Hal Blaine – ubiquitous drummer of The Wrecking Crew — born Feb. 5, 1929

I was out of town and not able to produce this tribute on his birthday. However, the contribution which Hal Blaine made to rock music should not be overlooked.

My little public radio show in his honor will be Monday Feb.26th for those who can listen. It will be specially fun. The playlist can be found on the associated radio blog site…. https://nearshoreradio.com/

HAL BLAINE, born February5, 1929, the ubiquitous drummer whose work in the 1960s and ’70s established him as one of the top session musicians of all time. John beats out a belated tribute in words and songs on Crosscurrents, Monday Feb. 26 at 8:00 AM . Listen live on102.7fm, or 103.1fm. or https://www.ktoo.org/listen/krnn/

Hal Blaine was born Harold Simon Belsky on Feb. 5, 1929, in Holyoke, Mass., to Meyer Belsky, who worked in a leather factory, and Rose (Silverman) Belsky. When he was 7 the family moved to Hartford, where he was inspired to learn drumming by watching the fife and drum corps of the Catholic school across the street from his Hebrew school .

Hal Blaine, the ubiquitous drummer whose work in the 1960s and ’70s with Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, the Ronettes and others established him as one of the top session musicians of all time.

Mr. Blaine, who played on at least 40 singles that reached No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart, was a reliable and adaptable musician, able to offer delicate brushwork on a ballad or a booming beat on records. He brought drama to a song’s transitions, often telegraphing a big moment with a flurry of strokes on a snare drum or tom-tom.

If he had a signature moment on a record, it was on the Ronettes’ 1963 hit, “Be My Baby,” produced by Mr. Spector. The song opened cold, with Mr. Blaine playing — and repeating — the percussive earworm “Bum-ba-bum-BOOM!” But the riff came about accidentally. “I was supposed to play more of a boom-chicky-boom beat, but my stick got stuck and it came out boom, boom-boom chick,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2011. “I just made sure to make the same mistake every few bars.”

Mr. Blaine was part of a loosely affiliated group of session musicians who in the early 1960s began dominating rock ’n’ roll recording in Los Angeles. Along with guitarists like Glen Campbell and Tommy Tedesco, bassists like Carol Kaye and Joe Osborn, and keyboardists like Leon Russell and Don Randi, Mr. Blaine played on thousands of recordings through the mid-1970s.

His skills led producers to use Mr. Blaine as the drummer for various groups’ studio work, replacing their credited drummers. The drummer heard on the Beach Boys’ records was often Mr. Blaine and not the drummer the group’s fans knew, Dennis Wilson, whose brother Brian was the band’s creative force. “I must tell you, first of all, Dennis was not really a drummer,” Mr. Blaine told Modern Drummer magazine in 2005. “I mean, they had bought him drums because they needed drums in the group. So he learned as they went on.”

Asked if Mr. Wilson was angry that he was replaced in the studio, Mr. Blaine said he was not. “He was thrilled,” he said, “because while I was making Beach Boy records, he was out surfing or riding his motorcycle. During the day, when I was making $35 or $40, that night he was making $35,000” performing live.

Mr. Blaine’s other studio credits include Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” the 5th Dimension’s “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Ms. Streisand’s “The Way We Were,” the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s “A Taste of Honey.”

In 2000, Mr. Blaine was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with four other studio musicians, including the drummer Earl Palmer, who had helped introduce him to session work. The Recording Academy gave Mr. Blaine a lifetime achievement Grammy Award last year.

SOUCE: New York Times