The world of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a stunningly beautiful fictionalized portrait of mid-century America, comprised of both real and fictional people and places. Season Three introduces some new characters who blend fiction and non-fiction, like Carole Keen, the sole female musician in Shy Baldwin’s band. Carole is played by Liza Weil, who also starred in Maisel creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Gilmore Girls. Although she only makes a few brief appearances, the badass, cat-eye glasses-wearing musician is a clever tribute to living legend Carol Kaye, a prolific American bass guitarist.
Kaye grew up playing guitar in Los Angeles jazz clubs, until a producer approached her and asked if she’d do a studio session. It turned out to be for Sam Cooke, and afterwards, the studio dates kept lining up.
Until one day, a bass player didn’t show up to a session. So they handed Kaye a bass, and as she told Louder in 2018, “I started creating lines that I always heard in my head, things that I thought bass players should play. I just provided what the music needed.” At the height of her career through the ‘50s and ‘60s, Kaye worked up to four three-hour long sessions every day. In an interview in rock documentary The Wrecking Crew, Kaye said that at that point she was making more money than the President of the United States.
Often called the First Lady of Bass, Carol Kaye’s career spanned decades and over 10,000 recordings. Her catalogue of illustrious work includes hits with The Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Ray Charles, Simon & Garfunkel, The Monkees, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, as well as numerous notable film & TV soundtracks.
She invented the bass line of Sonny and Cher’s “The Beat Goes On,” and played bass on several Beach Boys tracks including “California Girls” and “Good Vibrations” under the direction of Brian Wilson. Paul McCartney has cited the bass lines on Pet Sounds played by Kaye as the inspiration for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Carole Keen bonds with Rachel Brosnahan’s Midge over single motherhood and what it’s like to be a woman on a tour full of men. In real life, too, Carol Kaye was married and divorced by age 21 with two young children. And in terms of being a woman in a man’s world, the real Carol says that for the most part, it was easy. “Some guys would get macho,” she told Louder, “so I learned to out-swear [them], which I’m not proud of, but I was doing what I had to do.”
Kaye is now 84 years old and lives in California. Hopefully she’s binging The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season Three proudly, along with the rest of us.
