alpert hits where Alpert sings, and while he is not much of a singer, as you could probably tell from that clip, the composition was designed basically to accommodate his shortcomings, or at least that's one of the reasons they picked it, so he doesn't embarrass himself.

He does a perfectly okay job.

And it's all very well deserved, 'cause this is an excellent song.

The Wrecking Crew personnel includes Al Casey doing that wonderful finger-picked guitar, Larry Knechtel on bass, and Jim Gordon on drums.

This episode is not gonna be a Hal Blaine shutout.

And there's also a half a dozen violins to add those wonderful flourishes in the chorus, as well as a lovely soft bed for the whole song to rest on.

He went on to become one of the most sought-after recording session drummers in Los Angeles.

The protege of drummer Hal Blaine, Gordon performed on many notable 1960s recordings, including Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, The Spirit of 67 by Paul Revere and Raiders, No One Knows Where the Time Goes by Judy Cowens, and of course the hit Classical Glass by Mason Williams.

In 1969 and 70, he toured as part of the backing band for Delaney and Bonnie, which at the time included Eric Clapton.

Clapton subsequently took the group's rhythm section, Gordon, Carl Rado, and Bobby Whitlock, and they formed a new band, Derek and the Dominoes.

You being such a fan of old school drummers and a real actor there.

Yeah, but I got to tell you, on a lot of those Beach Boy albums, that was the Wrecking Crew, right? Am I crazy? Wasn't it really Hal Blaine and Dennis played live? And that woman, I forget her name.

She played bass on like everything.

I don't know.

Hal Blaine had that, he's called the Octopus.

It was like a single bass drum, a snare drum.

And then like, it seemed like 40 concert toms going around him and then like two or three floor toms.

And he had this stamp that he would put on his drum head on the sheet music.

Yeah, it was.

But when you work with the musicians like Hal Blaine, Joe Osborne, Larry Nectal, there was this bit of, a little bit of butterflies, should we say, because I'm the new kid here and those guys are very, very experienced, you know.

So I kind of took it in stride here and ended up getting recommended to more and more people there.

And I think one of the records I enjoyed playing on was The Way We Were.