Mr. 335: Larry Carlton’s Journey

As Larry Carlton has shown throughout his multifaceted career as a first-class session guitarist and a successful recording artist, the Gibson ES-335 guitar is his voice. Carlton was constantly featured with stars from every imaginable genre, ranging from Sammy Davis Jr., Herb Alpert, Quincy Jones, Paul Anka, Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, and Dolly Parton. He continued to tour 50 dates or more consecutively with his band at the time, the Crusaders. With his impressive reputation, Carlton became one of the most in-demand studio musicians of the past four decades. His catalog of work includes film soundtracks, television themes, and an impressive collaboration on more than 100 gold albums.

To facilitate his projects, he built a home studio, which he named Room 335. During this period, he arranged and produced songs for Barbra Streisand, Joan Baez, and Larry Gatlin, as well as producing and cowriting the theme for the hit sitcom Who’s the Boss? and cowriting (with Michel Columbier) and arranging the acclaimed movie soundtrack for Against All Odds. Rolling Stone magazine listed Carlton’s tasty solo on Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne” as one of the three best guitar licks in rock music. With more than 3,000 studio sessions under his belt by the early 1980s, Carlton had picked up four Grammy nominations along the way. In 1981 he won a Grammy for his collaboration with Mike Post for the theme to Hill Street Blues. The National Academy of Arts and Sciences (NARAS) also voted Carlton Most Valuable Player three consecutive years in a row and named him Player Emeritus, which retired him from eligibility.

Sitting down with Mr. 335 he was as modest as he was gracious and talented. As many of you know, Larry had a world-class recording studio back in the ’70s and ’80s in LA. We discussed everything from his new rerecorded hits CD released on his label, 335 Records, to his beginnings with Joe Sample in the Crusaders.

Looking back at your career, how much did the Crusaders influence you as a player?

It was in 1971 when I started recording with them, and I did 13 albums with them over the next six and a half years. In ’71 I was 23 years old and in my formative years. The first week on recording with the Crusaders they did a cover version of Carole King’s “So Far Away.” And I was using the volume pedal, making crying little notes. It was really new back then; nobody was doing that. And they told me after the recording that, after they heard the crying guitar sounds, the producer and the engineer in the booth said to each other, “What the hell was that?” They hadn’t heard anything like that or at least the way I did it. So yeah, we kind of created a new sound early in the ’70s.

Today I still approach my music in a similar way to how the Crusaders approached theirs. You get a great little hook; you get an idea about the production line. Maybe you have a bass line for letter A or maybe you don’t. You find it in the studio, if you didn’t get it in the preproduction. Then in the studio you go for the performance. Very seldom, I mean very seldom, will I do an overdub. The magic happens in the studio for performance.

Performing live with the Crusaders in those days, Joe Sample would like to break the band down. After the head happened and somebody else’s solo happened, Joe would bring us way down dynamically, so he could start his thing and could get into his solo section. And I do that on almost every song today. That’s where the freedom comes; it gets soft, and there is an open palette. You can go left, right, and straight, up, down, wherever you want to go. Then the moments of coolness can happen. And I still do it that way.

Prior to the Crusaders I was doing session work and had my own trios and quartets playing around Los Angeles. Joe heard me on a session, and that’s how I got to join the band. We were all very busy, and with the success the Crusaders had, they could be very choosy about what shows they’d play live. So, we would only go out on weekends or a small tour of Japan. In North Hollywood, originally in the 1970s through the ’80s, there was a local club called Donte’s, and that’s where I would end up playing with Joe Sample. It seemed like there were two camps: the camp that would play Donte’s and the camp that would play the Baked Potato. I chose Donte’s because I was invited to play there once. I was comfortable there, and we sold out every show. It was Joe Sample, Pops Popwell, Jeff Porcaro, Greg Mathieson, and I. But Dave Grusin, Tom Scott, and all of these other guys would be playing the Baked Potato. Eventually it all intertwined, and you would play wherever you wanted.

Going back to your classic recordings of “Room 335” and Lightning Strikes Twice, what was your approach for tone?

Back then, I was still using my Mesa Boogie. It didn’t have a name like Mark I or II; it was just one of the first made. I was very anal back then about sound, because I was a young engineer but an experienced guitar player-arranger. So, I had to go through the process. I spent hours on the kick drum, but when a big boy engineer would come in, he would just place it in a matter of minutes. I would try an 87 back 3 feet and a 57 on the cone but then had to move the 57 around. So, I went through all of that.

You’ve been playing a Dumble amp for long time now. How do they differ from the old Mesa Boogies?

There is no comparison to sound and approach to Mesas. I stopped using the Boogies around 1982. I had two, the original two I had purchased, and over the years the capacitors had dried up and had to be rebuilt. Randy Smith over at Boogie was wonderful to me. He went through all of my specs on my amp and built me another one, trying to duplicate the originals, but they didn’t quite sound as good as the originals. So, when I discovered the Dumble, my tone went way up. The quality of the sound went way up, and I kind of noticed over the years the sound of Boogie seemed very processed. And I didn’t relate to that. I have 2 Dumbles, one for stage and one for backup. The head is separate and the speaker cabinet Dumble designed to go with head. I use a 1×12 speaker cabinet with my head.

Tell me about your greatest hits CD on your label 335 Records.

We rerecorded everything. I took songs from certain periods of my career. We did “Room 335” from 1979 and “Smiles and Smiles to Go.” On 90 percent of the tunes, I tried to make them sound just like the originals when they first came out. So, you might put “Smiles and Smiles” on from the rerecorded hits version and say, “Oh, I know that,” but obviously all of the solos are different and other little sections are different. So, it’s really fun to do a tease and then new versions of the tunes. It was a cool project.

What players did you use for this recording?

Travis (Larry’s son) on bass. Jeff Babko, one of LA’s best keyboardists. We call him wonder child because he is so gifted. And on drums, Vinnie Calaiuta. Strong band. I still had all of the old charts, so I said to them, “You’ve heard them on the radio, so now let’s redo them.”

Recording techniques in the studio?

I honestly relinquished that all to the engineer. I’m a guitarist. I don’t stay up on the hippest, hottest condenser mics. I just hire the best guys I know, and whatever mic they decide sounds the best on my amp, I usually agree. Put it this way: In ’02 I recorded four sides with a smooth jazz producer in LA that Warner Brothers suggested. So, I went in, and all I took was my guitar. He had an old blackface Fender amp sitting around and put a 251 mic in front of it, and I cut the four tunes. It didn’t matter what amp was there it sounds like me, and we got two number-one radio hits off of it.

I used to labor, placing the mic half an inch off of the cone center, etc. But now I’ve really come to a different perspective. For example, I recorded “Firewire,” which was in ’04, and Csaba Petocz produced it. He had a sound in mind for my guitar for the tunes. We went into Capitol Recording, and it was interesting. The drums, bass, and guitar were set up in the big room, but my amp was in a smaller room, where he left the door to the smaller room cracked so there would be a very subtle amount of leakage from the amp onto the drum mics. Csaba really had a vision on how he wanted to present me. I even let him set my Dumble amp. I would just play, and he would start twisting knobs and then go back in the control room. He designed my sound for that album.

Conclusion

Mr. 335 has 19 Grammy nominations, 4 Grammy wins. Larry’s Greatest Hits Rerecorded, Volume 1, released on 335 Records was nominated for Best Pop Instrumental Album. In 2009 Fourplay’s “Fortune Teller,” on the Energy album, was nominated for Best Pop Instrumental Performance. Even in his 70s, Larry is still a driving force of inspiration for guitar players and the recording industry. It’s no wonder that his warm personality and great vibe seem to transcend through his remarkable guitar tone from his beloved 335!

By Brian Tarquin,

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