From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Sat Mar 8, 2003  2:10 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Red Callender

RED CALLENDER

Born George Sylvester Callender, 8 March 1916, Haynesville, Virginia
(Some sources say 6 March 1916.)
Died 8 March 1992, Saugus, California

Instruments : bass, tuba.

During the rock 'n' roll era Red Callender was a busy studio musician
who appeared on a countless number of recordings during his productive 
(and generally lucrative) career. Like many other session players from
the heydays of R&R, he was basically a jazz man and made most of 
his recordings in the jazz field. 

After briefly freelancing in New York, Callender settled in Los Angeles
in 1936, debuting on record the next year with Louis Armstrong. In the
early '40s, he was in the Lester Young band, and then formed his own
trio. Callender, in the 1940s, recorded with Nat King Cole, Erroll Garner, 
Charlie Parker, Wardell Gray, and Dexter Gordon, among many others, 
and can be seen and heard taking a bebop break on bass in the 1946 
film "New Orleans". After a period spent leading a trio in Hawaii, Callender
returned to Los Angeles, becoming one of the first black musicians to 
work regularly in the commercial studios. From 1951-54, he recorded
jazz and R&B (for RCA Victor, Recorded in Hollywood and Bayou) with
the Red Callender Sextette, which (at various times) included Maxwell 
Davis, Chuck Norris, Jewell Grant and Chico Hamilton.

In 1959, his composition "Primrose Lane" became a # 8 hit when it was
recorded by Jerry Wallace on Challenge.

By this time, Callender became a member of what Hal Blaine has later 
called the Wrecking Crew. Earl Palmer tells it like this in his autobiography
(Backbeat):

"The original rock and rollers - Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, Elvis and Jerry
Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly and their ragtag backup groups - were amateurs,
inspired tinkerers : folk musicians, really. By the late fifties, rock was too 
lucrative to be entrusted to untrained labor. The manufacture of hit records 
required a new worker, hip enough to understand the music, disciplined 
enough to crank out an album a day. Talented musicians streamed into
late-fifties L.A., sleeping on floors, looking for angles in the studios" (p.
103). 

The Wrecking Crew was a loose aggregation of highly skilled, prolific West
Coast sesion players. Some names: guitarists Rene Hall, Tommy Tedesco, 
and Glen Campbell (the later country superstar), bass players Carol Kaye
and Red Callender, saxophonists Plas Johnson, Jackie Kelso and Steve
Douglas, pianists Leon Russell and Larry Knechtel, drummers Earl Palmer 
and Hal Blaine and pianist-arranger Ernie Freeman.

Callender became good friends with Earl Palmer and Rene Hall and was
involved with most of their instrumental projects (the Ernie Fields Orchestra,
B. Bumble and the Stingers, etc.). The Bear Family discography in the 
splendid hardcover book that accompanies the new box-set by Johnny
Burnette tells us that Callender played on almost all of Burnette's sixties
recordings.

After this period, Callender returned to his preferred genre, jazz, keeping
busy up until his death in 1992.

Book: Red Callender and Elaine Cohen, Unfinished Dream : The Musical 
World of Red Callender. London : Quartet Books, 1986.