# Most Respected Session Musicians? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 30, 2017, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619 "2017-09-30T00:18:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2017, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/21 "2017-09-30T22:28:21Z")
To late to edit: should read GOOD slide player above, not goof :smack::D. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2017, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/22 "2017-09-30T22:34:39Z")
[Kenny Aronoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Aronoff) deserves an honorable mention for his prolific drumming. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2017, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/23 "2017-09-30T22:46:44Z")
> [@Superdude](#): > > [Kenny Aronoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Aronoff) deserves an honorable mention for his prolific drumming. Also [Jim Keltner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keltner). ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2017, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/24 "2017-09-30T22:50:16Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > ETA: one more who comes to mind: Ry Cooder. Besides having an extensive solo recording career of his own, he played on countless other’s, some of the biggest names. Heck, he even played on the first album by Little Feat, a band who really wasn’t in need of a goof slide player. He shared Grammy honors with Ali Farka Toure on their album _Talking Timbuktu_. ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2017, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/25 "2017-10-01T10:10:23Z")
Tower of Power Backed up everybody from Otis Redding to Aerosmith. And they put out their own stuff too: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/t9BRqGpppJw/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCOADEOgC8quKqQMa8AEB-AH-AoACoAKKAgwIABABGH8gPyghMA8=&rs=AOn4CLCox2XHLwU7Jecq207RagdvwtO_lA "Tower Of Power - So Very Hard To Go") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9BRqGpppJw) ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2017, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/26 "2017-10-01T11:34:30Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > And the song actually was about Nicky Hopkins! > > Others: > > My two favorite session guitarists: James Burton and Clarence White. I have a truckload of records on which they play on, and those are not the worst in my collection. > > Sly and Robbie: rhythm section for maybe half of every reggae recording ever and a big chunk of pop and rock records, too. > > ETA: one more who comes to mind: Ry Cooder. Besides having an extensive solo recording career of his own, he played on countless other’s, some of the biggest names. Heck, he even played on the first album by Little Feat, a band who really wasn’t in need of a goof slide player. I love this post. Great names. James Burton: king of the Tele. Invented Chicken Pickin. A gunslinger of the highest order. Do \*not \*fuck with James Burton in a cutting contest. Clarence White: Marty Stuart famously owns White’s Tele with the B-Bender built into it. CW wanted to mimic the glassy bends you get on a pedal steel, so he and Bernie Parsons routed a huge fucking hole in the back of a Tele and mounted a lever-pully system attached to the B (second highest) string and the strap peg on the guitar. When you lean on the strap peg, you get a pedal steel bend. Very cool, very country guitar geeky inside baseball type of stuff. Google Parsons-White B Bender if you want to see them. His 1935 Martin D-28, which he played his amazing bluegrass and flatpicking work on, is famously owned by national treasure flatpicker Tony Rice. The guitar is known for having an enlarged soundhole done as part of a repair. It also has a funky neck that is affected nt the weather a lot. Apparently White and Rice are the only ones who get the guitar and made it sing. Sly and Robbie: on, hell yes. Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare as essential. I wore the grooves off Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing album because of their work on it. Their version of Bill Withers’ Use Me is a master class in badass. Ry Cooder: in addition to all that, it was watching him play slide that got Duane Allman to really focus on slide for his lead voice. And Ry was working with the Stones when Mick noticed he was playing in a different tuning and had him show it to Keith. From Honky Tonk Woman on, Keith now plays in Open G tuning a majority of the time on his 5 string Teles. If you want a bit of guitar geekery on Ry, Google Coodercaster. He took an old Strat routed the heck out of it, and installed a “gold foil” pickup at the neck\* and a Supro lap steel pickup at the bridge. His slide tones are so glassy that fanboys try to replicate the tone and guitar. \*gold foils are the low-output single coils you find on the old cheap Teiscos and Kay guitars. They were built by the tens of thousands. Most were crap, but a good one, in a good guitar and through a good amp can sound three dimensional and glassy. Cooder’s and others use of them are leading to a huge fad in gold foils on guitar message boards right now. From p-90’s to TV Jones Filtertrons, to gold foils - there’s always something. ETA: hmm, guess I was in the mood to geek out a bit given all the fun IMHO guitar stuff related to these players. Hope that’s okay. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2017, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/27 "2017-10-01T15:55:30Z")
It’s more than okay, **WordMan** ; it’s _welcome_. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2017, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/28 "2017-10-01T16:34:58Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > \*gold foils are the low-output single coils you find on the old cheap Teiscos and Kay guitars. They were built by the tens of thousands. Most were crap, but a good one, in a good guitar and through a good amp can sound three dimensional and glassy. Cooder’s and others use of them are leading to a huge fad in gold foils on guitar message boards right now. From p-90’s to TV Jones Filtertrons, to gold foils - there’s always something. > > ETA: hmm, guess I was in the mood to geek out a bit given all the fun IMHO guitar stuff related to these players. Hope that’s okay. I’ve loved those guitars since the 80’s. Don’t tell anyone, but the silver and black foil pickups sound exactly the same as the gold foil ones. ---
**Author:** ![SantaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/da6949/32.png) [@SantaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SantaMan)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2017, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/29 "2017-10-01T16:49:03Z")
Wow! Thanks to all. I had no idea there would be so many. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2017, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/30 "2017-10-03T21:35:42Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > I love this post. Great names. > > James Burton: king of the Tele. Invented Chicken Pickin. A gunslinger of the highest order. Do \*not \*fuck with James Burton in a cutting contest. > > Clarence White: Marty Stuart famously owns White’s Tele with the B-Bender built into it. CW wanted to mimic the glassy bends you get on a pedal steel, so he and\*\* Bernie Parsons\*\* routed a huge fucking hole in the back of a Tele and mounted a lever-pully system attached to the B (second highest) string and the strap peg on the guitar. When you lean on the strap peg, you get a pedal steel bend. Very cool, very country guitar geeky inside baseball type of stuff. Google Parsons-White B Bender if you want to see them. > > His 1935 Martin D-28, which he played his amazing bluegrass and flatpicking work on, is famously owned by national treasure flatpicker Tony Rice. The guitar is known for having an enlarged soundhole done as part of a repair. It also has a funky neck that is affected nt the weather a lot. Apparently White and Rice are the only ones who get the guitar and made it sing. > > Sly and Robbie: on, hell yes. Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare as essential. I wore the grooves off Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing album because of their work on it. Their version of Bill Withers’ Use Me is a master class in badass. > > Ry Cooder: in addition to all that, it was watching him play slide that got Duane Allman to really focus on slide for his lead voice. And Ry was working with the Stones when Mick noticed he was playing in a different tuning and had him show it to Keith. From Honky Tonk Woman on, Keith now plays in Open G tuning a majority of the time on his 5 string Teles. > > If you want a bit of guitar geekery on Ry, Google Coodercaster. He took an old Strat routed the heck out of it, and installed a “gold foil” pickup at the neck\* and a Supro lap steel pickup at the bridge. His slide tones are so glassy that fanboys try to replicate the tone and guitar. > > \*gold foils are the low-output single coils you find on the old cheap Teiscos and Kay guitars. They were built by the tens of thousands. Most were crap, but a good one, in a good guitar and through a good amp can sound three dimensional and glassy. Cooder’s and others use of them are leading to a huge fad in gold foils on guitar message boards right now. From p-90’s to TV Jones Filtertrons, to gold foils - there’s always something. > > ETA: hmm, guess I was in the mood to geek out a bit given all the fun IMHO guitar stuff related to these players. Hope that’s okay. First, thanks for all the geekery, that’s what I always love in your posts, it gives so much insight for the non-musician musical geek. Of course I knew about White’s/Parsons’ B-Bender, but allow me one nitpick: it’s \*Gene \*Parsons, you must’ve confused his name with Bernie Leadon’s. But the LA country rock scene was such an incestuous bunch, that can happen (though GENE Parsons had no family connections to GRAM). And just to prove the genius of Clarence White, here’s my favorite country rock song, with Clarence on guitar and Gene Parsons on banjo, a forgotten single from 1968: [The Everly Brothers - I’m On My Way Home Again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41f8AFx1TDM) (I guess he does some of this bending here? Please **Wordman** , educate me) :). ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2017, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/31 "2017-10-03T22:15:30Z")
**EHund** - argh, yes, Gene Parsons!! :smack: I don’t hear the Bender on that track - some sublime harmonies, great banjo and chicken pickin Tele, but no strings ended. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2017, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/32 "2017-10-04T02:48:20Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > … one more who comes to mind: Ry Cooder. Besides having an extensive solo recording career of his own, he played on countless other’s, some of the biggest names. Heck, he even played on the first album by Little Feat, a band who really wasn’t in need of a goof slide player. Applying the same standard to “session player,” I’ll enter Ry’s close friend and long-time collborator **David Lindley**. Who can be googled to spare me from typing for a half hour. Mr. Dave is a living national treasure. And 4th cousin to Linda Rondstat, a connection they discovered while he was touring with her in her band. Another great who has played with everybody (and was Clapton’s bassist of choice for many years) is **Nathan East**. Another resume worth googling. His older brother was one of my closest friends from 1962 through about 1972. Not that it matters to anyone but me. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2017, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/33 "2017-10-04T12:34:27Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Paul Shaffer’s World’s Most Dangerous Band is made up of top studio cats who have played on everything. > > Drummers like Steve Jordan and Bernard Purdie. So many guitar players like all of the Steely Dan go-to players. > > Session work is its own world. > > Fwiw, it is my understanding that the Swampers in Muscle Shoals, compared to say the Funk Bros, Wrecking Crew or Brill Building gang, we’re not so much great, versatile musicians as a tight unit with a distinct groove. That’s not a bad thing at all - my gosh, look at what they played on! - but it points out that there’s different types of session success. > > **kenobi** , yeah, I’d mention Lukather. He’s the Tommy Tedesco of the past 40 years - THE gold-standard commercial session guitarist in LA. Must be so weird to be the guitar player on the biggest selling album of all time, Thriller, except for one single lead. And yeah, pocket studios, pro tools and the Internet changed session work forever. I’m not the one to answer the OP’s question, but I am glad Wordman and I are on the same page here. I was going to start a thread about Lukathor because of an incident with my wife the other month… \*Lionel Richie’s “Running With the Night” is on the radio. Wife reaches for the dial… \* “No, don’t.” “Really? You like this?” “Yeah. But even more important, it has incredible guitar work at the end, really elevates the piece. Completely unexpected, especially in a _Lionel Richie_ song.” Got home, looked it up, and Holy Shiite, this guy has thousands of credits! Had the thought “I should start a discussion, get some suggestions as to his best work”, but never got around to it. So, uh, yeah: Steve Lukathor. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![El\_DeLuxo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_deluxo/32/9043_2.png) [@El\_DeLuxo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_DeLuxo)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2017, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/34 "2017-10-04T14:10:22Z")
Bobby Keys ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2017, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/35 "2017-10-04T14:22:08Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > If you want a bit of guitar geekery on Ry, Google Coodercaster. He took an old Strat routed the heck out of it, and installed a “gold foil” pickup at the neck\* and a Supro lap steel pickup at the bridge. His slide tones are so glassy that fanboys try to replicate the tone and guitar. > > \*gold foils are the low-output single coils you find on the old cheap Teiscos and Kay guitars. They were built by the tens of thousands. Most were crap, but a good one, in a good guitar and through a good amp can sound three dimensional and glassy. Cooder’s and others use of them are leading to a huge fad in gold foils on guitar message boards right now. From p-90’s to TV Jones Filtertrons, to gold foils - there’s always something. > > ETA: hmm, guess I was in the mood to geek out a bit given all the fun IMHO guitar stuff related to these players. Hope that’s okay. It’s stuff like this that makes me feel bad when I play the bass with rolled off treble and a wad of felt jammed under the strings at the bridge…I have no finesse whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2017, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/36 "2017-10-04T14:30:43Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > So, uh, yeah: Steve Lukathor. 😃 Another neat thing about Lukather is how young he was when he started. He was doing studio and session work (for Boz Scaggs, among others) as a teenager, and he and his high school friends founded Toto when he was 18 or 19 (Toto’s first album came out in '78, just as Lukather was turning 21). ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2017, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/37 "2017-10-04T16:00:02Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Toto guitarist [Steve Lukather](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Lukather#Session_work) has been a very popular session musician throughout his career, and has appeared on over 1500 recordings, primarily during the 1970s and 1980s. He, himself, notes that the era of the session musician has ended (the quote below is from 2011, and appears on his Wikipedia page): > > > [@](#): > > > > There is no ‘session guy’ thing any more—not like it was. It’s not like the old days when I was doing 25 sessions a week. All the studios are gone. The budgets are gone. The record companies are all gone. So true. A good friend of mine was a session musician for many years. He’s not particularly famous (no Wikipedia page), but he played on a lot of well known albums. And plenty not-so-well known. He worked at the studio for about 20 years. But then business models changed and the studio laid off all of them. He still plays a few freelance gigs (he has an amazing list of contacts) and does some sound engineering and rentals to make ends meet. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/38 "2017-10-04T17:22:53Z")
**Jim Gordon** , at least until he murdered his mother. Respect turned to sadness and pity after that. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2017, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/39 "2017-10-04T17:37:44Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > Steve Gadd (drums) And Steve Gadd’s clone. (very obscure reference) ---
**Author:** ![jerez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c68b51/32.png) [@jerez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jerez)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2017, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619/40 "2017-10-04T17:45:19Z")
I came in here to mention Steve Gadd, since nobody else has. Also, Lee Ritenour and Larry Carlton. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-respected-session-musicians/797619.md?page=3)