Harold Simon Belsky (1929 - 2019)

Born 5 Feb 1929 in Holyoke, Hampden, Massachusetts, United States

Husband of Lydia Marie (Pellegrin) Belsky — married Jul 1962 (to Jul 1969) in New Orleans, Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Died 11 Mar 2019 at age 90 in Palm Desert, Riverside, California, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Dale Byers [send private message]

Harold Belsky is Notable.

Biography

• Married five times:
  • Divorced from Lydia M. Pellegrin, Jul 1969 @ Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; they married Jul 1962 @ New Orleans, LA
• Hal Blaine was an American drummer and session musician. He was a member of a loose collection of session musicians in Los Angeles known as the Wrecking Crew, a name he helped coin. If you listened to American popular music in the latter half of the 20th Century, especially the 1960s & 1970s, you listened to Hal Blaine.
• As a young man, Blaine worked as a comic in the Catskills, and was known for his wit by co-workers & associates throughout his career.
• Musically, Blaine's first love was jazz, playing in a Chicago quartet as one of his earliest gigs. Once, he remembers proudly, he sat in with Count Basie's band.
• In addition to his prolific session work (35,000 tracks, but who's counting?) Hal Blaine was Nancy Sinatra's band leader for several years.
• A extensive but incomplete compilation of Hal's recording credits can be found at allmusic.com. Please note that he also did a lot of work for commercial jingles, TV shows & movies.

Legacy & Honors

• Hall Blaine, Celebrated as the Most Recorded Drummer in History, Dies at 90 (Washington Post, March 12, 2019)
• Twelve Essential Hal Blaine Songs (New York Times, March 12, 2019)
• High Points from the Careeer of Hal Blaine (Associated Press, March 11, 2019)
• The Wrecking Crew (documentary, 2008]
• Hal Blaine: My 11 Greatest Recordings of All Time (Music Radar, reported 3/12/19)
• Tribute to Hal Blaine, Pt. 1
• Tribute to Hal Blaine, Pt. 2
• Hal Blaine profile (Modern Drummer, 1981)
• Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 2000
• Book: Hal Blaine & the Wrecking Crew, by Hal Blaine, 2010
• A Life in Music: Hal Blaine's Impact on Jazz (Jazziz, March 13, 2019)
• In 2018, Blaine received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

From Hal Blaine's obituary in the Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2019:

• The contributions of the studio players shouldn’t be underestimated. "I don't know how many times I've seen an artist go into the studio and have to be guided along by the musicians,” [first-call session drummer Earl] Palmer told The Times in 2000, “because the artists and even the producers didn't know what to do.”
• Atlantic Records executive and producer Jerry Wexler explained it this way: “All we would start with was a bunch of chords — we didn't have written arrangements. The musicians routinely came up with things that made those records. “If you just play the chords, it's [nothing],” Wexler said. “It's how you fill it in — the in-between notes, the upbeats, the downbeats, the walk-ups, the walk-downs, the rhythm pattern — that puts the icing on the cake.”

Video

Note that many hit songs on the radio are comprised of tracks created by studio musicians who often do not tour with the band, whose members copy the tracks originally recorded in the studio. An exception in Hal Blaine's case is that he was Nancy Sinatra's band leader for several years, and a few seasons of touring with John Denver. Blaine was also the session leader for most of the records he played on, often lining up the players for the session. Songs marked with an asterisk (*) won a Grammy award for Record of the Year.

• 1957: My Special Angel by the Vogues
• 1961: Johnny Angel by Shelly Fabares
• 1962: Return to Sender by Elvis Presley
• 1962: He's a Rebel by the Crystals
• 1963: Be My Baby by The Ronettes
• 1963: Another Saturday Night by Sam Cooke
• 1964: Little Old Lady from Pasadena by Jan & Dean
• 1965: Taste of Honey by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass *
• 1965: California Dreamin' by The Mamas & The Papas
• 1965: Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire
• 1965: Mr. Tambourine Man by the Byrds
• 1965: I Got You Babe by Sonny & Cher
• 1966: These Boots are Made for Walkin' by Nancy Sinatra
• 1966: Strangers in the Night by Frank Sinatra *
• 1966: Sloop John B by the Beach Boys
• 1966: Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys
• 1966: Last Train to Clarksville by The Monkees
• 1967: Up, Up & Away by the Fifth Demension *
• 1968: Mrs. Robinson by Simon & Garfunkel *
• 1968: Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell
• 1969: Aquarius (Let the Sunshine In) by The Fifth Dimension *
• 1970: Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel *
• 1972: Top of the World by The Carpenters
• 1973: The Way We Were by Barbra Streisand
• 1974: Annie's Song by John Denver
• 1975: Love Will Keep Us Together by The Captain & Tenille *
• 1981: Mr. Sandman by Emmylou Harris ft/Linda Ronstadt & Dolly Parton

Sources

• "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XQGC-6Q8 : accessed 12 March 2019), Harold Belsky in household of Meyer Belsky, Holyoke, Hampden, Massachusetts, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 161, sheet 17A, line 6, family 375, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 906; FHL microfilm 2,340,641.
• Wikipedia contributors, "Hal Blaine," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hal_Blaine&oldid=887443728 (accessed March 12, 2019).
• findagrave

From behind the ancestry.com subscription wall:

• Massachusetts Birth Index, 1929
• US Census, 1930 (Holyoke, MA)
• US Census, 1940 (Hartford, CT)
• California Divorce Index, 1969