3

He’s a Rebel

Do you think I have a future as a jazz guitarist?

—PHIL SPECTOR

As thirty-seven-year-old professional studio guitarist Bill Pitman peered warily through the venetian blinds on his small San Fernando Valley home’s living room window, he noticed a short, slightly built, dark-haired high school boy slowly making his way up the front walk.

In one hand the kid carried a large black guitar case almost as big as he was. In the other hand he held an expensive-looking leather attaché case. Dressed to the nines, the teenager had on a sport coat, a necktie, and neatly pressed slacks, topped off by a pair of wraparound sunglasses. Looking like some kind of unusually tiny junior executive on the make who had probably read Sloan Wilson’s novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit one too many times, the strange and incongruent sight gave Pitman pause. What in the world had he gotten himself into?

Several days earlier, Pitman’s wife, Mildred, had received a phone call out of the blue from some woman by the name of Bertha, practically begging for her son to be allowed to take jazz guitar lessons from “the great Bill Pitman.” All of which sounded quite flattering and reasonable on its face, except for one thing: Bill Pitman didn’t give guitar lessons. To anyone.

After spending the better part of two decades honing his talents in more touring Big Bands and combos than he could count, Pitman had finally become, by the mid-Fifties, a first-call guitarist in Los Angeles. In a profession where strong skills and showing up on time were paramount, producers and arrangers loved Pitman’s exceptional versatility and rock-solid dependability. He played on radio and TV shows (The Rusty Draper Show, I Love Lucy). He played major jazz dates (Tony Bennett, Mel Tormé). And Pitman became, for over three years, the singer Peggy Lee’s principal road and studio guitarist, a plum gig with a world-class artist. Sometimes he even sat in on bass or banjo during recording dates, whatever those in charge needed him to do. Pitman wore many hats in the music business and wore them all well. But teaching was decidedly not one of them.

Despite some gentle hinting from Pitman’s wife, however, the determined woman with the Bronx accent on the other end of the telephone line had simply refused to take no for an answer.

“Please, just a few lessons, then?”

Whether out of pity or perhaps out of just plain exhaustion, Mildred Pitman—herself a mother of three—felt her resolve begin to crumble. When a child is in need, the shared bond between two mothers can quickly become a force majeure. The next thing she knew she heard herself agreeing to the request, as did her incredulous husband, sitting nearby.

“Mim, you know I don’t want to teach,” he said as she hung up the phone. “I work all week long in the studios. On weekends, I just want to cool it.”

“But she seemed so desperate, Bill.”

Pitman thought for a moment. If he had learned anything as a married man it was when to pick his battles. And this was definitely not one of those times. The look on his wife’s face said as much. That was a domestic lesson he had learned.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Pitman replied, sighing. “What’s this kid’s name anyway?”

“His mother said it was Phillip something.” She paused. “Phillip Spector, I think.”

*   *   *

By the time the early Fifties rolled around, Carol Smith knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted to keep playing guitar.

Her mentor and teacher, Horace Hatchett, had helped her pick up some local work around the Long Beach area, and she had flourished. His connections made the difference in getting her in with a number of local musicians who needed a solid guitarist to play in all sorts of configurations, from trios to combos to Big Bands. Though her knees were shaking during her first gig (as part of a small jazz outfit at a private party), she fortunately knew most of the tunes of the day—standards like “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Flying Home,” and “Tea for Two”—and managed to play just fine.

Starting with an average of about one booking a week at the almost unprecedented age of only fourteen, Smith rapidly gained acceptance during her high school years among the area’s veteran players. She soon found herself in regular demand for live work at a variety of dances, parties, and nightclubs in the South Bay region. Still lacking proper equipment, Carol also had to routinely borrow one of Hatchett’s guitars for two full years in order to save enough money to buy her own, top-of-the-line Gibson Super 400. Always versatile, she even found work as a part-time teacher at places like Morey’s Music Store in nearby Lakewood.

As the money started to come in, Smith also began to feel a sense of empowerment. She found the ability to finally buy a few things for herself, help her mother with the bills, and enjoy her work, all at the same time. A heady trifecta for the ambitious teenager. And in doing so, she sat side by side on any given night of the week with a bunch of grown men in an era when women in the American workplace commonly limited their employment pursuits to nonthreatening “female” jobs such as nursing, teaching, and secretarial services.

Never satisfied with the status quo, the independent Smith took additional steps on her own to further her musical education by frequently taking the short train ride up to Los Angeles to see acts like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and many of the popular Big Bands of the era. It was in watching these kinds of top-flight pros that Smith began to imagine herself being a part of their world. The sort of world where only the best of the best were able to dwell. Where jazz wasn’t just a style of music but a supremely expressive and nuanced art form all its own. A virtual way of life among its most dedicated practitioners. And she felt particularly drawn to the faster tempo of bebop, where improvisational chops mattered and the ability to really swing it mattered even more.

Just after high school, Carol caught on for a couple of years with the popular Henry Busse Orchestra, with whom she traveled the country playing dances and other events. She also ended up marrying Al Kaye, the band’s string bass player, permanently taking his last name. Soon thereafter came a son and a daughter.

However, by 1957, with the Big Band gig having come to a close sometime earlier (Busse had fallen over dead from a massive heart attack during, of all things, an undertakers’ convention), Carol Kaye found herself at a crossroads. Despite her best efforts, her short marriage had not worked out, due in large part to a considerable age difference and her husband’s penchant for drinking a little too much wine. Kaye was also no longer on the road making regular money, either. And she now had two kids and a mother to support, all on a single income.

Deciding she needed to be practical, Kaye found a day job as a high-speed technical typist within the avionics division of the giant Bendix Corporation. Though the pay was good, she simultaneously moonlighted on guitar sometimes five or six nights a week in the local jazz clubs around Los Angeles. An exhausting schedule for anyone, let alone a working mother of two. But laying down some bebop fed Carol Kaye’s musical soul; there was no way to shake that. And the more she played, the more her reputation grew within the higher echelons of the West Coast jazz world.

Unfortunately for Kaye, however, with rock and roll’s popularity on the rise in the late Fifties, the number of Southern California clubs catering solely to jazz patrons began to dwindle in direct proportion. It made it almost impossible for an up-and-comer like Kaye to earn a living playing full-time, which had always been her dream. But she persevered, creating the music she loved by night, hoping for the best by day.

One evening, while Kaye took a short break from laying down her inventive lead guitar fills (now on an Epiphone Emperor) as part of the saxophonist Teddy Edwards’s combo at the Beverly Caverns nightclub, a man she had never seen before approached her with a very unexpected question.

“Carol, my name is Bumps Blackwell,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m a producer here in LA. I’ve been watching you play tonight and I like your style. I could use you on some record dates. Interested?”

A more-than-surprised Kaye looked at Blackwell and then at her bandmates, not sure what to think, say, or do. She had certainly heard all the rumors that taking on nonjazz recording studio work would be the kiss of death for someone trying to make a career out of playing live bebop. Once someone left, they tended to never come back. And true jazzers tended to look down on those who played what they sometimes referred to as “people’s music.” It took time to build a name in the clubs, too. But Kaye also knew she needed to get away from her job at Bendix as soon as possible. She had grown to dislike it. Maybe going into studio work would be a chance to finally establish a solid, well-paying career playing music full-time.

With a deep breath, a hesitant Kaye agreed to take the plunge.

“He’s a new singer out of Mississippi that I just started producing,” Blackwell continued, delighted that she was interested in coming aboard.

“His name is Sam Cooke.”

*   *   *

After her serendipitous encounter with the ambitious Bumps Blackwell, Carol Kaye did indeed start working studio dates for his protégé Sam Cooke. And the mental transition on her part in moving from dedicated jazzer to rock-and-roll guitarist proved to be smoother than she expected. Though Kaye had at first never heard of Cooke (few had at the time), she found herself enthused by the caliber of musicians hired to play alongside her. As she gracefully slid into her new role, her particular specialty became adding tasteful and appropriate guitar fills at important points during the songs.

To Kaye’s surprise, playing on Cooke’s hits at the turn of the decade like “Summertime (Part 2)” and “Wonderful World” didn’t seem all that different from playing live in the clubs, either. A quality song was a quality song. And her work began to lead directly to additional offers from other well-known producers and arrangers, including Bob Keane (“La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens), H. B. Barnum (“Pink Shoelaces” by Dodie Stevens), and Jim Lee (“Let’s Dance” by Chris Montez). Word habitually traveled quickly between recording studios whenever a hot new player arrived on the scene. The comparatively lucrative studio pay also proved to be a godsend for Kaye. She soon found herself earning a steady enough income at union scale to finally quit her suffocating day job for good.

As for Glen Campbell, his touring work with the Champs began to wind its way down after a year or so, putting him in a precarious financial position. Without any further hits on the radio, the band had seen its live following diminish accordingly. But that was okay with Campbell. He was tired of the road anyway and wanted to quit. Though he needed the money, he desperately missed his wife and child back home, especially on the nights when he had to sleep five guys to a room in some fleabag motel halfway across the country. At least this time around, though, he was living in Los Angeles, where music jobs seemed more plentiful. And he still had his ace in the hole, Jerry Fuller.

With an unshakeable belief in his own songwriting abilities, Fuller was ever a man on the move. One day in early 1961, on a hunch, he decided to take his latest tune over to a new publishing company on Hollywood Boulevard he had heard about. It’s the door you didn’t knock on that might have been the one to hire you, he always figured.

Dropping off a demo of his song at SAR, Inc.—owned by none other than the now seemingly ubiquitous Sam Cooke, along with his business partner J. W. Alexander—Fuller hoped to entice the star into recording it. Fuller felt it was the perfect vehicle for Cooke’s sublimely smooth singing style.

But when Alexander later played the demo in his small office on the phonograph kept handy for just such purposes, he didn’t hear a hit. In fact, he didn’t hear anything he liked about the song at all. It was just some tune about a bunch of far-off places like China, Berlin, and Waikiki. Something called “Travelin’ Man.” Cooke’s fans wanted heartfelt love songs they could identify with, not a world atlas.

“This is pure trash,” Alexander said to his secretary, flinging the disc into a garbage can next to his desk. “I’m not even going to bother Sam with it.”

But at that same moment, directly next door, in another office, a second set of ears had come to a very different conclusion. Joe Osborn, a bass player out of Louisiana currently playing in Ricky Nelson’s band, had heard the song, too. And he liked it.

Having stopped by that day to conduct some business at Imperial Records, Ricky’s label, Osborn could hear the record being played through the Warner Building’s notoriously thin walls. He immediately thought the song might be just right for Nelson. It had a great hook and an easy, carefree feel, something the teen idol’s fans had come to expect from his music.

Osborn walked next door and inquired about the song’s name and writer. Alexander, a man of few words, merely motioned toward the 45 now sitting in the garbage can and said, “You want it? You got it. It’s all yours—right there.”

When he took the record back to the studio for Ricky to hear, Osborn’s instincts proved to be right on the money. Nelson loved the song. So much so that he and his band cut it within days, and it soon became his first number-one hit in over three years.

Jerry Fuller had scored big. With the success of “Travelin’ Man” for Ricky Nelson, Fuller’s stock as a songwriter had risen dramatically. Nelson now wanted to know what else he had song-wise, and Fuller had plenty to offer. He also brought in his old pal Glen Campbell to sing with him on backing vocals for Ricky on every song after “Travelin’ Man.” Glen got to play his guitar on most of them, too. With help once again from Fuller, a stand-up guy if there ever was one, Campbell had finally achieved his longed-for entrée into the invitation-only world of LA recording studios.

*   *   *

In spite of his initial concerns, Bill Pitman’s new role as the teenage Phil Spector’s guitar teacher actually went better than he had expected. It wasn’t his dream job, but working with the kid was okay.

Each Saturday morning, Pitman would show his earnest young student some standard jazz licks, and then Spector would diligently work on them at his home across town, always returning exactly seven days later to show his progress. Pitman’s wife, too, would hang out in the kitchen and make chitchat with Bertha Spector, while teacher and pupil went through their paces just steps away.

But several lessons into the arrangement, Phil Spector showed up one week at his appointed time with something clearly weighing on his mind.

“Bill, I gotta ask you something,” Spector said, looking unusually somber.

“What’s that?”

“Do you think I have a future as a jazz guitarist?”

Well, there it was. The elephant that had been silently sharing the living room with them from the very first lesson had been acknowledged.

Spector, to his credit, was nothing if not clearheaded and practical about his own prospects. He previously had mentioned to Pitman about his plans to possibly become a court reporter, going so far as to purchase his own stenographic machine and to take a series of courses. A recent job offer had even come his way. So he naturally wanted to know where things stood.

For Pitman, the question created a conflict of emotions. On one hand, he had grown to like Spector. Pitman could see that the serious young man was both hardworking and conscientious—two admirable qualities. But Pitman also detected one fatal flaw in Spector’s playing. And he felt he had to be honest.

“No, Phil, in truth, I don’t see that for you,” Pitman replied. “You’re lacking one thing that a musician absolutely has to have. And that’s meter. You don’t feel when one musical phrase ends and another begins.”

Spector didn’t argue.

“I know I don’t,” he replied resignedly.

Though perfectly proficient skill-wise, and with a good ear, Phil Spector—for all his intense effort and desire—just never seemed able to grasp where he was in a song.

“I’m sorry,” Pitman offered, feeling genuine empathy for the boy. “But I can’t teach you that. I don’t know anybody who can.”

*   *   *

Not long after the terrible circus fire in Hartford, fifteen-year-old Hal Blaine and his family moved to Southern California. His father had developed a serious asthma condition and the family doctor recommended drier air and a reduced amount of pollen as the best course of action. While Hal’s parents moved in with his aunt and uncle in the Santa Monica area, he ultimately chose to live with his older sister, Belle, in San Bernardino, about eighty miles to the east of Los Angeles.

It was in San Berdoo, as the locals called it, that Blaine’s professional drumming ambitions finally began to take shape. Getting together with some local high school friends, Blaine formed his first band, a little six-piece, part-time combo, and subsequently played his first paying gig at the Chick-A-Bunny restaurant and nightclub in tiny Norco, about a half an hour away. The place wasn’t much, but Blaine earned five bucks a night and had his choice of either a free chicken or rabbit dinner. And he loved every minute of it.

After dropping out of high school and serving a two-plus-year hitch in Korea during the late Forties playing drums as the only PFC in an all-officer U.S. Army band, a nineteen-year-old Blaine returned stateside and soon used his G.I. Bill benefits to enroll in the prestigious Roy C. Knapp School of Percussion in Chicago. Blaine knew that to really succeed as a professional drummer he needed to both polish his skills and learn how to read music. Guys who could read drum charts, as well as the rest of the band’s music charts, were the ones who were in big demand. Without that ability, the chances of one day playing for a major orchestra led by someone like Count Basie or Benny Goodman were practically nil.

Following graduation, Blaine then spent several years honing his sight-reading skills by playing drums in several Chicago strip joints and then in nightclubs and supper clubs all over the country with a number of small bands. He even found time in the mid-Fifties to squeeze in a short-lived marriage to a beautiful young singer named Vicki Young. But by 1957, with Blaine single once again, he finally made his way back to California for good, settling in for an extended run as the drummer for the Carol Simpson Quartet, a noted jazz combo.

One night, just after finishing a show with Simpson and the band at the celebrity-laden Garden of Allah hotel lounge in Hollywood, Blaine felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see a short, stocky Mafioso type standing right behind him.

“Hey, kid, I’ve been watching you,” the wiseguy said, puffing on a cigar. “And I like the way you play. You wanna make some money? I got a band auditioning tomorrow for Capitol Records and they need a drummer.”

Hal thought for a moment. Getting some studio work was definitely appealing. That had long been one of his goals. Maybe it would be worth hearing this guy out.

“What kind of music?”

“It’s called rockabilly, like rock and roll, but with some country and western thrown in.”

Blaine had been listening to some of the latest rock-and-roll records on the radio and didn’t think much of them. As far as he could tell, rock and roll was mostly just a bunch of beats and a bass drum. Not nearly as interesting or challenging as playing jazz, his latest love. And he was already in a band.

“Nah, I don’t think I’d be interested,” Blaine said. “I don’t really have much experience with that kind of music.”

“Well, would you be interested if I gave you seventy-five bucks just to come in for the audition and then leave?”

Now that was more to Blaine’s liking. No strings attached and some quick and easy green to shove in his pocket.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” he said.

It would be one of the smartest moves the young drummer would ever make. And a funny thing happened to Hal Blaine after barely playing one song with the unknown rockabilly musicians just before their big audition: he became the band’s permanent drummer.

After meeting with the young trio of musicians to talk things over and maybe rehearse a little bit, Blaine, much to his surprise, found himself taking an instant liking to them. They were country to the core and at least a decade younger, but he loved their enthusiasm and collective sense of humor. It also didn’t hurt that they told Blaine they were in fact auditioning to be the backing band for teen sensation Tommy Sands and desperately needed a good drummer to go on the road with them if they got the gig.

Hal knew that a national tour with a name star like Sands would likely mean a nice pay increase and it also might provide some welcome exposure for his drumming career. The kid was too hot not to score some major network TV appearances along the way, Blaine thought.

Though he wasn’t really looking to leave the Carol Simpson Quartet, by the time Blaine finished jamming with the three Texans on an old tune made famous by Hank Williams called “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” the notion of actually throwing in with them began to take hold.

But before Blaine could give it any further thought, a booming voice rang out from the shadows.

“You’re just what we need,” a man said. “When can you start?”

Tommy Sands and his manager had been secretly watching the whole time. And they liked what they had heard. The four musicians were a perfect blend.

After an exchange of introductions and a quick round of small talk, the pair got down to business, offering Blaine a deal on the spot: he would start at three hundred dollars a week to be the band’s drummer and road manager. He would also get to play on Tommy’s recordings at Capitol, something Blaine particularly coveted. That would give him some important studio experience and might also help him make a few good connections. And with many veteran drummers in Hollywood unable or unwilling to play rock and roll, Hal Blaine’s timing could not have been more perfect. Working with Sands would provide a road-tested crash course in laying down a solid rock beat, a skill that producers, arrangers, and contractors all over town were increasingly hungry to find.

As they all said their good-byes that day, Tommy Sands’s manager, Ted Wick, wanted a decision. Was Blaine on board?

“Let me think it over,” Hal said with a smile, knowing full well he had been presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

“Don’t think too long,” Wick replied. “You’re leaving next week.”

With Blaine agreeing by the next day to accept the manager’s offer, going on tour with Tommy Sands and his band turned out to be three years’ worth of everything that the drummer could have hoped for and more. The quintet toured the world several times over, playing for hoards of screaming teens by night and lounging by the pools of luxury hotels by day. And Blaine did in fact end up on national television multiple times, appearing with Sands on network variety shows hosted by the likes of Red Skelton, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Garry Moore.

Perhaps more important, while working at Capitol Records Blaine not only played on most of Sands’s recordings but also got to know plenty of movers and shakers involved in LA’s studio world. These connections directly translated into playing on session dates for other major-label artists, including the Diamonds, the singers Patti Page and Connie Francis, and even Elvis on several of his movie soundtracks, including Blue Hawaii and Girls! Girls! Girls. Other than occasionally kidding around in the studio, however, Hal Blaine and the rest of the movie musicians interacted sparingly with Elvis on a personal level. The King had his so-called Memphis Mafia on hand for all that. If Presley so much as wanted a Coke, a half dozen of these handpicked hangers-on would leap to grab one for him.

By the beginning of the Sixties, through this growing number of session opportunities, Blaine also got to know a couple of fellow studio musicians named Steve Douglas and Earl Palmer, who were doing most of the rock-and-roll dates around town. Not only did they quickly become Blaine’s good friends; they also generously saw fit to recommend his services to producers and contractors wherever they could.

Suddenly Blaine’s stick work was in high demand. And the irony of it all didn’t escape him. After years of virtual invisibility while providing the rhythm on countless, often-complicated arrangements for all sorts of crooners, Big Bands, and jazz combos, it took playing the drums in a three-chord rockabilly band to finally put him on the map. Hal Blaine was now fast becoming the last thing he could have imagined: a rock-and-roll studio drummer.

*   *   *

Despite the deflating realization that he had no future as a professional jazz guitarist, Phil Spector found it within himself to take the news from Bill Pitman in stride. There were other ways Spector could make a living in music; he was sure of it.

No longer seriously considering the option of becoming a court reporter, the diminutive Spector instead was pushed by his overriding love for music and his overweening personality in another, more suitable career direction. He decided to form his own singing group.

In early 1958, after joining with a couple of his classmates from Fairfax High School, Annette Kleinbard and Marshall Leib, the always-hustling Spector managed to finagle a record deal for the trio (through a friend’s neighbor) with a tiny label in Hollywood called Era Records. Naming themselves the Teddy Bears (after the Elvis Presley song from the year before), they worked up an arrangement of a Spector-penned song based on the epitaph carved on his late father Ben’s gravestone. To virtually everyone’s surprise, the song—“To Know Him Is To Love Him”—ended up becoming a number-one national hit. Still only a senior in high school, Phil Spector had accomplished what seemed to be the impossible. He had metamorphosed from an unknown, struggling jazz guitar student to local rock-and-roll royalty, all within a matter of months.

With the Teddy Bears’ promising future unfortunately derailed in less than a year by the release of a series of ill-conceived follow-up singles, their initial chart-topping success did serve one major purpose. It provided Phil Spector with a clear view of his future. Yes, he had enjoyed all the singing, writing, and camaraderie that had gone into creating their one and only hit. But what really turned Spector’s crank had been putting all the individual elements of the song together in the studio. It was like working on a real-life jigsaw puzzle, only he got to control all the pieces. An especially intoxicating proposition for a boy desperate to forge his own identity away from a domineering mother.

Carefully weighing his options, Spector decided he would set his sights on an even loftier occupational prize. No more singing for his supper. No more answering to others. He now wanted the top job. Phil Spector would become a record producer.

Behind the windowless walls of a recording studio, the producer is the one in charge of everything. It is his (or her) absolute domain. From the choosing of the musicians and the engineers to exactly how a song is recorded, the producer runs the show. An obviously powerful position, it also comes with its share of stress. Producers are usually put in place to make the best possible commercially viable recording. When things go right, the monetary rewards can be significant. And the acclaim can establish a career overnight. But when a record with high expectations fails to become a hit, it’s the producer who most often winds up being called on the carpet by unhappy label executives.

In mid-1960, through a connection made while singing with the Teddy Bears, Phil Spector, with characteristic industriousness, landed a job as an apprentice producer in New York City with the famed songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The duo, composers of classic hits like “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” and “Stand by Me,” took the twenty-year-old Spector under their wing, where his producing prowess and fanatical devotion to his newly adopted craft soon became apparent.

After a little over a year of tutelage, while manning the productions for major artists like Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker, and Ray Peterson (“Corinna, Corinna,” a number-nine hit in early 1961), Spector felt he had squeezed all he could out of his relationship with Leiber and Stoller. Spector had seen firsthand the methods they employed in creating important songs for important artists. How they used multiple percussionists. How they positioned the microphones just so. How they carefully mixed down all the competing sounds at the control board into a cohesive, unique, and compelling finished product. Nothing escaped Spector’s hawk-like vision and hearing. Now he just needed to put the second part of his plan into play.

Traveling back to the West Coast, Spector quickly wheedled his way into a partnership with Lester Sill, the same guy who had recommended his services to Leiber and Stoller in the first place. Only this time around, instead of just producing, Spector had a grander vision. He now wanted to have his own record label, too. That way nobody could ever again tell him what to record or what to release. For Sill, the pairing made good sense as well. His forte was record promotion, an extremely important sales-related task for which Spector had shown little natural interest.

Settling on the corporate moniker of Philles Records (the merging of their two first names), the two opened a small office in Hollywood and promptly set about looking to record some hits. One day, in the summer of 1962, while visiting Aaron Schroeder Music Publishing in New York City on a scouting mission to look for new song possibilities, Spector came across a demo recording that made his eyes light up. Written by the popular singer Gene Pitney, the hard-hitting tune, called “He’s a Rebel,” was all about teenage alienation, a traditionally relevant—and bankable—theme among young record buyers.

From the moment the song started to play, Spector could feel a stirring in his gut. This was it: the surefire pop smash he had been looking for to put his new label on the map for good.

He leaped to his feet.

“I want an exclusive on that one!”

*   *   *

Racing back to Los Angeles with a copy of “He’s a Rebel” burning a hole in his briefcase, Phil Spector immediately booked time at Gold Star Recording Studios, the same place he had used for his big hit with the Teddy Bears. Spector loved the sound and vibe the studio provided, which he felt had directly contributed to his early success. He also knew he needed to work fast. Great songs don’t stay unrecorded for long. And an “exclusive” from a publisher often wasn’t worth the handshake it came with. Back in New York, Aaron Schroeder had let slip that another producer by the name of Snuff Garrett had recently shown interest in the song, too. Time was clearly of the essence.

With a sense of urgency, Spector next placed a call to an old friend from Fairfax High School, Steve Douglas. Besides having become one of the most sought-after sax players on the West Coast (after spending several years as one of guitar star Duane Eddy’s Rebels), Douglas also found time to moonlight as a freelance contractor, the guy in charge of hiring all the musicians on any given studio date. Whenever a producer or arranger had a new recording project coming up, one of the first calls was to a contractor. From there, the contractor would begin booking the exact number of musicians needed to fit the style of music and the budget.

On many, if not most, rock-and-roll recording dates at that time, only a few instruments were commonly utilized—often just guitar, bass, and drums. Sometimes a saxophone or piano might be thrown into the mix, too. But keeping a rock-and-roll arrangement clean and simple was part of the whole point. It’s what helped give the genre its propulsive quality, its sense of in-your-face immediacy. The proof of the minimalistic formula’s success lay evident in the massive number of hits recorded by everyone from Elvis to Buddy Holly to the Everly Brothers.

But Phil Spector saw things differently. He would have none of the status quo. He had other ideas for his latest production. Transcendent ideas. To him, less wasn’t more—more was more. He told Douglas to get him two bass players, two guitar players, and two sax players, plus a drummer and a pianist. Eight players instead of the usual three or four. It would be rock and roll writ large, Spector-style.

When they all gathered in Studio A at Gold Star, the engineer, Larry Levine, did a double take. He had never seen that many musicians on a rock-and-roll date before. But having worked with Spector in the past, Levine knew enough to go with the flow. To him, the kid was an abrasive, spoiled brat, but Levine never once doubted Spector’s talent.

Built in 1950 by David Gold and Stan Ross on the corner of Santa Monica and Vine in what used to be a dental office, Gold Star had become, by the early Sixties, one of the most successful and influential recording studios in the world. Well before the Record Plant in Sausalito, Electric Lady Studios in New York, or Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, Gold Star was the place to cut a record in America. Especially during the early days of rock and roll, few studios witnessed more history than the scuffed linoleum of Gold Star.

Though a comparatively small structure, with only two undersized tracking rooms, it featured the most highly regarded echo chamber in the music business. And Gold Star’s handcrafted audio compressors and microphone preamps were the envy of every engineer in town. “Summertime Blues” by Eddie Cochran had been recorded there. Same with “Tequila” by the Champs and “La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens. Gold Star had a sought-after, hit-making mojo all its own.

As the musicians settled into their metal folding chairs scattered throughout Studio A, Steve Douglas took the opportunity to walk Spector around for some quick introductions. Spector already knew a couple of the guys—Ray Pohlman on electric bass and Howard Roberts on guitar were guys he had worked with before—but the rest were unfamiliar faces.

After Spector said hello to Tommy Tedesco (guitar), Al DeLory (piano), and Jimmy Bond (upright bass), he stopped in front of the drum kit.

“I’m Phil,” he said, extending his hand.

A dark-haired, blue-eyed drummer stuck out his hand in return.

“Nice to meet you, Phil. I’m Hal Blaine.”

*   *   *

Within weeks of its release, “He’s a Rebel” became exactly what Phil Spector had envisioned from the start: a number-one hit. Credited to the Crystals, a New York–based vocal group with whom Spector had been working on and off, the song had actually been sung by a local LA session veteran named Darlene Wright. Blessed with a powerful voice and a charismatic presence, Wright was a natural at singing up-tempo material that required passion and swagger. And she, along with the expanded number of musicians who had performed with her on “He’s a Rebel,” had allowed Spector to test his orchestral approach to rock and roll, with spectacular results.

Now, like an obsessed alchemist frantically trying to turn base metals into gold, Spector wanted to toss additional instrumental ingredients into his sonic stew, to make an even bigger sound. If more was more, why couldn’t a lot more be the most? Spector wanted to push his Wagnerian concept to its absolute limits, to make what he began to refer to as “little symphonies for the kids.”

In typically unorthodox fashion, the next song on Spector’s docket would be, on its face, a most unusual choice. Thinking back to his childhood one day as he fooled around on his guitar, Spector suddenly flashed on a tune he loved from a Disney movie called Song of the South. It had won an Academy Award in 1946 for best original song, and, he thought, it would make an even better rock-and-roll record.

Gathering at Gold Star on August 24, 1962, Spector and his engineer, Larry Levine, set about turning “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” into yet another three-minute rock-and-roll symphony. And in keeping with the boss’s explicit instructions, Steve Douglas had gone all out in his contracting efforts this time around. Spector wanted “the same drummer as last time,” and Douglas also brought in two other players who were making significant names for themselves in the studios: Carol Kaye and Glen Campbell.

Now, instead of eight pieces like had been used on “He’s a Rebel,” those present totaled a mind-boggling twelve—including three guitarists, three bass players, and three piano players—four times the total number of musicians found on a normal rock-and-roll date. But there was nothing remotely normal about Phil Spector or his methods. Competition and common sense be damned; he wanted the fattest, densest sound he could possibly muster.

As the musicians dutifully labored away over the next three hours rehearsing and refining their respective parts, Spector kept asking Levine to turn up the faders (volume levels) on the mixing board for the microphones used on each of the individual instruments. With his intense focus on every nuance, Spector always liked listening to the music as loud as possible on the three big Altec 603 monitors in the booth. But this time, with so many sounds competing with each other in a low-ceilinged, relatively small twenty-eight-by-thirty-five-foot tracking room, the mélange became too much for the custom-designed board to handle. Levine’s meters were pinging into the red zone, indicating a dangerous level of volume overload, causing distortion.

Despite knowing the wrath he would likely incur, Levine took a deep breath and began uniformly turning off each of the faders.

A disbelieving Spector watched in horror.

“What the hell are you doing?” he exploded. “I just about had it, man. I just about had the sound.”

“I’m sorry, Phil, but the levels were redlining. It was unrecordable.”

Spector slumped in his chair, demoralized. His painstaking, hours-long effort at achieving just the right balance between all the instruments—a delicate task far beyond the competency of virtually any other rock-and-roll producer on either coast—had now been completely wiped out.

Without saying anything further, a guilt-ridden Levine did the only thing he could think to do: he began very carefully dialing the faders back up, one by one. Maybe he could somehow salvage things by mimicking Spector’s skillfully achieved balances, but at lower overall volume levels.

As the assembled musicians began running through the song one more time, Levine gingerly brought up the levels on the two acoustic guitars. So far, so good. Then, slowly, he raised the volume levels on each of the three basses, followed by the triumvirate of pianos, the sax, and then the drums and percussion. Not bad, he thought—almost there. One more to go.

But just as Levine reached for the final fader, the one that controlled the volume for the lone electric guitar, Spector suddenly shouted, “Stop! That’s it. It’s perfect.”

Levine’s hand froze in place.

“What about the electric guitar, Phil? I haven’t turned its volume up yet.”

“Forget it—don’t touch anything. I like the sound the way it is. Let’s record it. Now.”

With so many instruments crammed into such a small space, the sound from the electric guitar had accidentally leaked into various neighboring microphones, allowing its fuzzed-out tone to artfully blend into the mix like it had all been planned from the start.

As for the tone itself, the guitarist, Billy Strange (always one of Steve Douglas’s favorite hires), had decided on his own to pull one of the four 6L6GC output vacuum tubes out of the back of his Fender Twin Reverb amp in order to get the raw sound he felt the song needed. A surprised Spector loved the results. That’s why he only wanted to work with the best.

With optimal volume and balance levels finally reset, Levine began rolling tape. On a now-reenergized Phil Spector’s cue, the twelve assembled musicians promptly launched into laying down an inspired, slinky, and soulful performance for the ages, sounding like they had been playing together all their lives. The guitars, basses, pianos, drums, and horns expertly melded with the swimming, cavernous echo to create a giant wall of sound. And after the voices of Bobby Sheen, Darlene Wright, and Fanita James were added (dubbed Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans), there was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to the specialness of the outcome. Rock and roll had been forever altered.

Semi-randomly chosen though they initially were, Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, and Hal Blaine, along with Billy Strange, Bill Pitman (personally requested by Spector), and seven other highly skilled session musicians, had unknowingly created music history—and a career path for themselves. On one level, they had given the twenty-two-year-old wunderkind Phil Spector his second consecutive Top 10 hit, in the process helping to solidify a sound, style, and feel like no other. But on perhaps an even more profound level, their teaming on that one hot August day in 1962 had been carefully noted by most of the other rock-and-roll producers in town. They reasoned that if these particular sidemen were now Spector’s secret weapons in cutting his growing list of majestic, operatic smashes, then they wanted in on the action, too. The driven young producer’s innovative, interwoven use of just the right musicians in just the right combination had spun gold. And in the music business, imitation has always been the sincerest form of making a profit.