Member-only story
Hal Blaine: Time Well Kept
The numbers alone are amazing. Forty #1 hits had Hal Blaine keeping time on them. More than 35,000 recorded tracks over the years.
He called it playing “on the 4.”
When the distinctive drum intro to The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” comes on, produced by Phil Spector and the now famous (infamous to the people who survived it) “Wall of Sound” production, you should know it as one of the most famous drum riffs ever. And it may have been an accident by a drummer who prided himself in mastering his instrument.
Well, I keep saying I’m not positive about that. It’s a very strange thing. It was unintentional. It’s possible that I was playing it straight 2 and 4, and at one point, maybe when we started rolling, on the first or second take I may have accidentally missed that second beat, so I played it on four. And I continued to do that. Phil might have said, “Do that again.” Somebody loved it, in any event. It’s just one of those things that sometimes happens. Now, if you listen to Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers In The Night,” you’ll hear that I used that very same beat, just slower. That time it was intentional.
If that is the wrong generation for you, you might know the song better from this:
