"I like them, but so simple a drum part, especially "To Know Him Is To Love Him" why hire anyone?"

Jim replied....

Actually, nobody was really "hired" to do the drum part.

In fact, that whole record was a freak in that it was started out a one-voice one-guitar demo, with bits added!

As you say, The Innocents were managed by Jim Lee who was learning the record business as a staffer with Indigo Records, and they had come off their first big hit "Honest I Do" which had got to Number 1 in Los Angeles, and if I remember rightly, into the Top 30 nationally.

Kathy Young meanwhile, was an Innocents fan - (who I think was still only 14 or 15) - and while getting their autographs after a TV show, had mentioned to Jim Lee that she had written some songs suitable for the Innocents.

He offered her a session if she raised $200 (which she and her school friends did), and he gave her a time.

However, the day before it was due to happen, she fell (I think in a swimming pool), so in desperation, she asked Lee for a second chance as she was due back in school the following week.

He had a three-hour session booked with the Innocents and some session musicians for the next day, so he suggested she come in at the end, and cut a demo of the songs.

Next day, Kathy, her mother and some school friends, arrived half-way through the Inncocents session.

When it ended, she sang a few of her songs, but Lee did not think them all that suitable for the Innocents.

He suggested instead that she demo "A Thousand Stars" which he had been thinking of covering.

She did not know the song, so he played her the 45rpm by the Rivileers.

She learned it, and accompanying herself on guitar, she did the recording.

Meanwhile, the session musicians had packed up, but Lee, thinking the demo was a bit bare, asked Nelson to take out his snare drum and add some percussion, while Al Candelaria of the Innocents offered to add bass.

Although nobody really presumed it was of release quality, Lee asked the Innocents to add vocal background, and when they were finished, he put on a huge amount of echo to cover up the roughness of it, and took it over to Indigo Records.

Indigo liked it - and although Lee offered to record it "properly" - they said it was fine as it was!

However, although he thought it would come out just under her name (he had signed her as a solo act), Indigo decided it would get more airplay if it came out as The Innocents (Featuring Kathy Young) - then on the second pressing, as Kathy Young & The Innocents.

And so, Sandy Nelson ended up playing snare drum on a Number 3 record which he had probably forgotten all about by the time it came out!

That type of thing was not unusual - back in 1957, Buddy Holly and some friends had cut a demo of "That'll Be The Day" (wrong bass notes and all), which Norman Petty had shopped around a few labels hoping to get Holly a deal.

Coral liked the demo, and released it as it stood - not under Holly's own name, but under the name of "The Crickets".

Only one of the eventual Crickets actually played on "That'll Be The Day", but that was the way it was in those days - producers made records, and then if they took off, formed the act whose name was on the label!

During the 50's and 60's, session guys did 90% of the "group" work, because producers found it quicker to use session men than the bands they were recording.

There were strict AFM rules re the length of a session (three hours), the number of tracks you could do at a session (four, then later three), and as a result, musicians often turned up at sessions where they either sat around for one of the tracks because their instrument was not required, or else played something else altogether.

Floyd Cramer for example, was hired for a Jimmy Dean session.

On one of the songs, there was no piano part for him to play, but the producer wanted the sound of a pick-axe, which the drummer could not get, so Floyd got a metal door-stopper, hung it on a coat-hanger, and then hit it with a hammer!

And so Floyd Cramer ended up playing percussion (or playing pick-axe) on "Big Bad John".

I have heard the master without the pick-axe, and with it, and there is no doubt in my mind that it would not have crossed over onto the pop charts without Floyd Cramer's coat hanger!

And I actually could have played that!

(If of course I was there...and somebody had asked me...and if I had enough brains to realise that a door-stop on a coat-hanger struck by a hammer would produce a pick-axe).

But all that aside - I could have done it.

Imagine, instead of me writing about Floyd Cramer on this site, he could have been here writing about me.

• RE: The Innocents and Sandy Nelson - John 09/29/2009 16:24:28 EDT (0)