Carol Kaye inspires me too

For some reason I often think about Carol Kaye when I’m playing this show. She was the first-call electric bassist in LA during the 1960s and early 70s. She played on hundreds of hit songs. Name a song from that era, and it was probably her on the electric bass. I got to know her via her website and then I was lucky enough to take a couple of lessons with her when I first started playing electric bass. She is amazing. Before she took up the bass she was a working guitarist in the jazz clubs around LA. She also toured as the guitarist with a big band in the 1950’s and her husband was on the gig too, playing upright bass. I know that things were not the same at all back then with the touring bands and that we are in no way in the same category, but it is fun while I am on stage to imagine her out there on the road doing the same thing. Her circumstances were so completely different from mine but it is also fairly likely that there are some similarities as well. It is fun to think that I am continuing something or other by being a woman touring with a mostly male big band show all of these years later. I hope she enjoyed the performances when she was on the road as much as I do now. When I am performing this show, it really is the music that makes everything else worthwhile. I wonder if it worked that way for her too. I enjoy imagining that it did. Anyway, check her out at http://www.carolkaye.com/