Uncle Carl & Three Mice

 

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Stella by Starlight

(Victor Young – Ned Washington)

Music: Victor Young
Lyrics: Ned Washington
Arrangement: Dick Reynolds

Artist: Carl Korthof
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: Bones Howe
Conductor: Dick Reynolds
Contractor: Benjamin Barrett
Copyists: George Yocum, Mainerd Baker

Personnel:
Carl Korthof – lead vocal
Gene DiNovi – grand piano
Al Viola – archtop acoustic guitar
Cliff Hils – double bass
Frank Capp – drums
Dorothy Remsen – harp
Gene Cipriano – oboe
Bill Green – flute
Robert Jung – flute
Wilbur Schwartz – flute
Henry Laubach – trumpet
Ollie Mitchell – trumpet
Al Porcino – trumpet
Virgil Evans – trumpet
Richard Nash – trombone
Urbie Green – trombone
Lew McCreary – trombone
Richard Perissi – French horn
David Duke – French horn
Arthur Maebe – French horn
Red Callender – tuba
James Getzoff – violin
Bernard Kundell – violin
Robert Barene – violin
Arnold Belnick – violin
Darrel Terwilliger – violin
William Kurasch – violin
Henry Roth – violin
Alfred Lustgarten – violin
Harry Bluestone – violin
Lou Raderman – violin
Marshall Sosson – violin
Paul Shure – violin
Raymond Kelley – cello
Frederick Seykora – cello
Armand Kaproff – cello
Jesse Ehrlich – cello
Joe Saxon – cello
Karl Rossner – cello

Recorded to 1/2″ 3-track and 4-track:
October 15, 1965 (1:00pm-4:00pm) / United Recording – Studio A

Mixed to 1/4″ mono:
October 15, 1965 / United Recording – Studio A

Unreleased

 

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How Deep Is the Ocean

(Irving Berlin)

Music: Irving Berlin
Lyrics: Irving Berlin
Arrangement: Dick Reynolds

Artist: Carl Korthof
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: Bones Howe
Conductor: Dick Reynolds
Contractor: Benjamin Barrett
Copyists: George Yocum, Mainerd Baker

Personnel:
Carl Korthof – lead vocal
Gene DiNovi – grand piano
Al Viola – archtop acoustic guitar
Cliff Hils – double bass
Frank Capp – drums
Dorothy Remsen – harp
Gene Cipriano – oboe
Bill Green – flute
Robert Jung – flute
Wilbur Schwartz – flute
Henry Laubach – trumpet
Ollie Mitchell – trumpet
Al Porcino – trumpet
Virgil Evans – trumpet
Richard Nash – trombone
Urbie Green – trombone
Lew McCreary – trombone
Richard Perissi – French horn
David Duke – French horn
Arthur Maebe – French horn
Red Callender – tuba
James Getzoff – violin
Bernard Kundell – violin
Robert Barene – violin
Arnold Belnick – violin
Darrel Terwilliger – violin
William Kurasch – violin
Henry Roth – violin
Alfred Lustgarten – violin
Harry Bluestone – violin
Lou Raderman – violin
Marshall Sosson – violin
Paul Shure – violin
Raymond Kelley – cello
Frederick Seykora – cello
Armand Kaproff – cello
Jesse Ehrlich – cello
Joe Saxon – cello
Karl Rossner – cello

Recorded to 1/2″ 3-track and 4-track:
October 15, 1965 (1:00pm-4:00pm) / United Recording – Studio A

Mixed to 1/4″ mono:
October 15, 1965 / United Recording – Studio A

Unreleased

 

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Three Blind Mice

(Brian Wilson)

Music: Brian Wilson
Arrangement: Brian Wilson

Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: Bones Howe

Personnel:
Al Viola – archtop acoustic guitar
Cliff Hils – double bass
Frank Capp – drums
Henry Laubach – trumpet
Ollie Mitchell – trumpet
Al Porcino – trumpet
Virgil Evans – trumpet
Richard Nash – trombone
Urbie Green – trombone
Lew McCreary – trombone
Richard Perissi – French horn
David Duke – French horn
Arthur Maebe – French horn
Red Callender – tuba
James Getzoff – violin
Bernard Kundell – violin
Robert Barene – violin
Arnold Belnick – violin
Darrel Terwilliger – violin
William Kurasch – violin
Henry Roth – violin
Alfred Lustgarten – violin
Harry Bluestone – violin
Lou Raderman – violin
Marshall Sosson – violin
Paul Shure – violin
Raymond Kelley – cello
Frederick Seykora – cello
Armand Kaproff – cello
Jesse Ehrlich – cello
Joe Saxon – cello
Karl Rossner – cello

Recorded to 1/2″ 3-track and 4-track:
October 15, 1965 (1:00pm-4:00pm) / United Recording – Studio A

Mixed to 1/4″ mono:
October 15, 1965 / United Recording – Studio A

Initial Release:
2011 Stereo Mix – The Smile Sessions (Capitol Records, 2011)

 

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Uncle Carl

Audree Wilson’s older brother, Sherley Carl Korthof, and her father, Carl Arie Korthof, each donated a name to her sons Dennis Carl Wilson and Carl Dean Wilson, who each did the same with their sons Carl B. and Justyn Carl. Carl, a name so good it apparently never depreciates in value. 

Uncle Carl (father to the Wilson boys’ cousin Steve Korthof) was once considered the pre-eminent male singer in the family clan; at many a musical gathering, he loved to bring the house down with Bing Crosby songs like “Silver on the Sage,” “Mexicali Rose” and “Irish Lullaby” in his billowing operatic tenor. He would be remembered fondly by good friend/neighbor/man waiting for a bus Al Jardine, who always thought that Audree’s side of the family gave Carl Wilson his singing talent. “Boy, he could just belt out a tune like his uncle Carl,” Al said. “I used to know his uncle. He used to deliver bread for a bakery in L.A. – Carl Korthof, Audree’s brother. Boy, that guy had such a great voice. He’d sing in that bakery truck when he’d come by and the smell of fresh bread on that truck – those are the great old days.” Beyond name and voice, old photographs also reveal that Carl W. got his looks from Uncle Carl; dark black hair, a wide smile, and a jolly, round face. 

By the mid ‘60s, Uncle Carl had fallen into ill health with a heart condition. He was the opening subject of Murry’s epic, deranged, sprawling manifesto letter to Brian dated May 8, 1965, in which he wrote: “Your mother and I are leaving with Carl and Gwen [Carl’s wife] for a twenty day tour of Europe, and confidentially, because Carl is not a well man, we are taking them on this trip with us to give both Carl and Gwen a little more happiness, because we fear something might happen to Carl within the next two or three years. Under NO circumstances, ever mention this to Shirley [his daughter], Gwen or any of his family of our fears.” 

Prophetically, Carl did pass away not two years later, suffering a heart attack in January 1967 while vacationing in Las Vegas with Audree. But winding the clock back to 1965, those private health concerns aired by Dad may have motivated Brian to gift his uncle with a starring role on his very own record. 

Recording “Stella by Starlight” and “How Deep Is the Ocean”

On the afternoon of Friday, October 15, 1965, Brian held an expensive three-hour session in Studio A at United Recording, the room where “The Surfer Moon” and the orchestrated Christmas Album tracks had been recorded. The client was merely designated “Brian Wilson” (sending the bill to Capitol), but in actuality this was a session with Uncle Carl Korthof as the performing artist. 

The objective was to record versions of the old standards “Stella by Starlight” and “How Deep Is the Ocean,” songs that Carl presumably loved singing and chose for himself. For this, in the Beach Boys’ Christmas Album spirit, Brian reunited with the Four Freshmen’s erstwhile arranger Dick Reynolds, who took up his request to score charts for a lavish 38-piece chamber orchestra. Alongside a core rhythm section of Gene DiNovi on piano, Al Viola on rhythm guitar, Cliff Hils on double bass and Frankie Capp on drums, they had harpist Dorothy Remsen, three flutes, an oboe, four trumpets, three trombones, three French horns, a tuba (played by Red Callender, who once worked with Murry in the ‘50s), twelve violins, and six cellos. Reynolds conducted, Benjamin Barrett contracted the musicians, copyists George Yocum and Mainerd Baker handed out the parts, and legendary engineer Bones Howe ran the board (curiously, he was ID’d as a percussionist on the AFM sheet). The union fees for that roster added up to $3,460.77, equivalent to about $36,000 in 2026 money. The top of the contract noted the session leader as “Richard Reynolds (Carl Korkof)” [sic]. Brian produced, but with this music being quite far outside of his wheelhouse, he didn’t seem to have a hand in the arrangements. 

The orchestral arrangements of Dick Reynolds were typically florid affairs, full Old Hollywood big band cornball, not out to push boundaries (except for occasional avant garde “Pop Goes the Weasel” fanfare mania), pretty square. He weren’t no Nelson Riddle. Dick was prone to writing the sorts of high, sappy violin swells and flute trills that elevators couldn’t get enough of in days gone by, always going for the mournful horn swoops, the sparkly harps, and the odd airstrike-like blast of trumpets to really enchant forth tinnitus cases. And man, he loved an oboe. The more wistful the oboe the better the piece of music. But Brian dug his work for its unabashed sentimentality, bringing him back to a simpler time when hipness couldn’t obstruct romance. “[He’s] just about a god to me,” Brian said in 1964. “His work is the greatest, and the Freshmen’s execution is too much.” The flavor here is very much like the standards on the Christmas Album, subtracting a degree of whimsy. 

The 72ft by 60ft Studio A had no trouble accommodating sessions much larger than this one, officially advertising that it could hold around 75 musicians (for context, Western’s 15ft by 31ft Studio 3 was only supposed to have room for 10, but Chuck could squeeze nearly 20 in there). Comparing Reynolds’ previous work with Brian, the festive sessions involved a similarly scaled 41-piece orchestra. Bones Howe had recorded it all at the Putnam studio complex, in every conceivable shape and size and pedigree, from Sinatra to Jan Berry. 

The Western-United studios all received an upgrade to 1/2” four-track tape machines in the month or so leading up to this session, so Bones recorded on three-track and four-track simultaneously to be safe in case the new format conked out. The musicians would primarily have been picked up by spacious Decca Tree style overhead mics, plus some close directional mic placements on instruments like the guitar, bass and tuba. Carl got to live out his crooner fantasy (assuming he had one) and sang live with the orchestra here, like Ol’ Blue Eyes himself – he was put at a vocal mic behind baffles in an isolated corner, and Reynolds could hear Carl’s voice over headphones to help with his conduction. On four-track, the parts were laid out like this: 

Track 1 – harp, flutes, oboe, violins, cellos + reverb 
Track 2 – trumpets, trombones, horns, tuba + reverb 
Track 3 – vocal 
Track 4 – grand piano, acoustic guitar, double bass, drums 

Now, the performer. Carl Korthof once possessed a magnificent voice, a clear-as-a-bell warble of distinction that could’ve probably made it somewhere in opera if his life had turned a different way. That is… not what we hear on these tapes. At 49 years old, time and illness had made him sound, frankly, weird, like Kermit being throttled inside of a washing machine. His vibrato is so wide and wild as to often be orbiting about three notes at once. Other times it’s quite touching, with vestiges of great power and feeling. Still, this would not be a proper Brian Wilson production for an unknown rando if they didn’t make compellingly strange noises. That’s actually how you know it’s the real deal. So Carl stood at the mic with a lyric sheet, Dick readied the band, and Brian oversaw the operation from the booth as they set about tracking “Stella by Starlight” first, entirely live.

It’s worth noting that back during the Christmas Album tracking sessions in June 1964, Brian generally made himself an invisible presence in the booth and let Reynolds (officially uncredited) produce the orchestra with Bill Putnam; our boy had never before handled sessions of such scale and probably felt out of his depth telling everybody what to do. A year on in a similar situation, he doesn’t have much creative input here either, but Brian is clearly feeling more confident coming off those post-touring months spent honing his craft and he slates most of the takes with an easy rapport, the comfortable boss of the situation. That’ll become more apparent later. “Go ahead, Dick,” Brian says over the talkback, and the band whirl up into take 1.

This version of “Stella by Starlight” is one of the interpretations that doesn’t repeat itself much, consisting of a twirly instrumental intro with a suspended cymbal swell (incredibly similar to the beginning of “Blue Christmas”), an introductory verse, a chorus, a long instrumental interlude, and a second chorus to end. Way, way more theatrical than an Ella Fitzgerald or Tony Bennett take, absolutely no flamboyance sequestered by helpful doses of shame. Dick knew how to saturate an arrangement with melody. Zero time off for anyone. Strings swirl, oboe and flutes take turns to sing in the spaces, harp and piano tinkle, brass balloons out, and they all rush together in spectacle at the refrains, turning this typically fragile love song into its own “great symphonic theme” of some kind. Underneath, the drums gently swing along with brushes, the bass plays a steady one-three, and the guitar strums laid-back quarter notes. Carl puts his all into the freaky vocal, belting out those crescendos just like in the bakery wagon days. After a complete take, Dick tells the band to take a five minute break while they listen to a playback. 

The remainder of the tracking is just going through it again until they have a performance everybody’s satisfied with. Brian slates the rest and can be heard clowning around in the control room with Bonesy. Take 2 is a false start, breaking down to various musicians saying “Yo!” at each other. Take 3 is complete, marked for another playback. Take 4 is a false start because Carl forgets to sing – “Me, sorry,” he murmurs. 

“That’s okay, we got it!” Brian calls over the talkback. Take 5 is a third complete version lasting 3:04, also played over the monitors and circled to keep. 

“‘How Deep Is the Ocean,’ take one,” Brian slates next. Maybe it’s the downcast, dramatic sweep of the older song, but Reynolds and Korthof both seem to acquaint themselves much better with this second number. The arrangement’s grand theatrics (though pulling all of the same tricks) aren’t so massively out of step with the material, and Carl lets loose with a genuinely emotive and effective vocal, playing to the strengths of his odd voice. He sounds like an ancient forlorn god of the sea. Or maybe that’s only an opinion you form when you listen to these tracks a lot. 

This rendition of “How Deep Is the Ocean” begins with another tried and tested Reynolds intro that’s basically identical to the break in the middle of “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” The ensemble play through the verses, take an instrumental break, and reprise the final couplets. Uncle Carl even finishes it off with a lovely held falsetto, sounding for a flicker a little like his namesake in the Beach Boys. 

Take 1 is a quick false start, then take 2 is a full 2:42 attempt noted for playback. Takes 3 and 4 are both intro breakdowns flubbed by the horns, and 5 is abruptly held up by Dick when Carl sings the wrong starting notes. “How much,”  Dick demonstrates at correct pitch out to the singer across the floor and Carl apologizes. Carl sings the same wrong note again on take 6 (and late), instantly realizes and sighs, “Try it again.” 

Take 7 is a second complete version – not bad – after which Brian pipes up to suggest “Let’s do just one more Dick, okay?” Take 8 doesn’t really begin, and take 9 is another, more convicted full attempt lasting 2:40, reviewed and circled as the master. Mr. Korthof brings his last recorded performance home with an outpouring of heart, trailing on that last falsetto note for a long, ponderous moment. 

“How deep is the ocean?” Brian may never have found an answer, but he held onto the question.

Recording “Three Blind Mice”

Then, at around 3:40pm with 20 minutes left on the clock, the session took a turn for the interesting. 

Brian had been playing around at home with a new feel – a two-bar vamp, really – and with his uncle’s recordings done, and all of those musicians sitting idle with their instruments in the big studio, he seized the opportunity to get an idea on tape. Brian gave no spoken title for this experiment, but Bones Howe named it “THREE BLIND MICE” on the track sheet. 

A magazine once asked Brian about another session he held in late 1965, the track “Trombone Dixie,” and Brian offered an answer that didn’t make a whole lot of sense in that context. It makes much more sense if he was actually recalling “Three Blind Mice” when he explained, “I was just foolin’ around one day, fuckin’ around with the musicians, and I took the arrangement out of my briefcase and we did it in 20 minutes. It was nothing, there was really nothing in it.” 

In a flurry, these jazz cats reading from Dick Reynolds charts were subject to a 23-year-old kid barking orders on the floor and singing to each group of them the notes he wanted to hear. No copyist, no conduction. About half of the players Brian had worked with before, so they knew his way, but the other half were new faces. Four beats of Ebm7, two beats of Gb6, two beats of Ab7, voiced Wilson-style in a bouncy quarter note shuffle – that’s all they had to learn, spread out to different pockets of the orchestra. The piano, harp, flutes and oboe were dismissed, leaving Brian the strings, horns, guitar, bass and drums to pull together an arrangement, an ensemble of 32. 

Deprived of his usual comfort saxophones, Brian got to play around with arranging for a true brass section here. He sang out the notes from memory rather than consulting a piano and layered them into a deep four-voice harmony, going trumpets, then trombones, then horns, then Red Callender’s hefty bass tuba, an instrument Brian clearly knew nothing about other than its propensity to make a really low toot. 

Moving swiftly over to the string bass, Cliff Hils (of “The Girl from New York City” fame) was told to thump quarter notes to the same pitch as the tuba. Dick Reynolds apparently had little affection for the viola, so the assembly left behind of twelve violins and six cellos was an unusual balance of fiddles for Brian. Rising to new sounds, Brian took it a step further, and had all of them play pizzicato, plucking the strings – not an idea he’d dabbled in much before, and so immediately it stands out as the calling card of the track. The cellos (quiet in the overall balance) double the bass in the octave above, and the violins are divided into their own four-voice harmony.  

The brass and string parts had only just been dealt and given a quick rundown when Bones hit record, thereafter capturing twelve-and-a-half uninterrupted minutes of Brian talking the musicians through his jam, going for some takes, making changes on the fly, and committing a quick master before packing up. The parts were laid out on tape: 

Track 1 – violins, cellos + tape delay + reverb 
Track 2 – trumpets, trombones, horns, tuba 
Track 3 – open 
Track 4 – acoustic guitar, double bass, drums + reverb 

This is also where Brian commandeered the sound of the session. Situated in the high-ceilinged United A, it’s already a more open air ambience than you’d get on a typical Beach Boys date without much concern for leakage. Brian took care to wrangle the room to his preferences by splodging reverb on the drums, making the horns dry, and sending the plucked strings to a tape slap effect as well as their own reverb. Tape rolls right as Bones is getting this stuttery delay set up for him, at first putting it separately on track 2 before rerouting it to track 1 with the dry strings. 

“Sounds like a giant ukulele,” one of the musicians observes on hearing the pizzicato fiddles test out their parts together. 

“Okay, now, like we did before,” Brian directs, “the third from the top of the violin notes.” The lowest violinists play him their pattern. “Okay, now the second to the top.” The second highest fiddles follow. “Okay, the top.” The highest notes play next. “Okay, all of them please, and the bottom end too.”  

Only the lowest violins, the cellos and the bass play with Frankie Capp clicking his sticks to keep time, until Frankie points out, “I think he wants everyone. Want everybody, Brian?” 

“Here we go, everybody please, all the strings,” confirms Brian, and the whole group of them spring to life for a few rounds of the vamp. “I don’t hear the second from the top quite enough – the BOM BOM...” 

Without anything on the music stands, the string players momentarily get tangled up over each other trying to work out which part he means, demonstrating what they thought to be the second line, and Brian doesn’t help the situation by adding, “No, it’s bom bom bom bom bom,” but singing the lowest harmony instead! “That’s the third voice!” one of them identifies. Brian opens the door into the studio to unclog his own confusion.  

It turns out they’d forgotten (or he’d forgotten) about another violin voice, actually third from the top, between the lowest notes and the higher middle part the musicians had just been playing back to him. “No, it’s bom bom bom bom…” Brian sings the new line for their benefit. “Okay, try all of them at once! One, two, three, four…” Now all of them play what he wants, six parts in all between the bass and cellos and violins. “Fine, that’s it!” Satisfied, Brian walks over to the drums and guitar for their instructions. The horn players are meanwhile caught up in a riveting conversation about electric cabling. 

Drummer Frankie Capp usually handled auxiliary percussion on Beach Boys sessions, but he knew the score and didn’t need much directing to swing into the punchy backbeat and fills Brian liked. “Frankie, can you give me a groove to go along with that?” 

“You want two and four on snare?” Frankie anticipates. 

“Okay, fine.” That’s all Brian needs. Frankie stomps on his kick pedal (which gets no mic of its own in the orchestra setup) and lays his snare into the backbeat. 

Jazzbox guitarist Al Viola had already half sussed out the chords by the time Brian came over to him. “Minor seven, or… E-flat minor seven?” he asks and strums. 

“Well, that one’s a six kinda, but yeah,” Brian says; the voicing fits, and Al’s asked to strum the same chord shape over the vamp while only changing the top note, which Brian sings to him. They go back and forth for about 50 seconds working through that idea until it’s changed to the bottom note instead, then Brian just decides, “Play the chords with me once more,” and counts the band into another rehearsal, with Al and Frankie tagging along as he walks off, and the tuba joining in as well. 20 seconds later, Brian’s in the control room again pushing the talkback button to stop them: “Okay, play it straight like we had before. Here we go. And the horns, after, say, uh… after four bars, could all the horns start blowing?” 

Now that everybody has a part, Frankie counts in for what could be considered the first informal “take” (which nobody ever counts). A trombone deflates like a sad elephant on the first downbeat and one of its friends points out that they start four bars in; the brass guys all begin again together at the right spot, and Brian adjusts their mix on the go by pushing up the tuba. Tape echo on the strings makes the drums sizzle when they leak prominently into those mics. Frankie changes his approach as the jam goes on, throwing in quick fills and adding light brushed timekeeping on the snare, which he eventually moves over to the hi-hat. Likewise, Al Viola starts out strumming straight quarter notes and progressively leans more into the upbeat stabs. Brian lets them go for about 50 seconds and gives another instruction: “Alright, Frankie? You play quarter notes now, all the way through.” 

Take 2 carries on with Frankie committing to the quarter note hi-hat beat. “Hit your tom,” Brian tells him as they play. He listens for a few more rounds before stopping to clarify: “Okay, hold it for a second. Frankie, the tom, alright? No snare.” 

Frankie realizes he’s actually looking for the Hal Blaine Speciale, enquires “Both?” and thwacks his snare and floor tom together with sticks. “That’s it,” Brian affirms. The drummer then asks if he wants four to the bar on the tom-tom but Brian’s attention drifts to another arrangement change: “Could I just have the fiddles – all the strings – start for the first two bars, and then the horns and Frankie.” 

Take 3 begins with violins, cellos and bass only for two bars, Frankie comes in on bar three thwacking quarter notes on the snare and tom, and the brass section follows at bar five, but Brian’s turned all of them down except for the tuba, his latest little fascination. He then holds them and asks to hear the bass alone – Cliff plays for a few bars, all good. Then Brian requests, “Okay, the bass, and the, uh… the, whatever that big huge thing is.” 

“Tuba,” Bones throws him. 

“Tuba!” Brian catches. 

“Bass and tuba together,” Frankie passes along and counts them in for a short duet. After Brian’s happy enough with those two, he asks for the bass with all the horns to check them over. They all play and he quickly catches that the trumpet line is wrong: “No, the horns should be going, BAAA BAAA baaa BAAA,” specifying that they never play above the concert Db he’s singing there. 

The brass section goes for a second demo, Brian listens, then requests, “Could I have the trombone on the right, far right, go…” and dishes out another slightly different middle harmony line. They go again; he next asks to hear the trumpets and fixes up their line definitively (it actually only seems like two trumpets play here, so maybe some fellas sat out of the experiment).  

Take 4 gets off to a messy start as the brass all stumble in at different times. Brian’s next request is for vague, spicy drum action: “Alright, Frankie, do the four-four thing every two bars. Give me a, uh… give me some stuff, alright? Here we go.” On take 5, the horns (mostly) remember to wait ‘til they’re supposed to play and Frankie tumbles every couple of bars per request. 

Almost there, Brian pares back the intro build-up the way he’d started conceptualizing it a few takes ago. “One more thing, do the same thing starting with the fiddles like for two, three bars… Two bars fiddles, then horns, then the drum, okay? Bass will come in with the horns – and guitar. Here we go.” But Frankie doesn’t get the memo to not play at the top and Brian stops take 6 right away, clarifying that he’s to wait. On take 7 he thrashes quite bashfully in a way that totally overpowers the strings on their mics, prompting one of those beautiful ‘60s live room cases of “mixing” via adjusting the performance. “The fiddles have to sustain louder than that,” muses Brian. But Bones explains, “Well, I can’t because of the drums.”  

“Okay, we’ll have to take something,” Brian says. “Don’t play so loud, Frankie!”  

“You want brushes? Or want me to try with…” he starts checking. Brian reassures him, “No, that’s fine, but we just couldn’t get enough fiddles because you were awful loud.” 

“Okay. I’ll play soft, sorry.” Frankie counts into take 8. 

The fiddles start it out, Frankie builds up his drums quietly from bar three, the horns and guitar and bass come in at bar five, and the ensemble groove through a solid take for 57 seconds before a contented Brian pipes up over the talkback. “Okay, thank you very much.” 

“Now that’s experiment number one!” a string player quips and the tape stops. 

Dubdowns

Having shaken that out of their system, the bemused flight of musicians left for their next dates while Wilson and Howe mixed the three masters they’d recorded from four-track onto a ¼” mono reel marked “Ruf D/D 4-1.”

Take 8 (not that anybody counted) of “Three Blind Mice” was dubbed down first, a fun souvenir to take away on a disc and mull over. It never would’ve been meant for release – Brian only let the track roll for 37 seconds before cutting it off without a fadeout. 

They then finished up with the actual reasons for holding the session, Uncle Carl’s two songs. Take 5 of “Stella by Starlight” and take 9 of “How Deep Is the Ocean” were mixed from three-track to mono with a helping of reverb on the vocal. We can only assume Brian had both productions cut to a two-sided disc (maybe a pile of copies to give to family members), and nary a thought was ever given to selling the record. Hope it brought Carl some much needed happiness. 

…

Session excerpts and the final take of “Three Blind Mice” were released as a bonus track on 2011’s The Smile Sessions 5 CD box set, disc 4, track 21. Its original short mono mix has not been issued as of writing. 

Why even spend so much time talking about such an obscure jam created and recorded in 20 minutes? Well, for one, it’s music by the B Dog that exists, and we’ve gotta do it all. Two, this late ‘65 oddity carries an interesting legacy in that it has almost nothing to do with the music Brian recorded for Pet Sounds. What its DNA is, is much closer to a lot of the music Brian recorded afterwards for the abandoned Smile project. 

The Brian Bounce. The spooky primordialism. Prominent double bass. Pizzicato strings and a swingin’ acoustic guitar, like “My Only Sunshine.” A tuba, like “Look” and “Teeter Totter Love.” Deep brass harmonies, like “Surf’s Up.” A whole track that’s a two or three chord repetitive vamp. A reference to a nursery rhyme. We can’t be too sure that in the middle of 1966, after finishing up Pet Sounds, Brian didn’t flick through a pile of old dubs, spin “Three Blind Mice” on the turntable, and declare, yes, that’s my next record.

 

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Sources

Based on original research by John Brode, Will Crerar, Joshilyn Hoisington and Craig Slowinski.

Tapes and associated documentation from Brother Records and Capitol Records.

AFM Local 47 Contract 195251.

Brian Wilson to Melody Maker, 1964.

Letter by Murry Wilson to Brian Wilson, May 8, 1965.

Al Jardine interviewed by Ken Sharp, “A Beach Boy Still Riding the Waves,” Goldmine, July 2000.

Brian Wilson interviewed by Jacobo Benci, Record Collector, January 1995.