Even if you don’t readily recognize her name, you’ve heard Carol Kaye playing bass on Pet Sounds, Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Somethin’ Stupid”, The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”, and countless other hits from the 1950s and 60s. As a key figure in the Wrecking Crew, the iconic group of West Coast session musicians, Kaye has built a legacy on her effective, tasteful, and catchy bass parts, all of which elevated the songs she was playing on without taking over the track entirely. But to those musicians who knew Kaye more closely, her legacy is much more…sanitary, shall we say.
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In 1964, fresh from her second divorce and rolling in money as a first-call session bassist in Los Angeles, Kaye decided to splurge on a pink bidet (complete with warm water feature) for her Toluca Woods home. A bidet was quite the fancy addition to the home at that time, and Kaye decided to have a little fun with it. She hired a catering company and a bartender, invited all her entertainment-industry friends, and hosted a “bidet party.” Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and his wife, Marilyn Wilson, and Eugene Czerwinski (founder of the Cerwin-Vega amplifier company) were among the star-studded attendees.
If you thought the idea of hosting a party in celebration of a bidet was the strangest part of this anecdote, you’d be wrong.
Carol Kaye Had an Interesting Party Trick for Her Bidet Bash
Inviting friends and colleagues over so they can try a new bidet is certainly an interesting decision, but it’s not the craziest idea for a party we’ve heard. (At least you know everyone is nice and clean?) But one detail of Carol Kaye’s anecdote about her pink bidet in her pink bathroom did take us by surprise. According to the legendary Wrecking Crew bassist, she and Stan Ross, producer and founder of Gold Star studio, set up an Ampex tape machine and microphone under her new bidet.
When someone would use the Bidet, Dennis Budimer would turn up the amp that was always on,” Kaye wrote in a Facebook post. “And we’d listen and hear ‘oooo ahhh I’ve got to get me one of these!’…….it was sooo FUNNY! And of course we acted normal when they’d get out….next “victim” would go in and show off the Bidet to their girlfriend and get squirted water on their pants…hahaha…on and on, Dennis would giggle at the next on of Mrs. Rene Hall who also loudly oooo’ed and ahhhhhed (think she was overdoing it for the “audience”)….and then Brian and Marilyn Wilson tried it.”
When the Wilsons were in the bathroom, partygoers heard someone scratching the microphone and Marilyn saying, “Brian, look at this. It’s a microphone!” Brian, unbeknownst to the party gag, replied, “Nah…Carol would never do anything like that. She’s too square.”
Apparently not.
Photo by Jasper Dailey/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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