Chuck Rainey (b. 1940) is a legendary electric bassist who has worked with everyone from King Curtis to the Rascals, Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, Louis Armstrong, Quincy Jones, Steely Dan, and many, many more. His intricate, rhythmic bass playing can be heard on thousands of recordings, and today he is still counted as one of the most prolific session bassists of all time.

The following is compiled from two separate interviews I conducted with Chuck, the first via Zoom in October 2021, and the second in-person at the University of North Texas in March 2023.

Brian F. Wright: So, it seems like you started playing electric bass around 1961, when you were about 20 years old, is that right?

Chuck Rainey: That’s right.

BW: Do you remember why you were drawn to the instrument? Was there something about the bass specifically that interested you?

CR: The bass has always been very important to me. I came up playing in marching bands and orchestras in high school and junior high school. And the tuba was always exciting to me. When I got to College I played baritone horn, which is fingered the same way as the trumpet except it is in the bass clef. So, the bass has always been in my system. And when I ended up as the third guitar player in a band, it was suggested that I go and get a bass, because I was playing bass parts on my guitar.

BW: I read that you first saw an electric bass at a Hank Ballard and the Midnighters show?

CR: I was about 14 years old. I snuck out of the house. And that was the first time I saw it.

BW: So, was the sound of the electric bass part of its appeal for you? Or was it just that you were generally interested in low end instruments? 

CR: I think it was the clarity. Because it was hard to hear the upright bass on most records, and especially live, because they weren't amplifying them then. So, basically, I think it had a more specific sound. It wasn’t just in the background. It was a lot like the organ bass. You can’t miss it at all because the sound is just so dominant. Of course, I came up listening to a lot of Gospel music, with organ playing bass.

BW: And those organ bass players had a big influence on how you conceived of the sound and role of the bass?

CR: Absolutely.

BW: When you first started playing electric bass, had you moved to Cleveland yet? Or were you still playing in Youngstown?

CR: I was still playing in Youngstown. I left shortly after. I guess I was playing the electric bass for maybe two or three months before I went to Cleveland.  

BW: Was the bass sort of a novelty at that point? Did anyone else in town have one?

CR: Not that I could see. I think I remember a Gospel choir having any electric bass, but they were traveling on the road. I'm not quite sure if they were from Youngstown or not. There may have been another one, but I can't specifically remember who it was. So it was sort of a novelty.

BW: Was the electric bass accepted back then, or was it considered strange? Did its novelty value mean that people would come to the gigs just to see it?

CR: I don't really know for sure, but we were playing R&B. And I would imagine that some people did come by to see the instrument, because the only other time I saw the instrument was when the movie [Go Johnny Go (1959)] came and the Flamingos had one. But where I came from, the bass was always an acoustic bass or organ bass. So, I think the electric bass was a novelty, but I didn’t know that at that time. I was just playing the bass, you know?

BW: Did you have a steady band when you moved to Cleveland or were you freelancing?

CR: Oh no, I left Youngstown with a band from Cleveland. They had come to Youngstown for maybe three or four months, why I don’t know. But I joined them, and they decided to go back to Cleveland, which is a much bigger city, so I went with them.

BW: And after that, you got a gig with Big Jay McNeely?

CR: Right. In Cleveland.

BW: Were you still playing R&B?  

CR: Well, he was more known for jazz. He was a honker. He walked the bar, walked the club, and he honked. “There is Something on Your Mind” was a ballad, sung by Little Sonny Warner. That was his attraction. So, we played that and one or two other standards, but basically it was a honkers show.

BW: Can you talk a little bit about the audience that went to see McNeeley back then? Was it mainly adults or teens?

CR: Older people. Older than me, that’s for sure. I guess at the time I was maybe 22 or 23. So the audience was basically people that were into jazz.

BW: Was it primarily a black audience?

CR: No, at that time it was primarily a white audience. Cleveland was sort of racially divided. Whites lived on the west side and Blacks live on the east side. And we always played on the west side, unless it was a tour.

BW: At some point you switch to playing an Ampeg B-15. Did that happen while you were still in Cleveland, or was that later on?

CR: That happened later on in my career, when I started working in the studio. In Cleveland, I played a Fender Bassman. I think it was 50 Watts, with that tweed cover and two 12-inch speakers in it.

BW: So, after working with Big Jay McNeely, you get a gig with Sil Austin, and that’s eventually how you get to New York? And that was around 1962?

CR: I would say that is correct. I did get to New York in 1962, from Montreal. Might have been ’63.

BW: Can you talk a little bit about what it was like in New York when you got there? Was it hard to find work as an electric bassist?

CR: New York was very exciting. I had never been around that many people. When I came into New York, of course I didn't have a job. I had gone to Montreal was Sil Austin, who I left Cleveland with. And when they came back, maybe eight or nine months later, I joined the band and came back to New York. But my mother and my sister lived in East Orange[, NJ], which is right across the river. And so I knew that if I had a problem, I could go home. I could always go back to mama. So, New York was hard, but I had good friends. I had a good friend that let me stay with him in his hotel room, until I was able to get my own. And that didn’t take too long. I think I stayed with him for maybe a week. I ended up going to East Orange to stay with my mother and sister. I really didn't have to fend for making money right away. I had a place to stay, I could eat. So I found New York to be very exciting. When I did start working, the club scene was very different from what I was accustomed to. All the jobs started at nine-thirty [p.m.] and ended at four in the morning. It was a very, very busy place. Now I'm basically a country boy, but New York was always busy busy busy, no matter what time of day or night that it was. Musically, there were clubs everywhere. Up in Harlem, Midtown, down in the Village, out on the Island. And there was always an opportunity to get a pickup gig. Of course, that didn't happen right away. It was maybe close to a year before I left East Orange and moved back into Manhattan. Pickup gigs weren’t a dime a dozen, but you know you could always pick up a gig without being in a band. They were always looking for a bass player. So I found New York to be a great education, because in New York you learned quickly what to do and what not to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

BW: So, during that year you’re spending in East Orange, were you going into the city and slowly getting established?

CR: Oh yeah. I would go into the city from time to time. I had jobs with Baby Washington, Bill Doggett, and probably a few other people. Because my close music friends were in New York, and whenever someone needed a bass player, all it took was a phone call. So I did go back and forth, not a lot at first. I didn’t do it every day, probably once or twice a week. Sometimes I’d go back just to hang. It was just a 45-minute bus ride.

BW: And then, after a year or so, you were something of a known quantity.

CR: Yeah. Pretty soon you get into a thing, where people see you enough. And the new guy in town always gets an opportunity to play, because they're always looking.

BW: Do you remember what kind of bands you were playing in back then? Were these Top 40 bands, R&B bands, etc.?

CR: Top 40.

BW: I’ve read that when you were playing in Top 40 bands, that’s when you discovered James Jamerson’s work with Motown, because you had to copy it every night. Did that happen in this era, or was that later with King Curtis?

CR: Well King Curtis’s band did not play much Motown. If anything, we played something by Junior Walker. But other than that, by the time I got to King Curtis, we were playing everything. We’d get a job playing a supper club gig. The band played all kinds of music genres. Of course, King Curtis was a jazz saxophone player who sang and enjoyed R&B. And so we always played little bit of both.

BW: When you got to New York originally, were there more electric bassists around? Did it seem like a more normal thing then?  

CR: Well, when I got to New York there were a lot of bass players playing the electric bass. So it wasn’t like it was in Ohio at all.

BW: Did you get a sense that there was a generational divide, where the older upright players looked down on the younger electric players?

CR: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Now some of the younger electric bass players, like Jerry Jemmott, they played the upright bass. But basically in my circle, that was rare. Bob Cranshaw played an electric bass sometimes. He played an electric bass on Sesame Street. But other than that, I can’t think of any other bass player in New York that played both instruments. So, there was a big divide, but there were exceptions. Charles Mingus, George Duvivier, Milt Hinton. They were acoustic bass players, but they were very kind to me. They didn’t play electric. Mingus was a big fan of King Curtis. Every jazz musician loved him. He was the king, he really was. And Mingus sat in with the band one matinee and he played my electric bass. He played one song and said, “Wow, that’s very interesting. It’s the first time I ever played one of these.” I don’t think he ever played it again. But the older players, without mentioning names, were kind of a pain in the butt. I think it’s because the electric bass players were getting a lot of studio work. Once the electric bass became popular, these upright players were getting less studio work. They were getting a bit jealous. Back then, if a session wanted a bass player and I get the call and showed up with an electric bass, it was considered a “miscellaneous” instrument.

BW: So it counted as a double or something?

CR: Yeah, a double. So you’d get paid for it. We always got paid a double. Some of the upright players ended up buying one, just so they could bring it with them to get that double. [Laughs] But to answer your question, yes, the upright players who were vocal were a pain in the butt. But once I got so busy, I didn’t mind it.  

BW: Do you think it mostly just came down to the money? That they weren’t getting called as much, that it was sort of a threat to their livelihoods?

CR: Well, more than that. They didn’t see the electric bass as a bass. I worked for a few contractors and arrangers who saw it as a bass guitar. And there’s a difference between an electric bass and a bass guitar. And as you know, if you’re a guitar player, you can play the bass. Not enough to make you a bass player, but on simple pop music and certain things you can play the bass. Because of the way it’s strung. So there were a few orchestrators who thought that the instrument was a bass guitar and they would write it in the treble clef. Until they came to me, and I had to explain that it wasn’t an electric guitar and the part needed to be written in the bass clef. So I kind of think they didn't respect the instrument.

BW: Also, was it that the arrangers and orchestrators were still figuring out what to do with the electric bass exactly?  

CR: Well, no. New York is very, very competitive, and the producers and arrangers go with the flow. If a bass player in the environment is using the electric bass, they hire him. So I don’t think it took them longer to figure it out, because there were also a few electric bass players in New York before me. Eric Gale also played electric bass. When I came in, there were a couple of other electric bass players that were doing studio work before me. As a matter of fact, in King Curtis’s band, the bass player that I replaced was an upright player—except that he played electric in Curtis’s band.

BW: Was that Jimmy Lewis?

CR: Jimmy Lewis, yeah.

BW: So maybe this is a good time to talk about King Curtis. It does seem like a lot of musicians who would go on to do session work got started in Curtis’s band. What was it about his band that made it such an important training ground?

CR: Well, to begin with, King Curtis was an excellent musician. He played on most of the Coasters records. He was the Yakety Sax. So he played a lot of record dates, and was known. He was a great businessman, he belonged to the Union, he did a lot of overdubs, and all of his bands, all of them had excellent musicians in them. His band was very popular in New York. If you worked in King Curtis’s band, people knew you were a good musician. So people would call you if they needed somebody who could play. If you played with King Curtis for any amount of time, you were on the radar, because everybody that he hired could play. He was a great bandleader.

BW: So it was just the reputation of the band and that Curtis had an eye for talent, so he was able to pick out the best young musicians.

CR: Young and old. He could pick them out. He was the epitome of a great band leader. Everybody in his bands were just excellent musicians. Also, everybody knew that if you worked for King Curtis, you understood the professional side of things. You would be on time, you would play in tune. Like you just said, his bands had a reputation for being good musicians.

BW: And, as you said, you had to be able to play lots of different styles, so if you had played with Curtis, contractors could assume you had a certain versatility?

CR: Absolutely. You had to be able to understand and play all kinds of music, because that's what he did. He taught me that my responsibility as a bass player was to be on time and to know the music. We didn't rehearse that much. Whatever song that he wanted to play, he would tell us what it was and we learned the song.

BW: But it wasn’t necessarily that you all developed the same practical skill set. It’s not like everybody in the band was a great reader or anything like that?  

CR: No. As a matter of fact, none of us at that time were great readers. That's a very interesting question because I got my reading chops together after being in Etta James’s band, and that was before King Curtis. So we could all read. I think Cornell [Dupree] could read, George Stubbs was the oldest member of the band, and he was a good piano player. He read. Ray Lucas did read. We were more of less reading chord charts. We never had to really read a lot of notation. If there was a chart, it was a chord chart. By the time I got Curtis’s in band, I had experienced… As a matter of fact, now that I’m talking, I did not have to really seriously read notation until after I got out of Curtis’s band. Because once you start doing studio work, a lot of times there are no charts and you got to make up your own chart. Or if they use a chart, you play to the chart. And then there are some people that will notate. 

BW: Working with Curtis, you were the opening act for the Beatles’ 1965 U.S. tour.

CR: We had a great band, top band, as a matter of fact, at that time in New York City. This is why we got the gig opening for the Beatles [in 1965]. That was a wonderful two weeks. We made a little money, and we also two got a chance to get out of New York and see Los Angeles, which I swore after that tour that I would live in LA.  

BW: Do you have any specific memories of that tour?

CR: Well, I remember that we did not know who the Beatles were. [Laughs] We saw signs on Broadway that said, "The Beatles are coming," but we didn't know who the Beatles were. We were not familiar with their music at all. We did not even know who they were until halfway through the tour. And of course, there were 6 or 7 other acts on that tour which we played behind. We opened, we played behind them before they changed the stage. And I remember so well because at the rehearsal, the first soundcheck, there were thousands of people there. We were not used to playing for that many people. I think the largest audience I had been in front of was playing with Jackie Wilson or Johnnie Taylor to probably 1,800 or 2,000 people. And the gig itself was exciting. But as a musician, I need to not be intimidated because if I don't do this, [Curtis] is going to get somebody else. And I would do the same thing. Business is business.

BW: What was your opinion of the Beatles once you found out who they were?

CR: They were excellent. The harmony was excellent. The instruments were excellent. We were shocked. They were very, very good. We were also shocked about the reception that they were getting from the audience, but we all thought that they were great.

BW: Was it in this era that you were developing your particular rhythmic approach to bass playing?

CR: At that time, no. I was just a hired hand bass player that happened to be in this band. Of course, I'm very proud to be in this band because in New York, when you find one good bass player, there's another ten that are just as good. Maybe the personalities are different or whatever, but being in that band, he could have chosen at least 4 or 5 other great bass players. So at that time I was just learning the ropes.

BW: Had you developed your style before you started doing session work?

CR: Yeah, because I had to play Motown music.

BW: Do you want to talk a little bit about the influence of James Jamerson and Motown on your approach?

CR: When I first got to New York, Motown was all over the radio. So I had to play Motown stuff. So there's a lot of James Jamerson in me, a lot. I maybe don't do it the way that he does it, but I do the same thing. I probably do it differently, but there's a lot of my style and understanding of bass lines that came from playing Motown music.

BW: It seems like you joined Curtis’s band around 1964 or so, and then by ’67 you leave and start doing session work. Does that sound right?

CR: That sounds right.

BW: Had you done session work before you left Curtis's band? Or is that really something that happened after you left?

CR: It happened after King Curtis. Now I had done some sessions. I did maybe three or four. I think my first big session in New York was with Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford and they did a single called “I Need Your Loving” [Fire, 1962], which was a radio hit. So I probably did maybe one or two sessions before King Curtis. And then I did two sessions with Curtis when I was in his band.

BW: Once you left the band, did you know you wanted to do session work? Did that become an ambition of yours?

CR: There came a time when I think Curtis’s mother died. And he left and went back to Texas. But he was gone so long that it was obvious that he was either dead or had changed bands.

BW: He didn’t tell you? He didn’t formerly break it up?

CR: No. And it was a good band too. Sometimes, when you’ve had a group together for three years, it’s hard when it breaks up. To be truthful, I didn’t understand it then. But I understand it now. He just wanted a new look. Too bad he did that because he wasn’t as successful with his new look as he was with his old. [Laughs] I don’t say that to be mean.

BW: So, what made you want to do session work?

CR: I had to. [Laughs]

BW: You needed the money. 

CR: Yeah. But also I needed to play. And being in his band for three years did give me sort of a reputation around town where people started calling me for demos. The bulk of my recordings after I left Curtis was doing demos.

BW: After you start doing demos, how long did it take for you to become an established first-call player. 

CR: I say, maybe a year.

BW: So by around ’68 or ‘69?

CR: Yeah. That sounds right.

BW: Did you feel like when you came along, your approach to the bass was different from the older musicians on the New York scene? Did you think of yourself as doing something different than the older electric bass players?

CR: That's a very good question because… Once I met Eric Gale, he had a lot younger mindset about the music. And he was hiring Bob Bushnell and Jimmy Tyrell and I would imagine even Jimmy Lewis, because he was a contractor. I got involved because he was dissatisfied playing with them. And once we started playing together, I think I was a little bit younger in style. But Eric chose to like me and started hiring me. Bernard Purdie was already on the scene. So was Paul Griffin. One thing too: once a trend or fad starts everybody follows suit. That's why you’ll find my name along with a lot of the same people on so many records. Because once you are successful, or known to do this kind of thing, other people just follow suit, they just hire the same people.

BW: Success breeds success. It takes a while for you to get your foot in the door through demo work, but once you start playing on hits you suddenly move up the call sheet.

CR: And not so much hits. Just sort of like being always there. Once people see you all the time… You’ve got to be doing something, if they see you all the time. And so pretty soon it becomes, “Who should we get on guitar?” “Eric Gale” “Who should we get on piano?” “Paul Griffin” “Who should we get on bass?” “Well I just worked with Chuck Rainey…” And it was that kind of thing.  Once you're on the scene all the time, people do see your face and remember your name.

BW: For as big as New York is, it seems that maybe the recording scene is pretty small? When a contractor wants to hire someone on bass, they probably have in their had three, four names. Does that sound right?

CR: It is small, especially when it comes to different scene. The recording scene was all in Manhattan. So I kind of think that it is a close knit society, in a sense, although within that society, there are different social groups. There are some that do a certain amount of work and then are different socially, then there’s a different group of people that do other kinds of work. And then the people in all close-knit societies do cross over into the other environment sometimes.

BW: So it's sort of like there were cliques? 

CR: Oh yeah.

BW: Were these divided among racial lines? It seems like you, Dupree, and Purdie are often called if it’s an R&B gig. Would they call the white guys if they was a rock session? Or was that not how it worked?

 CR: Of course, it’s that way everywhere. However, in New York, although those cliques do exist, every producer wants success. So what's different about New York, I think, especially from my experience in New York, if you can play well and get along and you can read, you can cross cliques. Of course, there's always certain people that they hire for certain kinds of music. However, there are people in those cliques that do cross over because they can play all kinds of things. A lot of people are able to play different genres of music and after a while arrangers and producers know who they are.

BW: And they also know not only the individual players, but how they play together. The more you play together, the closer you get, the more that becomes a winning formula. 

CR: That’s right. That goes for all rhythm sections that play a lot together. Smart arrangers know who they are hiring. They make sure that the contractor understands what’s being done. Because a lot of arrangers and producers don’t know what they’re doing. They just happen to have the purse strings, or they happen to have the job. So, every contract has to really understand who to put together and who not to put together.

BW: Part of that is who musically fits together, but also there’s an element of personality too. They need to be careful about which musicians don’t get along or have a conflict.

CR: Things like that do happen. That’s why the contractor is very, very important. Although the producer is responsible. Either you make it or you don’t, it’s on him. The first person to get fired from a project that isn’t working for the record company is the producer. So he has to be very careful on who is arranger is, and thar arranger has to be very careful on who is contractor is. The contractor is the one that has the license with the Union and ultimately picks the musicians. Now an arranger sometimes says who they do or do not want for a session, but it has to go through the contractor. The producer has to be aware of who is arranger is. Because, the bottom line is that that musicians are the ones that make it go or not go. But they’re the last to be fired.

BW: In the setup you’re describing, the musicians are the ones who make the music but they’re also the lowest level of that hierarchy. They’re not the ones held accountable, but also they maybe don’t have much power outside of playing. Does that sound right?

CR: That sounds very right. [Laughs] Very right.

BW: So I want to go back to your approach to playing the bass, especially once you were established as a session player. When I listen to you, I hear this emphasis on groove and rhythm, so I was hoping you could talk a bit about how you developed that approach?

CR: Well, the only thing I can safely say about that is that if I weren’t a bass player, I would be a drummer. Although I said earlier that I always listened to the tuba when I was younger, but it was also the rhythm cadence of the drums that got me excited. Every time I was in a in a marching band, and I was in a lot of them, I always loved marching in the drum cadence. I did play drums once, when I was 14 years old in a drum corps. I played field tom and I enjoyed that. I’ve always been interested in drum rudiments, and that became part of my playing. But I wouldn’t play it with two fingers. I would play with one, going back and forth, which gave me more speed. And I can play a drum cadence by going back and forth with my finger. So I kind of think that technique made some of the things that I do different from other players. I’ve been told by many bass players that are in the road band of an act that I recorded with that I really made their life interesting, trying to duplicate the bass line that I played. There’s some people that can play really, really fast with two fingers, but I never developed that. So a lot of my playing is like whipping my finger across the string, to a point where this “in” stroke, has the same sound as the “out” stroke.

BW: Did this way of playing give you a more percussive attack? Were you playing with your nail specifically?

CR:  I played with flatwound strings and I bit my nails, so my nails were not that long, but I do play with the very tip of my fingers, though. And a lot of people don't understand that one finger thing. It’s not like this [hooked], it’s more like this [straight]. The finger is straight. It’s got to be a pick. So I kind of think that the my technique had an impact on how I play. Now of course you don't play that way all the time. When I’m walking the bass, I have an upright feel/style, and I sometimes used two fingers. Someone once described me as very rhythmic and asked me how many fingers I was using. I said, “Well, I’m just using one.” It’s like when they talk about Jamerson and the “hook.” People have to remember, no interviewer or editor, nobody who writes about musicians ever asked James Jamerson anything [about his technique]. Everything that’s been said about Jamerson and the “hook” is what somebody else said. When you listen to his bass lines, it’s impossible to play what he played with one finger. Plus he was an upright player also, which means he had skills using both fingers. I've had a few friends that are bass players and I showed him how I did something and they don’t get it. Because you can't just wake up in the morning and say, “I’m going to do that.” It took years to build up this muscle.

BW: But it does seem that making your finger rigid like a pick would add to the rhythmic element.

CR: Oh yeah. 

BW: The other thing I hear when I listen to your playing is that it seems like you’re really subdividing. It seems like you’re always thinking at a 16th-note level. Do you think that’s what you’re doing when you come up with grooves and rhythms? 

CR: That’s very well put because if the tempo is slow… Like are you familiar with Donny Hathaway’s “Little Girl”? That song is so slow that the only way it really play it to have a 12/8 feel.  You know the music is 1… 2… 3… 4… but I’m feeling 123 223 323 423, double that. Or if it’s 8th notes, I’m thinking in a 16th-note feel. So very well put what you just said because I am thinking in double time.

BW: Before I turn to some specific songs, I had a few questions about the New York scene in general. The New York session musicians don’t get the same kind of recognition as the Wrecking Crew, or Muscle Shoals, or Stax. Why do you think that is? 

CR: Because, no matter how you look at it, New York people really do not care about that. It’s easier for people to write about Muscle Shoals or L.A. because those musicians will talk. Very few New York musicians want to talk. They’re not interested in that. They just don’t care and there’s also a lot of people that hustle. You know they ask a lot of questions, they do a lot of things. Like you’ve said I’ve talked to 1,000 people about my career. And you get a sense when you get the call what's going on. You know we can tell what’s going on. We know if it’s viable and it makes sense. But you’re talking about bass players in New York… A lot of people in New York that have been so instrumental in this music business have died. Now I’m at the end of my autobiography and I talk about a lot of people that I worked with. But basically they’re all gone. I turned 81 this year and looking back at the things I did musically and the trials and tribulations I went through, these stories should be written by somebody who does that as a career. Because my autobiography has taken me four years and I’m just now finishing it. A lot of people too have a tendency to overdo what they’re doing, so I imagine that biographers and writers do the same thing, like they do in Hollywood. You overdo the story. Everyone wants to put themselves in the story as though it wouldn’t exist without them. New Yorkers aren’t like that. My favorite New Yorker is Miles Davis. When you read what he wrote, he doesn’t sugarcoat it. Like Mingus. Mingus wasn’t from New York, but he was a New York kind of person. When you read their autobiographies, you can tell this is a normal dude that is telling it to you like it is, no matter how it makes them look. So to answer your question, New Yorkers themselves either they don’t care about the BS that goes down or sometimes they can’t trust the person who is doing it, because their ego is doing it, not them. I hope I am making sense. You, by the way, have a hard job. Because you have to figure out who is putting it on. Because some people you talk to, and I won’t mention any names, but you have to have a feel for this. Some people just don't have enough. They’ve got to keep saying stuff that is not true. When you interview somebody, is the ego talking or is that person really talking? I’ve seen quite a few interviews and Zoom sessions with people that I was just listening to, but they’re so full of it. It didn't happen that way. It's like Hollywood. I couldn’t stand the Jimi Hendrix movie. I could not stand the Aretha Franklin movie. I could not stand the James Brown movie or the Ray Charles movie. They put too much BS in it. Although I was not privy to know the lives of all the people I’m listing, I was around them at times when something was or viewed and it didn’t happen that way. I know that to be a fact because I was there. But I have found that people like you have a hard job because I know musicians, and the average musician is full of it. They want you to know how important they were and what they did, and how they did this, but it ain't true. That’s not the way it went down.

BW: Well, and in this era, session musicians weren’t credited on the albums, so that can make it even more difficult for later writers to know who exactly played on what.

CR: If you listen to the track, and you're a bass player, you’ve got enough of an ear to tell who is who. Yes they didn’t credit the musicians in the 1960s. But I can guarantee you that up through around 1980, if you play me a record, I could tell you who is playing bass. Because of the style and the feel. But when it comes to musicians, I hear BS all the time. For example, I’ve been in bands where I’m just a hired hand for a weekend and the trumpet player told everybody that he’s on this Aretha Franklin song that we were doing. But I know he wasn’t there, because I know who the horn players were. But I don't say anything. Like you said, your job is to determine if this person really did this or are they just saying they did it. So I commend you because your job is hard.

BW: Yeah. This might be a good time to discuss some logistics. Could you walk me through what a typical week looked like for you as a session musician?

CR: I'll just talk about New York, because they do things a little differently on the West Coast. But, basically, sessions are 10-1, 2-5 and 7-10. Three hours. So if you're a first call player, you can do 10-1, 2-5 and 7-10, Monday through Friday. This schedule was very easy for me because I love to play. As long as I'm playing, I'm happy. You know, no matter what kind of money I'm making, because I'm playing so much, I can't spend it. [Laughs]

BW: And you’re getting paid full union scale. Was that around $60 back then?

CR: $62.50 

BW: When you were in New York, were you getting double scale?

CR: No. Matter of fact, none of us were. I’m not privy to the whole scene, but I can tell you that New York was not a double scale place. Now the contractor got double scale because he was also one of the musicians.  

BW: Right, and if you had a double you get paid a little more top. 

CR: Yeah I think a double was like $22.80 [more] or something like that.

BW: So is that part of the reason why you eventually moved to LA? Because the money was better?

CR: Oh no. I’m not a city boy. I had a chance to go to Germany for two years and play with a radio orchestra in Frankfurt or go to LA and tour with Quincy [Jones]. I had done an album with him, me and Eric. And Eric and I were working with Roberta Flack on the weekends. We got asked to play a [West Coast] tour for Quincy Jones and Roberta Flack. Very good tour by the way. So I agreed. I went just to change environments, and plus I had been to LA on the Beatles tour [in 1965]. And I swore I would come back to live there one day. So it was about the time for me to move.

BW: As a session musician, isn’t taking a tour like that kind of a risky proposition? Because as soon as you leave town, you might stop getting called?

CR: That’s actually part of the reason I [originally] got started playing [sessions] in New York. Because the other guys lived too far away. I lived in Manhattan. When they called for a bass player, I was, by cab, 10 minutes away from any studio. A lot of the [older] first call players had made money and they were living on Long Island. It takes 45 minutes for them to come into town. So if it was a last minute call, I'm only 10 minutes away.

BW: Back then, were they miking your Ampeg B-15, or were you playing direct?

CR: We recorded out of the back of a B-15. And then sometimes some studios would mic it. Or do both.

BW: Did you feel like session work was a good living back then?

CR: Oh absolutely. Yeah. Especially when scale got to be $350 a session, and you’re making close to $8-10,000 a week and you’ve got a house, a mortgage, a car note, a baby, and two dogs, you know. All that was taken care of.

BW: So your making good money at the time, but you also have to sign away the rights to future royalties.

CR: Well, that’s not really true. In that, all musicians got royalty checks in June for records sold that their name was on the contract. And in August, they got paid royalties on all the films that we did. So we did get residuals, we did make money.

BW: Were those payments substantial? Or did it not really compare to the money you were making on sessions?

CR: Well, my years in LA, I would say the average trust fund check was between $8-12,000. This is after already being paid scale for the session. And then film checks were about the same thing. So if you were making roughly $80,000 a year, at least $20k of that was coming just from these residuals. Back then, that was good money.

BW: There are some session players who don’t get that money, for whatever reason. Some of them were just not in places where there wasn’t a big union presence. And some smaller companies also ducked paying into the trust fund. 

CR: New York and LA and Vegas are Union towns. You got to go out of your way to do a project there without doing it through the Union. Because even if you don't do it through the Union, the Union monitors the records that are sold, especially when the mafia ran it. Then the record company would have a problem. They would have to pay. So, say you do a record for CBS. Let’s take the Archies. Now the Archies was like a TV series. You may do two segments or two shows every other week, if it’s an ongoing series. You get paid union scale for that work. All the sessions are at least an hour. Now, when that music gets released as a record, CBS had to pay all the musicians a percentage of all the records that were sold every year. Now, when it comes to TV and motion pictures that's another that's another thing too. Like, for instance, we did Fat Albert in LA. We recorded the music one time, but they keep using the same music. The musicians get paid a certain percentage for it being played [on TV], along with money from the album. So the union musicians got two checks. And people like me were working all the time. So, with this extra money, we’re still getting paid, even though we are work-for-hire. Sometimes, like with “What a Wonderful World.” I recorded that in New York with Louis Armstrong. When they first released a record, I got a trust fund check because my name was on the contract. Now a couple of years later, they re-recorded the song with a full-blown orchestra and used an upright bass player. His name was on that contract, because when I recorded, it was just a rhythm section. After they re-recorded it, there was another contract, so my residuals stopped. Because I was no longer on what’s being played or sold. A lot of times, the musicians would do the date and their name was on the contract, but they would have another musicians overdub their part. Now the original musician has been paid for the session. When it gets overdubbed, they have to pay that musician. But for the trust fund check it comes down to whose name is on the contract. There were a lot of situations where somebody would be hired to overdub or play on a date, but they would put somebody else’s name on the contract. That’s just how life is. I have not always thought this way, but the last 20 years of my career I now realize it is what it is. You gotta do what you gotta do. I do so much work, I don't care. I can't afford to care. I know how people are. I know what it is. One thing is for sure, if you’re a bass player, you know who is not playing the bass. Or you should.

BW: How long did those trust fund checks last? Are you still getting checks for music from the sixties and seventies?

CR: Oh yeah. My Daddy said, “Son, whatever you do, be a union man, because the union will take care of you.” I just got a check the other day for $67 for the Rascal’s “A Beautiful Morning.” Somebody re-used the track to open a mall in Wisconsin, and they had to go through the union and pay everybody on that track a residual. 

BW: Speaking of the Rascals, on something like that you're playing the music and recording it, but other people maybe get credit for it. How did it feel for you to be an uncredited session player?

CR: I'll give you my honest upfront opinion about stuff like this: it doesn't matter. The producer of this group was Ahmet Ertegun, and his partner was Jerry Wexler. But I'm on this Rascals job mainly because the producer asked for me. So I'm not really working for the band. I'm working for the producer or the contractor. I'm working for them because they called me for this. Now, there's a certain aspect about this business that's very important. That record was done back in 1968. This is 2023. And I still get residuals from it. Anybody that wants to use this song, they have to pay for it through the union. So when a mall opens, they have to go to the AFM to get permission for it and pay for it. So everybody that's on this record gets a little taste, and it happens 2 or 3 times every year since 1968. We call it mailbox money.

BW: What about working with people that you had a more personal connection with, such as Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack. Were your sessions with them different than a typical Rascals session?

CR: Well, Donny came to Atlantic Records after I had already become their resident bass player. I think he came after Roberta Flack. And I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Donny was a genius. A pure genius when it came to orchestrating and talking about music. I have a lot of fond memories of Donny because of his master musicianship. He played the bass, he could play the guitar, he could also play the drums. And I have very fond memories of him. I remember one special occasion, and I think it was it was on a Roberta Flack record, and he orchestrated it. He wanted the musician to play what he wrote, and Donny insisted that you play what he wrote before you did anything else. And I'm a player who likes to improvise certain things, but he made it clear, "Chuck. This is what I want. Before you do anything else, do this first." I remember this one time he came up and he set the chart down on my music stand and walk behind me, and he put his arms around me. He put his hands over my hand on the bass. He said, when you get here, look at it like this. I'm glad he did that because when I got there without him saying that, I would have been lost. And he did that every now and then, but he trusted me. That's one of the things about Donny that really makes me smile. I love to talk about Donny. He was a great musician, a great musician.

BW: I’m most interested in your work with Aretha Franklin. Do you remember how you first came to record with her?

CR: Yeah. I was on staff at CBS, or was one of the bass players at CBS at least. And Aretha did an album and I got contracted to play with her on that album.

BW: And then you came back to work with her after she moved to Atlantic?

CR: Yeah. King Curtis was working A&R for Atlantic at the time. And being the man that he was, he knew what was what. He hired musicians for Atlantic. And that’s when I met Aretha personally. At CBS, I didn’t actually meet her because I was just a hired hand. 

BW: So your relationship with Curtis was still good then? Even after the band dissolved?

CR: Oh yeah! King Curtis, #1, which I can say about New Yorkers, is that no matter what your relationship is with somebody, if they can be used to satisfy a means to an end, you never really fall out. Your New York friends would always tell you all kinds of things and be serious about it, but if you could do something that needed to be done, you’re gonna do it. So King Curtis, by the time he came back on the scene, I was already well established. As a matter of fact, I did several gigs with him after he came back because his bass player at the time could not read notation.

BW: What was it like to work with Aretha in the studio?

CR: When it comes to singing, she never sang the song the same way twice. Different things always came out of her. She's a lady. She was not a diva. Aretha is very, very important to me. I remember Bernard [Purdie] and I went to her funeral, and I remember us both crying hard because she was no longer here. But what a wonderful spirit. What a wonderful lady.

BW: I once read somewhere that she told you not to listen to her singing as you were playing. Is that right?

CR: That's true. She's so powerful. Now she never spoke to the band at all about music. She never told us what to do and what not to do. But we had one concert in Oakland where Bernard Purdie was the drummer. And she was singing something, and he lost it to where he couldn't play. He just dropped his sticks and laid on the bandstand, and the background singers had to come and fan him. [Laughs] In front of about 10,000 people. And it took about maybe 5 or 10 minutes before he could get his composure and come back and play. Now, on one of the gigs that we were doing, she came to me one time. And she was such a lady. She grabbed my hand. She said, "Chuck, I don't want you to pay too much attention to me because I know what I'm doing to people. I know what it is. So I don't want you to pay too much attention because I need bass." And so I understood, and I asked her, "Am I doing something that makes you say this to me?" She said, "No, but I hear you listening. I feel you're listening." Because she would, I mean, at least out of an audience of maybe 5,000 people, she would just lay out maybe 50 by the way she's singing. So she said, "No, but I feel you're listening." I said, "Well, Re don't worry about it. I got you covered." And I did. But she didn't want to lose the bass the way that she had lost the drums.

BW: On a song like "Rock Steady," it's just a really deep groove. It's just this sort of deep, repetitive groove with all the sort of syncopation and motion, and then the chorus hits and it just breaks free. When you think back about this, was that kind of the approach you had in mind?

CR: Well, to be honest with you. We've been around Aretha and played on a lot of her recordings as Atlantic. And she sat down at the piano, so that we can learn the song. And she sang it and she played it. She laid it down. Very simple song. Now once we start playing. Like I said, if I were a drummer, I would play just like Bernard. If I were a guitar player, I would play just like Cornell. We were a magic trio. Richard [Tee] was so exceptional, nobody can play like him. But I've told this story a thousand times. I'll tell it to you again. She taught us a song. We memorized it or just made a simple chart. And then we recorded it as a demo because we were in Miami. And being fed well and then just having a good time coming out of New York. And Jerry Wexler had not gotten there yet. Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin had not gotten there yet. And so we made a demo with Gene Paul. So when they get there, they listen to what we had done. So Arif had to listen to it and make his chart. He's the arranger. You gotta get his chart. Jerry Wexler now they got to work on the song. We tried all morning to play the song differently, to do it different than what we had originally. Nothing worked. To the point that we had to leave it alone. We never went back to "Rock Steady." They used the demo track to overdub.

BW: And this goes to your point earlier about, about the producers and the arrangers. Sometimes they don't even need to be there. You did it without them.

CR: Yeah.

BW: Can I ask what your relationship was like with Jerry Wexler?

CR: Great. He was a very upfront businessman. And I did a lot of sessions that he produced. I can picture his smile right now. I've been to his flat in New York a couple of times. I thought he was great. I learned a lot from Jerry Wexler about money. The relationship was great. His motto was "more bass"!

BW: You end up going on tour with Aretha for a while. What made you want to go on tour and leave the city, leave the sessions? 

CR: The three years I was with her, she never did a tour. It was always one-nighters, usually a one-night festival show to a large audience. The only time that I remember playing with her extensively for more than one day was at the Latin Casino in Philadelphia, where she was booked for eight days. Other than thatm all my Aretha gigs were one-nighters.

BW: So it was easy to pop out for a night, to  fly somewhere, play a gig and come back.

CR: Right.

BW: When you played with Aretha, were you reading off charts? Were you just reading from a book for those gigs?

CR: Well we had a formal bandstand. The band is dressed in tuxedos. And we're always playing with the orchestra that works in that particular city. And every song we did was basically segue. We segue from one to the other to the other, to the other, the other, the other. I don't remember seeing any notation. The bandleaders Truman Thomas and Bill Eaton, they had  cheat sheets probably, and maybe the horns had notated music. But I think we just had a chord sheet for every song. But, you see, back in those days, the job of a sideman was to learn the music. So everything that we played was already recorded and nothing was changed. We play the songs just like they were recorded. Every time I went on a tour, the artist would send me a tape of what they're going to play and I learned the tape. With Aretha we we we all had to go from place to place because we all have to remember what's next.

BW: So you get sent a tape in advance, you sort of study a little bit before the gig, learn things by ear, and then the chord charts are just kind of a reminder of what to do?

CR: Absolutely.

BW: A few years after that, you do the Amazing Grace album, right? You do that live album at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in LA.

CR: That's right when I moved to LA. I'd been living in LA maybe three months.

BW: You talked about growing up in the church and listening to a lot of gospel music when you were young, did you feel like you kind of tapped into your own childhood when you were doing that album?

CR: Well, I think that you're right. I was raised in the Pentecostal church. And everybody in the band, if they weren't out of the church, they were very close to it. So every song that she sang during this concert, I knew by heart and had heard all my life. And I'm pretty sure that was true for the rest of the rhythm section too. So I do remember that being overjoyed to play all that gospel music. We were her rhythm section for three years, those particular people, and we knew her like a book, and she knew us like a book. It was a pleasure hearing her sing.

BW: On those sessions, I hear you kind of laying back a little bit. That you're not doing that constant 16th-note rhythmic groove thing. Is the 16th-note rhythm, groove, drum stuff, something that you think of as a soul R&B style, and then you change gears for something else. Or were you just trying to lay back a little bit?

CR: Well, what you're saying has a lot of merit, in that is true for a lot of gospel stuff. But I wasn't trying to lay back. It's just that that's what I felt the music was.

BW: What do you think of the new video footage they put out showing the album being recorded?

CR: Looking at the video, I didn't care much for it. Because that video was not about Aretha. The video was about James Cleveland and her father. Because I was there, rehearsing all week. And being around the scene, it was all about James Cleveland, her father, and Jerry Wexler. They used Aretha. They used Aretha to get attention. But, after saying all this, I can honestly say I'm glad that it was done, because it showed her talent. The choir was excellent. She was excellent. I just didn't like all the BS that was attached to it. When the video came out for the public to see, I still was a bit bothered by some of the things that I experienced while I was there. They took half of the BS out, but there's still some of it there. But even saying that, I'm a hired hand. I'm there to play the bass.

BW: Did the Amazing Grace recording feel different from the sort of live gigs you had been doing with her prior to that?

CR: It was in a church setting, and it was gospel music. But, as a musician, you're playing different kinds of environments all the time, you know?

BW: I had a few more questions that are more specifically about technique, if that's okay. We talked already about your rhythmic subdivision, 16th-note groove style. One question I wanted to ask is how much of that style comes out of you playing with somebody like [Bernard] Purdie? Do you feel like he and the drummers you worked with shaped your rhythmic approach and pushed you to try new things?

CR: When I play, it is never independent. I'm always playing with or from what I'm hearing. But when I'm hearing stuff that's not like a Bernard Purdie, or other drummers that don't have that kind of feel, my approach is still that way. Like I hear Cornell Dupree when I'm playing, I'm hearing what he would be playing if he were there.

BW: So Dupree and Purdie are so essential to your style that you kind of envision them even when they're not there?

CR: That's one way to put it. And sometimes I might add what I think they would be doing. I am who I am, no matter who I'm playing with, but when I'm with those particular musicians, they really enhance my feel for what I'm doing. And hopefully I had enhanced their playing too.

BW: Yeah, there's like a certain magic that happens through the relationship you've built up with these other musicians that really brings out the best in you.

CR: Yeah. We love each other. Sometimes we fought like cats and dogs, but we loved each other. Just listen to the bass and the drums on [Aretha Franklin's] "Until You Come Back to Me" or [Alain Toussaint's] "Just a Kiss Away". Every time I hear it, I want to know what were we thinking? Those records were done in a single session, which meant there weren't long rehearsals. But that's me and Bernard. I mean, when I listen to it, I just kiss the sky, because it's was so perfect without it being a elongated rehearsal. It just happened.

BW: Since I have the opportunity, I wanted to ask you about one of my favorite of your bass lines, the one for Aretha Franklin's "Every Natural Thing". Do you have any memories of this particular song?

CR: Well, I don't remember a lot about this song. But I do feel what's going on there. This rhythm section had played on many sessions together. That band right there we were four peas in a pod. We knew each other very, very well. We all sat down as studio musicians and we made up the part. Your job is to make it sound like it was orchestrated. You don't get credit for it, but if you're the bass player, you're going to play a part that makes it sound like it was written, if you want to come back and be on the rest of the session. I remember doing a series of recordings with the Archies. And, you know, it's very, very simple. When you come in and they say to you, this is Archie and Veronica, so you play something that sounds like Archie and Veronica. You play something simple. Well, it's the same way when going into the studio. And you got to understand when it's time to do this, when it's time not to do this and not to take everything personal. You have to understand what your job is: work for hire.

BW: You brought up these other two elements of your playing that people talk a lot about, which is your use of chord shapes and your use of slides. You just hinted that maybe you developed those while working with Eric Gale or Cornell Dupree. Is that kind of where those elements came from? How did those things become a standard part of your approach?

CR: Well, it started before I worked with them, but I imagine I started doing it more with them. Matter of fact, I know I did, because I did it with King Curtis. Played double stops and slides.

BW: Do you think that comes out of you trying to emulate other instruments, or maybe comes from your training as a horn player?

CR: I'm not sure. I think probably. All I know is that I hear these things and if I have room to play them, I'll play them. Now, I must say, too, that I learned the hard way when to do these things and when not to do them. It's like me and Jeff Porcaro on "Peg". I knew that Donald [Fagen] did not like slapping, but Jeff kept pushing me, saying, "Go and slap it. They ain't listening to you anyway." Which they weren't. They were listening for a drum track. Your question is very interesting. There's a lot to say about that. But I did have to learn the hard way because I did play too much sometimes. A lot of people think that I play a lot of notes, but I don't. I play a lot of rhythm on the few notes that I do play. Every now and then I will play a lot of notes, but basically my style is to play a lot of rhythm.

BW: So you're talking about how on these sessions, you have to adapt to whoever the leader is, but in 1972, you were the leader when you put together your own album with all these guys you were just talking about. I'd love to hear about how this experience was different for you and why you wanted to put this together.

CR: I really didn't want to do it, because I didn't have a band, but I was popular. And Gary McFarland, who I'd been closely united with in some productions and stuff like that. And so Gary suggested that I do an album, and I said, "Well, I don't have a band." And he says, "Well, nowadays your name is going to be enough for the label to market it." And so all the people I used were musicians that I'd be playing with in the studios.

BW: So one of the things I was thinking about here too, is that on these recordings, it's the same personnel. Although you weren't a band, you were playing with the same guys over and over again. How does that shape the kind of work you do when you go into a session? The fact that you already know Bernard and you know how he drums or you know Cornell, etc.

CR: Well, it shapes it this way: Number one, if you're a producer and you've produced a hit record, you'd be very wise to use the same people, both for their experience and for their name value. For me, the few times that I've produced something, I use the people that I've been around, the people that I work with a lot. You see Larry Carlton, Bernard Purdie, James Gadson, and Steve Gadd on a lot of records. That's because you were successful with them. You'd be wise to hire Steve Gadd because of the experience and name value. So I always tell players to go to all the jams, let everybody know that you can play because they do not have a bass player file or a guitar file. When they need a musician, they ask a drummer who should we get on bass? Or who's on this record?

BW: But also playing with Purdie or whoever, you've played together so long that is just becomes easy to lock in and know where to go.

CR: Well, you got to use everything you got. And I really mean this from the bottom of my heart: I don't do anything. Everything that I do comes through me. When I'm there, the music tells me what not to do. It tells me what not to play. It's the music. I'm playing my bass, and all of a sudden I play a gliss or a chord

BW: I did want to briefly ask you about working with Steely Dan and how you feel about those recordings today.

CR: I think these are some of the greatest songs ever written. I mean, you listen to Aja. That's magnificent. These two guys [Walter Becker and Donald Fagen], it was not easy working with them. It was not easy at all. They didn't smile hardly ever. [Laughs] I started working with them because of the producer, Gary Katz. And it was not difficult because I was used to working with Gary. So sometimes they had demos that they had made, but basically you would come in and they would piecemeal a session together. I'll say this, and I really mean it. The Aja album took three years from the day we started doing it. It took three years. Now, this is great, because during the three years I'm doing this record, I overdub my part so many times that the bank was happy and so was my wife. [Laughs]

BW: You get paid for all those sessions.

CR: Well, and can you imagine what it's like to be walking in Hollywood and another musician says, "Hey, Rainey, how you doing? What are you up to?" And I say, "I'm working with the Steely Dan." It makes you walk away feeling like George Jefferson. You just feel great. And I have fond memories of working with these two guys. The music is just incredible.

BW: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me!

CR: You’re very welcome.

Link to Chuck Rainey’s Website