Who are the Unsung Heroes in music?
 

If you have seen the film/documentary Standing In The Shadows Of Motown you will know what I am getting at, basically I am looking for the guys/girls who appear on tracks you love but have never got the credit they deserve.

2 examples for me immediately come to mind:

1) I absolutely loved Damien Rices album "O" and the thing that really caught my ear every time I listened to it was a wonderful female singer. I later discovered that it was an Irish singer called Lisa Hannigan and while her solo material imo never lived upto her performances on the Damien Rice album, it was nice to put a face and a name to her voice I had heard so many times.

Lisa Hannigan begins singing @ 1.17.

Damen Rice - Cold Water live on Jonathan Ross - YouTube

2) For years I loved Jay-Z's Girls, Girls, Girls Pt.2 (remix) track which appears on The Blueprint album. It was only earlier this week that I discovered it was produced by Kanye West and the sample used was a song called "trying girls out" by The Persuaders. Ok, so Kanye West is very well known and isnt an unsung hero in the music industry, but what if that track was arranged by an unknown person, these are the people I want to discover in this thread.

Jay-Z - Girls, Girls, Girls, pt. 2 (remix) - YouTube

So what guitar lines? Backing vocals? Drum beats?...Anything, really catch your ear? Let's try and find out the people/s responsible.

I'm going to say that the producers and mixers are the unsung heroes.

Another snippet that I have just thought of is the watery guitar part in Busta Rhymes and Janet Jacksons "what's it gonna be?!"

Will try and find out out who is responsible for these sounds. I'm sure there must be a core of widely used session musicians.

The part I am on about starts @ 23 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4PFClnMkOU

I DONT SUPPOSE ANYONE HAS THE ACTUAL ALBUM THIS IS ON AND CAN CHECK THE LINER NOTES TO SEE IF THE GUITARIST WAS CREDITED?

Two Words: Bill Laswell

the left banke, highly underappreciated 60s pop band

Checked these out, thanks for that!

Looked him up, what an impressive CV/Resume.

Neglected this thread a bit so wanted to get the ball rolling again.

In the photo in my avatar on the Left hand side is a guitarist called Robert White

He composed the guitar riff to My Girl that starts @ 4 seconds & runs throughout the whole track, and played on many other Motown hits as part of the labels studio band called The Funk Brothers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_White_(guitarist)


My Girl - YouTube

Carol freakin' Kaye.
http://www.carolkaye.com/www/assets/...e_1974-lib.jpg

Hands down, in my opinion, the best session bassist to have ever lived, and the best thing about this song:

Right now there are a couple of sounds that really catch my ear.

1) This opening guitar riff that starts @ 31 seconds was composed by Guy Chambers of Robbie Williams' Angels fame.


TAWIAH SINGING GHOST FROM THE TV SERIES SECRETS OF THE POP SONG. - YouTube

since most acts make the most money out of live acts, i'd say the roadies are the unsung heroes, they get paid a pittance, but the success of the shows are mostly due to them, and they slog harder than the performers

I dont mean to be rude but you obviously didnt read the first post, just the thread title. (Dont worry you are not the only one)

Apologies I just want to try and keep on topic.

oh ok, apologies

a lot of session men/women, then, they get a tiny footnote on the album sleeve, but most of them are more capable than the main act

Yes! This is exactly who I am on about.

Do you know of any names? or examples of the music they have played on which you like?

Joe South - he played a lot of the guitar parts on Dylan's three mid-60s "seminal" electric albums

Two of my long time favorites are Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn.
A couple of very impressive studio musicians, songwriters, producers, and band members with Booker T. & The M.G.'s and many other bands.

Steve Cropper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Donald "Duck" Dunn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First person who comes to mind is a woman called Morgan. She fronted The Romanovs, who are criminally ignored for such interesting, experimental, gothic/ classical (that's a lot of tags) music.

(look up "The Romanovs - Fever Pitch" on youtube, I can't post links)

She then went on to contribute to albums like the most recent M83 LP, yet no one knows who she is.

Morgan Kibby contributed vocals on Saturdays = Youth, not sure if she is on their latest album.

Also the cello player in The Romanovs was Ana Lenchantin, the sister of Paz Lenchantin who played in Zwan and A Perfect Circle. Ana also played with Zwan occasionally.

I'll post the song for you. I've never actually listened to them but this song seems pretty good.

M'why thank you. Album as a whole is great, by the way. Deeply disturbing, perhaps, but still great.

Seconded.

Interview thats worth a read:
Interview: Carol Kaye - the Queen of Bass | MusicRadar.com

I know it might sound weird but I love the music in Tom & Jerry cartoons. Will try & investigate who is responsible.


http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I5LFD9VDq88

Mark Ramos-Nish1ta (stupid censor)

Better known as Money Mark and better recognized as the super funky keyboard bits that add that extra layer of soul to any Beastie Boys instrumental track.

great in acknowledging the Funk Brothers - session men supremos

Well, a large portion are just classical songs. However:

Carl Stalling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Man was insane.

Much appreciated, thanks!

Love the guitar playing & tone on this John Legend track. I havent got the album so cant look in the liner notes to see who is responsible.


John Legend - Show me (ALBUM) - YouTube

Edit: Apparently the album sleeve lists the guitarists on this track as being Rob Bacon, Raphael Saadiq, and David Torn.

Listening to Al Greens 2008 album Lay It Down the guitar playing throughout the whole album really caught my ear, turns out the parts were played by a musician named Chalmers Edward "Spanky" Alford (May 22, 1955 – March 24, 2008)

Chalmers Alford - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Really tasteful playing for the song, the guitar tone is really nice too.

Al Green - No One Like You - YouTube

Have been really enjoying this track called "Frontier Psychiatrist" by The Avalanches (from their 1st and only album called "Since I Left You" which was released in 2000) which comprises of many samples added together to create the full track, actually the whole album is created this way and over 3500 vinyl samples are said the have been used in making the whole album.

I think this is such a well done video which jumps between the audio of The Avalanches track and the snippets of the samples they used to make it.

Enjoy!

This is easy for me, Alain Johannes is, imho, the most unknown\over-talented multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, and songwriter of the last 20-30 years. He started out as the leader of what was essentially(but not directly) an early version of RHCP, and has gone on to contribute(in basically every role possible) to albums from Chris Cornell, No Doubt, Live, UNKLE, Mark Lanegan, Silverchair, Puscifer, Spinnerette, Eagles of Death Metal, The Gutter Twins, Arctic Monkeys, and several more- even Hilary Duff and Kelly Clarkson. He is also an unofficial member of both Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures, writing and touring with both acts, and still finds time to do his own amazing music.

EURONOMUS, Thanks I had never heard of him before.

What album can you recommend which showcases his best work?

That's kind of a hard question, his work is all over the place. As far as his own stuff he has released A solo Album and has lead 2 bands that have both released a handful of albums, What Is This?(with Hillel Slovak, Flea, and Jack Irons but changed line-ups a few times) and Eleven (with his late wife Natasha Shnieder and Jack Irons) and they are all pretty different. the song I posted is from his only solo album "spark", IMO the best of his stuff. He wrote it as therapy after his his wife(and main musical collaborator) passed away and is as emotionally intense as you would expect with that back story. I love Eleven, you can't really go wrong with any of their albums, but I'll admit some of it sounds kind of dated now. As far as What is this? goes I've never been a big fan-I'm not prone to like music from the 80's, but I'd still say they are better than most.

Eleven - Reach out, from 1993


What Is This? - I Am A House, from 1984


But like I said in my first post-he is all over a bunch of albums you may have already heard and if not you should definitely check out. Most of Chris Cornell's Euphoria Morning was basically just an Eleven album with Cornell fronting and it shows-even a lot of the vocal melodies sound more like Johannes melodies to me than something Cornell would come up with. Eleven was even the touring band for that album.



He's written for QOTSA- Hangin' Tree and In My Head are both his own creations, and he was part of the writing process for most of the other tracks on those albums-as well as the Them Crooked vultures album(which he recorded and did most of the Backing vocals on).



He also was a main musical contributor(and producer) for Mark Lanegans Blues Funeral album, one of my recent favorites.

I first heard "I left my heart in San Francisco" sung by Mayer Hawthorne about 2 years ago when watching a clothing sponsers video. The complete song really impressed me, the whole arrangement that lets the vocals really shine.

Today the Tony Bennett version (who made it famous) came on my Spotify playlist which prompted me to see who actually wrote it in the first place. The music was written in 1953 by George Cory, with lyrics by Douglass Cross, about two amateur writers nostalgic for San Francisco after moving to New York.

"I Left My Heart In San Francisco is the work of two amateur writers who grew up in the Bay Area but moved to New York following wartime military service. George Cory, who wrote the music, scratched a living playing piano in bars. Douglass Cross, the lyricist, worked in radio. Besides being songwriting partners, they were also lovers. They died within three years of each other in the Seventies while still only in their 50s.
The song wasn't written in the golden sunshine of San Francisco but in Brooklyn Heights, New York, during the autumn of 1953. It started as When I Return To San Francisco, then became When I Come Home before ending up as the song we know today.
In a rare interview, Cory said: 'It was pure nostalgia. We missed the warmth and openness of the people and the beauty. We never really took to New York."
Cross added: 'New York is a hard, ruthless city. It lives on the edge of terror and catastrophe. New York is tired. San Francisco has newness and vitality.'



The full Wikipedia link is here I Left My Heart in San Francisco - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia & more information I borrowed from here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/ar...ired-song.html

Just listening to Michael Jacksons "Off The Wall" album for the first time in ages and once the second track "Rock with you" started, the funky guitar playing immediately impressed me.




David Williams and Marlo Henderson are listed on Wikipedia as playing the electric guitar on the track. I am not familiar enough with either guitarist to confirm who played the rhythm guitar parts, but when I find my "Off The Wall" cd sleeve I will see if that contains any more information.

Two that come to my mind

Waddie Wachtel

http://rockalittle.com/waddy3.gif

Jeff Skunk Baxter

http://www.directionsmag.com/images/...eoint09_sm.jpg

You know who are the real unsung heroes? The people who make the tea, they don't get nearly as much credit as they deserve.

Oh Betty, you are too cute.

Buskers.