VA - The Wrecking Crew (2015)

They were the studio musicians behind some of the biggest hits in the 1960s and 70s. From Be My Baby to California Girls Strangers in the Night to Mrs. Robinson You've Lost that Lovin Feelin to Up, Up and Away and from Viva Las Vegas to Mr. Tambourine Man the group dubbed The Wrecking Crew played on them all. Six years in a row in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Grammy for Record of the Year went to Wrecking Crew member recordings.
The talents of this group of first call players were used on almost every style of recording including television theme songs, film scores, advertising jingles and almost every genre of American popular music, from the Monkees to Bing Crosby. Notable artists employing the Wrecking Crew's talents included Nancy Sinatra, Bobby Vee, the Partridge Family, David Cassidy, Jan & Dean, the Mamas & the Papas, the 5th Dimension, the Association, the Carpenters, Glen Campbell, Cher, John Denver, the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, the Grass Roots and Nat King Cole.
The record producers most often associated with the Wrecking Crew are Phil Spector, who used the Crew to create his trademark Wall of Sound and Beach Boys member and songwriter Brian Wilson, who used the Crew's talents on many of his mid-1960s productions including the songs Good Vibrations, California Girls, Pet Sounds, and the original recordings for Smile. Members of the Wrecking Crew played on the first Byrds single recording, Mr. Tambourine Man, because Columbia Records, namely, producer Terry Melcher did not trust the skills of Byrd musicians except for Roger McGuinn. Spector used the Wrecking Crew on Leonard Cohen's fifth album, Death of a Ladies Man.
Two of their members, drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, were among the inaugural Sidemen inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, while the entire Wrecking Crew was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2007. According to Blaine, the name the Wrecking Crew was derived from the impression that he and the younger studio musicians made on the business older generation, who felt that they were going to wreck the music industry.