Hal Blaine will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Route 66 Rendezvous Cruisin’ Hall of Fame in San Bernardino, Calif., in September, reports the Press-Enterprise.
If you don’t know who he is, chances are almost certain you’ve heard him. He’s a session drummer who’s played on albums by Frank Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Carpenters, Partridge Family, John Denver, and the Supremes during the 1960s and ’70s.
Blaine, now 79, is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s played on at least 5,000 records.
As for why the Rendezvous is honoring him, his roots in San Bernardino run deep:
“I grew up in San Bernardino,” he said. “And I went into the service in San Bernardino, and after service I went back to San Bernardino.”
After he got back from the Korean War, he studied at a percussion institute in Chicago for three years. Then he went to work in San Bernardino.
“My first work was in San Bernardino in a nightclub called the Magic Carpet, a wonderful dinner club,” he said. One of the people he worked with in San Bernardino was Bobby Troup, who wrote the song “Route 66.”
He also did his first recordings in San Bernardino with disc jockey Bill Bellman at radio station KFXM. “That’s where I got my first real studio work, where I had to find out what studio work was all about. We did some wonderful records there,” Blaine said.
As for the highway, he said, “Of course, I got to drive Route 66 many, many times from Chicago to LA and back when I was on the road and things like that.”
It’s not often that a drummer is so highly regarded that he’s allowed to record his own album. Here’s a cut from his 1965 LP: