Carol Kaye

Origins and early life

Carol Kaye, born Carol Smith in Everett, Washington, to two professional musicians, learned the guitar in her early teens, taught it, then played the Los Angeles jazz and big-band circuit before starting session work in 1957.

Work and career

When a bassist failed to turn up to a date in 1963 she picked up the electric bass, and became one of the most in-demand session players of the decade: she is among the most recorded bass guitarists in popular music, credited on an estimated ten thousand recordings over a career of more than sixty-five years, and was part of the Los Angeles studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, working for Phil Spector and Brian Wilson.

From the late 1960s she also played on film scores, particularly for Quincy Jones and Lalo Schifrin, and wrote a series of teaching books beginning with How To Play The Electric Bass. Raised a Baptist, she converted to Judaism in the early 1960s and celebrated a bat mitzvah. In 2025 she was selected for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Excellence category, and declined the honour.