My Career in Five Songs
IN A REMARKABLE career that has spanned 50 years, Danny Kortchmar has recorded with an astonishing array of legends, including Carole King, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon—and, as the saying goes, the list goes on! Hailing from New York City, the guitarist cut his teeth in the late 1960s playing Greenwich Village clubs in such groups as the King Bees and the Flying Machine (which featured a pre-Sweet Baby James James Taylor) before he headed to Los Angeles to try his hand at the studio-session scene. As he explains, his timing couldn’t have been better.
“Things were changing right as I got to L.A.,” Kortchmar says. “The Wrecking Crew were still cutting records, but there was this new batch of players coming in—friends of mine, like Waddy Wachtel. We were different; we were rock and blues guys. And we were perfectly suited to the kinds of records that were coming into fashion.”
As Kortchmar describes it, during most of the ’60s, L.A. sessions were business-like affairs, at which songs were cut in three-hour morning and afternoon blocks. “Everybody was punching the clock, and most
