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News & Events

Hal Blaine is inducted into the new 'Musician's Hall Of Fame' in Nashville. Started by Joe Chambers, this place is an amazing tribute to musician's musicians!
Hal's discography is complete we are now just working with publisher's trying to put it together! It will be released along with a photo scrapbook filed with many cool memories. Stay tuned!

News & Events

From The Desk Of Denny Tedesco:
Thank you for making the LA premiere at the Grand Performances a Great Success but if they missed it and want to send a friend, this is a great event. After playing to great response at SXSW, Buffalo, Nashville and Seattle Film Festivals (see reviews), we are very excited that "The Wrecking Crew" documentary will screen as part of the "Don't Knock The Rock" Film Festival at the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax in Los Angeles.

Join us for a beautiful tribute to those brilliant musicians who made some of the best records of our lifetime, yet rarely the picture on the record -- now they get the spotlight. In fact, if you showed up to The T.A.M.I. Show Sunday night, you heard them, but you barely saw them -- they were the house band for all those great acts. This evening is all about them!

A Q&A with Denny Tedesco will follow the screening and Boyd Rice DJ's Wrecking Crew classics and novelties from Rodney Bingenheimer's personal collection, while Kari French and her Go Go Troupe do the hippy hippy shake to Rice's collection of rare 60s Scopitones!

PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE WORD. ITS VERY IMPORTANT THAT MUSICIANS AND MUSIC LOVERS KNOW ABOUT THIS SCREENING. THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT.

Here's Ernest Hardy's fabulous review of the film...

THE WRECKING CREW: BEHIND THE MUSIC
Movie retrieves rock history from the cutout bin
BY ERNEST HARDY
The shimmering intangibles of pop music whatever it is that makes three or more recorded minutes of music connect to and resonate within the human spirit are the co-subjects in this wonderful documentary on the Wrecking Crew, the industry-acclaimed but otherwise little-known group of session musicians who played on almost every major album or single recorded on the West Coast from the '60s thru the early '70s: the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, Ray Charles, the Mamas and the Papas, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Band the list is endless. Music geeks already know, but it'll come as a shock to the casual music fan that some of their favorite "bands" were forerunners of Milli Vanilli, miming over the masterful tracks laid out by this group. Directed by Denny Tedesco, whose legendary guitarist father, Tommy Tedesco, was part of the Crew (and whose licks can also be heard on countless classic TV theme songs), the film crams a lot in its fast-moving running time: the shifting of pop music's cultural center from New York (i.e., the Brill Building) to Los Angeles; how the Crew and their rock & roll sound and sartorial aesthetic redefined the "session musician"; and the brilliance of bassist Carol Kaye (the group's sole female member) and how she kicked down doors without even trying. Talking heads include Dick Clark, Cher, Lou Adler, Brian Wilson, Nancy Sinatra, Glen Campbell, Mickey Dolenz and a roundtable of the Crew itself. Tedesco began the film as a tribute to his father (which it very lovingly is) and ended up retrieving history from the cutout bin.

News & Events

June 25th, 2008
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN)
They played with Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, the Monkees, and countless others on chart-topping and Grammy-winning hits. But for all their success, the Wrecking Crew may have well been the invisible people.

Until now.

On Wednesday, the group of some of "the greatest musicians in the world," in the words of drummer Hal Blaine, was inducted into Hollywood's RockWalk, the Sunset Boulevard music gallery that honors some of pop music's most notable musicians.

Among those attending were Blaine, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer on songs including "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Strangers in the Night," "Good Vibrations" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water"; guitarist Glen Campbell; Danny Tedesco, son of the late guitarist Tommy Tedesco; bassist Jimmy Bond; and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas.

"It's like one big birthday party," Blaine told CNN upon seeing many of his old colleagues.

The Wrecking Crew was the name given the core group of L.A. session men and women who played on hundreds of chart hits, TV themes, movie soundtracks and commercial jingles. Phil Spector used the Wrecking Crew on most of his productions; Brian Wilson tapped their talents when he wanted to experiment in the studio and his group, the Beach Boys, was on tour.

Others in the group included pianist Leon Russell, keyboardist and bassist Larry Knechtel (that's his piano on "Bridge Over Troubled Water"), bassists Carol Kaye and Chuck Berghofer (Berghofer played the descending bass line on Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin' "), saxophonist Steve Douglas and guitarist Barney Kessel.

Blaine credited Tedesco, director of a new documentary about the band, for maintaining interest.

"[The film] came out so wonderful," Blaine said. Tedesco has "been directing commercials for a very long time and so this was a new project for him, but he knew exactly what he was doing and he went for it and did it."

Campbell, who broke away from the Wrecking Crew in the mid-'60s to become one of the leading country singers of the '60s and '70s, said he missed being part of a band.

"I wanted to stay here and play with the musicians. It was what I really enjoyed doing, more so than singing. I was a guitar player, one of the gang!" he said. "But putting yourself out there yourself, it's a lot different. You've got the people out there and the band back here and I missed my peers a lot."

"The Wrecking Crew" is making the rounds at film festivals. Hollywood's RockWalk is located at Guitar Center's Sunset Boulevard location.

News & Events

Hal Blaine is on MySpace, a place for friends. The Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum opened to the public June 9, 2006 and is the only one in the world. It honors great musicians of all genres regardless of instrument played. The museum consists of many historic instruments played on countless of famous recordings from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Dylan, all of the Beatles individually, and to Hank Sr., George Jones and Garth Brooks. The complex also houses a school of music and a performance hall. Visit www.musicianshalloffame.com for more information.

Since the opening of the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, the Hall of Fame has sent ballots to professional musicians, producers, engineers, and music historians across the country requesting their nominations for inductees into the Musicians Hall of Fame. From this pool of nominees, the Musicians Hall of Fame Advisory Board chose the inaugural class for the 2007 inductees. The Musicians Hall of Fame’s inaugural class includes The Blue Moon Boys, The Funk Brothers, The Memphis Boys, The Nashville A-Team, The Tennessee Two, and The Wrecking Crew.

The Wrecking Crew

In the early 60’s, there was a group of studio musicians located in L.A. who, with time, became known as The Wrecking Crew. Although virtually unknown to the public, these musicians played on most of the hits associated with the West Coast sound. These younger musicians inherited their name from the original session players of the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. The older generation musicians did not want to play “that rock and roll music,” and they felt that the younger group of musicians would wreck the industry by playing the emerging genre. Hence, The Wrecking Crew was a fitting name for this talented group of musicians. Most of The Wrecking Crew is also known as a part of legendary producer Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound.”

That sound consisted of artists such as Sonny and Cher, The Association, Ricky Nelson, The Beach Boys, The Fifth Dimension, The Byrds, Herb Alpert, The Mamas and the Papas, Johnny Rivers, Jan and Dean, Andy Williams, Simon and Garfunkel, The Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers, Nancy, and even Frank Sinatra. Members of the Wrecking Crew played on countless movie scores and television themes such as Hawaii Five-O, Twilight Zone, Green Acres, and M*A*S*H*. View the article from Nashville's own Tennessean!

Musician's Hall of Fame

This past summer, Hal's daughter, Michelle and her hubby Andy along with their son Andrew traisped across the country from LA to VA with a stop along the way in Nashville.
They did this intentionally, wanting to check out the HB exhibit there and were they ever pleased with the result! Aside from the mad hospitality of these southern creatures the exhibits in general were incredible! The Hal Blaine/Wrecking Crew exhibit is one of the most comprehensive and gorgeous displays ever viewed! It is a must see when you hit the Nashville scene.
Hal will be inducted this fall, November 25th, 2007 - along with many other deserving musicians.
One of the main reasons this is such a stellar project is due the fact that the MHFM pays tribute solely to MUSICIANS!
The Musicians Hall Of Fame And Museum is the one and only museum in the world that honors the talented musicians who actually played on the greatest recordings of all time. Some like Jimi Hendrix are well known, while others like L.A session drummer Hal Blaine are not as well known to the public, but have played on hundreds of hit records from Elvis, Frank and Nancy Sinatra,The Byrds, The Mamas and The Papas and The Beach Boys, just to name a very few . The Musicians Hall Of Fame And Museum has on exhibit the very instruments that these musicians used to record many of these classic hits. The Museum will constantly be adding new exhibits for you to enjoy from all genres of music .
The MHFM showed that they brought in the New Year in style with several visits from the musicians showcased in the museum. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' drummer Chad Smith, one of HB's good buddies, dropped by the MHFM on January 18 for a Meet and Greet with the press and some of his Nashville fans.