Incredible guitar solos on Born With the Moon in Virgo on Michael Franks first album. Does anyone know of other similar stuff by Tedesco ?
Incredible guitar solos on Born With the Moon in Virgo on Michael Franks first album. Does anyone know of other similar stuff by Tedesco ?
Tedesco played a lot of cool guitar licks, most people don't even realize he played. He did a lot of TV work, things like the theme from Bonanza, the "gawdawful fuzz guitar" on the Green Acres theme, the "silly wah wah" on the intro of the Three's Company theme, and lots of others were him. And apparently on some of the records he played on, he confounded the hell out of the guitarists who had to play the damn stuff onstage when the performers went on tour. Gary Lewis says that none of the guitarists he's ever had in his band have ever been able to play the Spanish guitar licks Tedesco did on whichever Gary Lewis And The Playboys song.
I used to read his column in Guitar Player back in the 80's, he had lots of great stories and advice for anyone wishing to play guitar professionally.
In The Wrecking Crew film, they show this great clip of him at a seminar, talking about how he used the exact same pseudo-Spanish guitar licks on three different TV shows, where the composers asked for guitar licks that evoked Latin America. The thing was, on each show, the composer named a different country, where the given episode was supposed to be set, but Tommy faked his way through each one playing same stuff.
And I could swear I saw an episode of some TV show back in the mid 80's, might have been an A-Team episode (ironically enough), where a character was named Tommy Tedesco. I'm sure that couldn't have been a coincidence.
The name was familiar to me but I had to look him up. It seems the list of popular recordings on which Tedesco did NOT play is quite short.
He even played with Zappa (Lumpy Gravy).
Tommy T was a regular "visiting Teacher" at GIT during my time there in '79-'80. He even took me and my roommate with him to a recording session for "The Love Boat"....Tommy was cracking jokes non-stop right up until the Conductor's count of 4. Shelly Mann was on drums that day and we got to meet him too.
He was the guitarist on Fernwood Tonight...
Death of a Child
www.soundcloud.com/darklounge
Yeah, that was hilarious! I just saw that documentary about a month ago and I highly recommend it. Among other things, it's mind boggling to discover what a giant chunk of all the popular music in the '60s had the same group of musicians playing on it, from Elvis to Sinatra to The Monkees to Sonny and Cher to The Beach Boys... and on and on.Originally Posted by GuitarGeek
And made some appearances on The Gong Show, one of them wearing a tutu.
He did a clinic at Wurlitzer music in Boston when I was at Berklee in the 80s.
Very funny guy who can read anything!
no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone
Well, popular recordings made in LA, during the 60's, yeah. There were a lot of bands who employed The Wrecking Crew (including Tedesco) in place of the actual band members. The Monkees got chastised in some quarters for many years, even though it was already a common industry practice at the time. Of course, nobody knew about it, because back in those days, they generally didn't list musician credits on album covers (and sometimes even when they did, they weren't exactly accurate).
I remember reading an interview with Tedesco in Guitar Player back in the early 80's, before all this stuff became commonly known. He was asked about some of the records he had played on, and I think it's The Marketts he mentions. The interviewer says, "You played on the Marketts records?", and Tommy replies, "We were The Marketts", then explains that the Wrecking Crew played on the records, but the producer or whoever hired teenagers to go on tour. That's actually touched on a bit in the Wrecking Crew film, where some of the musicians complain about the guys who had nothing to do with making the record (not even as songwriters) being put on the road as the group in question.
Well, being the geek that I am, and having read interviews with Tedesco, Carol Kaye, etc in guitar magazines 30 years ago, I kinda already knew it. But to see it really put it in bold face the way it is in that film, really sharpened my perspective on the matter. I liked Roger McGuinn's commentary on how quickly he and some of the Wrecking Crew musicians knocked out the backing track of Mr. Tambourine Man, then notes that it took The Byrds as a group something like 47 takes to get Turn! Turn! Turn! nailed down.
And I also liked the comment about how once things started changing and singers started using their road bands in the studio and groups started insisting on playing on their records. I think it's Al Casey who talks about how Glen Campbell's road guitarist told him about how he struggled to nail down this guitar part on a session, and Glen says, "I want that big Al Casey sound". Al says, "Does Glen know I'm available?!".
BTW, another line I once heard from a studio guitarist, I can't remember if it was Tedesco or one of the guys from the sort of next generation of LA studio rats, who I think were sort of collective known a the A Team. Anyway, this guitarist was talking about how he often times does sessions where the producer will ask him to tweak his sound, eg "more treble", "less treble", "less reverb", or whatever. So what he'd usually do is reach over to his amp/pedalboard/effects rack or whatever, and turn a knob that had no consequence to the sound (eg something on a pedal that was bypassed or an amp channel that wasn't being used), or if he had his amp positioned so the producer couldn't see the front panel, he might even just touch the front panel. He'd then play something, and the producer would say "Perfect! Don't touch anything!". Uhm, he didn't touch anything to begin with! I wonder how often such tactics were employed and how often they actually worked.
Any guitar player who doesn't own Tedesco's book "For Guitar Players Only" is not really a complete guitarist. Apart from having all the theory and tricks you'll ever need it's full of great anecdotes.
I recall reading a lot of articles in the good old Guitar Player magazine that Tommy wrote, IIRC it was Studio Log or something to that effect, after reading those I started to chase down some of his recordings, suffice it to say, he was one of those "Most in demand" session cats for quite a while.
Yeah, the point is made in the Wrecking Crew movie (which was made by Tedesco's son, starting not too long before his dad died, and taking something like 8 years to finish, and another five years to come up with the money to pay for the mechanical rights to use to the songs heard in the movie), that though most people have no idea who Tommy Tedesco was, they've almost certainly heard his guitar playing at some point in their lives, whether it was on a Marketts or Monkees or Beach Boys record, or in any of the TV and movie soundtracks he contributed to. The only people who've never heard Tommy's playing are people who don't own a radio or stereo or TV (in other words, the Amish, Amazonian tribes, etc).
Thats the amazing truth! The wrecking crew documentary, as previously mentioned, is astounding!!
I have a CD of his called Hollywood Gypsy which features Tommy and Jimmy Bruno on acoustic guitars, and a bass player.
His son is working on a documentary about him. I think there's a clip about it on YouTube.
Tommy was a pretty funny guy.
Last edited by Reid; 08-19-2015 at 01:31 AM.
I found out about the Wrecking Crew in the late 70's because of James Jamerson. I wanted to know who played so many of those great Motown bass lines that I was learning, it was mostly Jamerson. Reading up on him lead me to stories about the Wrecking Crew, the Swampers at Muscle Shoals, Booker T. & The MG's being the Stax house band, the MFSB (either Mother Father Sister Brother or Mutha Farkin' Studio Band depending on who you believe) guys who did sessions for Gamble & Huff in Philadelphia etc. Here's one of my very favorite bass lines, played by Anthony Jackson:
I'm a huge fan of the Wrecking Crew's "second wave" bass player Joe Osborn. Not flashy at all, but he worked so well with the drummer Hal Blaine and he had a great, trebly tone, because he played with a pick. Another favorite was Larry Knechtel, who had the distinction of playing the bass part on The Byrds Mr. Tambourine Man, the great piano part on Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water and the wah-wah lead guitar parts on Bread's Guitar Man. There's a documentary about the making of the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, and Paul Simon notes that he was skeptical about using Blaine, Osborn and Knechtel. He bought in to the whole "they're just slick LA session guys, they won't add anything special" thing. He was knocked out by how talented they were, how hard they worked, how they'd try anything just to make the record better.
...or you could love
Isn't this the Wrecking Crew documentary that so many here have been talking about?
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
Who is it that's tearing it up on guitar at the end of The TAMI Show? Tommy Tedesco, Glen Campbell or both?
Maybe that's the one? I haven't had a chance to watch it yet. Anyway, in that hour long Throwback Thurday video, Tedesco said one of his cherished memories was meeting and working with Frank Zappa on Lumpy Gravy. FZ was a big fan and had been following Tommy's work since the 50s.
+another one! Fabulous documentary!
I still think "Tedesco" sounds more like the name of a company - perhaps a maker of office equipment - than a person's surname.
Improve your workplace environment with Tedesco - office furniture for the new millenium! A great work environment makes for happy and productive employees!
Yep, along with "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" and "Muscle Shoals." The days of having a studio "house band" playing on multiple artists' albums are long gone, which makes it all the more fascinating to see those docs and get a feel for what it was like in those times when being a freelance musician could be as fun as it was lucrative.
Tedesco simply means "German" in Italian.
Just saying.
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