Born 89 Years Ago in Louisiana, the Bassist Who Played on Hundreds of Hits With L.A.’s Wrecking Crew and Nashville’s A-Team

On this day (August 28) in 1937, Joe Osborn was born in Mound, Louisiana. He is one of the most recorded bassists of all time. Osborn played on his first hit single before he finished high school. Later, he became a first-call session player in Los Angeles. After playing on more than 200 hit songs, he moved to Nashville. There, he continued working as a session musician, playing on 53 No. 1 country singles.

Osborn started as a guitarist. His grandmother and uncles taught him how to play when he was young. By the time he was 12 years old, he was playing in church every weekend. Then, in high school, Osborn started playing in local bands. Notably, he played guitar for Dale Hawkins. He appears on Hawkins’ 1957 album Oh! Suzie Q. The title track became the first hit Osborn played on.

After working with Hawkins, he and Roy Buchanan traveled from Louisiana to Las Vegas to join country singer Bob Luman’s band. They believed that Luman needed two guitarists. That wasn’t the case, though. He needed a guitarist and a bass player. Because Buchanan knew more standards on guitar, he took that slot. Osborn, who had never played bass before, became the singer’s new bassist. “We played there for almost a year, and then I headed back to Louisiana,” Osborn told Vintage Guitar. He didn’t stay long, though.

Joe Osborn Goes Back to the Coast

When Joe Osborn returned to Louisiana, he learned that Ricky Nelson was putting a band together. So, he went back to the West Coast to join Nelson’s band. During his four-year run, he helped Nelson find his biggest hit.

“When I first got there, they asked me to mail back all of the demos people had sent for consideration. There were hundreds of them. I was supposed to just mail them back. I started listening to a few, and that’s when I heard ‘Travelin’ Man,’” he recalled. He took the demo to Nelson. It went on to be a massive hit.

Becoming a Session Musician

Nelson dissolved the band in 1964. However, Osborn had already started working with Johnny Rivers. They played the opening of the Whiskey A-Go-Go. Rivers recorded several albums over the next few years, and Osborn played on all of them. As a result, producer Lou Adler, head of Dunhill Records, asked him to play on the Mamas & the Papas’ debut album. When he arrived at the studio, he reconnected with engineer Bones Howe. Soon, Howe started producing sessions. He and Adler regularly called Osborn to play bass.

Soon, Osborn, Hal Blaine, and Larry Knechtel started regularly working together. They were the Hollywood Golden Trio. Later, they were all members of the Wrecking Crew, an elite group of session musicians who backed nearly every high-profile artist on the West Coast.

Near the end of his time in Los Angeles, Osborn started charging double union scale. At the time, that meant he was charging well over $200 an hour. “We thought we would work less and make the same money, but producers were willing to pay us anything we wanted, so we started working more often than we really cared to,” he recalled. “There was a time when I worked two sessions a day, six days a week, and then a session on Sunday. It was really too much after a while.”

[RELATED: Born on This Day in 1929, the Wrecking Crew Drummer Who Played on Chart-Topping Hits From Frank Sinatra, John Denver, and the Beach Boys]

The huge workload meant that he was on several successful recordings. He played on 200 top 40 hits while in Los Angeles. Eighteen of those went to No. 1.

This huge workload led him to pack up his family and move to a farm north of Nashville.

Joe Osborn Was an A-Team Player

“I just thought I wasn’t going to play anymore,” Joe Osborn told Pop Culture Classics. “It was too stressful. I just felt angry all the time. And not about any particular thing, just angry,” he recalled. “I wanted to quit. A friend said, ‘You don’t want to quit. You probably just want to do it in a different place.’ So, Nashville was the obvious place. I did it all again in Nashville.”

Before long, he was playing six or seven sessions a week for country artists. Before he decided to return to Louisiana and go into semi-retirement, he played on 53 No. 1 country singles.

Featured Image by Greg Campbell/WireImage for NARAS

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