Harvey Brooks definitely has a knack for being at the right place at the right time.
That gift — along with his considerable skills as a bass player and record producer — have led him to leave his name in the credits of something like 100 records in the last 40-plus years. But, we’re not just talking quantity here but quality, as well.

Brooks has, in his relatively unassuming way, played on some of the most ground-breaking jazz, blues, rock and folk records of the last several decades.
Three records by themselves illustrate this. The first of Brooks’ studio recording to see the light of day — and his first studio recording, by the way — saw him playing bass on Bob Dylan’s ground-shifting Highway 61 Revisited album in 1965. The second is the iconic Super Session album from 1968 with Michael Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Stephen Stills. And then, in 1969, came Bitches Brew by Miles Davis.
Putting aside Brooks’ huge body of work for a moment, consider the influence of these three recordings.

Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited was a pivotal, polarizing release, encapsulating the then-current battle between folk purists and those more open to (electric) change. Some loved it, and some hated it, but everyone had an opinion.

The Super Session record was a surprise hit and a signature record of the time, further cementing Bloomfield’s reputation as THE white blues guitar player of the ’60s. Dorm rooms from coast to coast seemingly came stocked with copies; it’s a safe bet that it introduced blues to untold thousands of young music fans.

Bitches Brew is the somewhat analogous jazz version of Highway 61 Revisited, a hugely influential, polarizing record that introduced Davis’ big band, free-form jazz funk to the world. It’s one of the most famous (and notorious) jazz records of the 20th century. In other words, it’s one of the most famous jazz records every made.
Brooks’ smooth, supple, infinitely tasteful bass playing was the grounding wire for these records. Harvey is a supremely versatile player, showing himself equally adept in any number of genres.

Although his name may justly be associated with the above records, they only tell a small portion of his story. A true pioneer in bringing the electric bass into the realm of folk music, Brooks played on numerous recordings by Eric Anderson, Richie Havens, John Martyn, Mama Cass, John Sebastian, Seals & Crofts, Loudon Wainwright III and others.

Many know Harvey for his wonderful playing on Soft Parade by The Doors. Or for his long-time membership in The Electric Flag, with whom he played with at the Monterey Pop Festival.

As for versatility, how many other musicians can claim credits on records as diverse as rockabilly pioneer Paul Burlison (of the Rock ’N Roll Trio), rock avant-gardist John Cale, soul singer Fontella Bass and Texan boogie-blues hotshots The Fabulous Thunderbirds?

Brooks (originally Harvey Goldstein) was born in Manhattan in 1944 and raised in Long Island City and Queens. He went to school at Queens College. As a teenager Brooks attended some of Alan Freed’s Rock & Roll shows in Brooklyn, seeing Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Ben E. King, The Drifters and more.

Originally a guitar player, he switched to bass when one of the early party-rock and R&B bands he was in was top-heavy with guitar players. Brooks also was playing jazz in high school, starting a trend of playing several styles of music at an early age. After two years of going to college while playing music six nights a week, Brooks opted for full-time musicianship.

Brooks was high school buddies with Al Kooper, another musician/producer/scene-maker with a gift for being at the right place in the right time. It was Kooper who brought Brooks into the studio for Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited sessions at the Columbia Studios at the Hotel Victoria,  777 Seventh Ave., Studio A.

Brooks played on all the tracks except for the single “Like a Rolling Stone” and one other track. A few months later, Brooks also played at the famous Dylan show at Forest Hills, Queens, in a band that included Kooper and two-fifths of what soon became know as The Band, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm.

Brooks remembers the scene.

“At that time, people didn’t sit in front of the stage, they were back in the seats, and there was a big opening from the stage to the audience, a big grass field,” says Brooks. “Then, all of a sudden, there were people on the stage that rushed the stage, and security were tackling people. They were pissed off… just running wild. I turned around and saw Kooper go down; someone pulled the stool out from underneath him. It was really kind of hostile... hostile in the sense that people really took it seriously that Dylan was going electric.”

By the end of the Dylan sessions and gigs, Brooks’ career as a professional recording artist was set, a career that has now spanned parts of five decades. Following Dylan, Brooks became the go-to bass player for a whole roster of artists blending folk and rock music.

He moved into Greenwich Village, into an apartment he got from Phil Ochs and became “kind of like the house bass player at Café Au Go Go,” playing with Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, etc. He played on the first albums of Richie Havens and Mama Cass Elliot, as well recordings by David Blue, Eric Anderson, Hedge & Donna and Jim & Jean.

The next great leap forward came with the formation of The Electric Flag.

“For me, it started with meeting Mike Bloomfield at the Dylan sessions,” says Brooks. “Mike came back into town (New York City) with Barry Goldberg and said that Albert Grossman (Dylan’s manager) was putting a band together, out of San Francisco. It was going to be a horn band, an R&B band, and did I want to do it?”
At the time, Brooks was working with a manager named Arthur Gorsen and playing with a lot of his folk artists: David Blue, Eric Andersen and others. Then, he gets a call from Murray the K (a famous New York-based DJ/personality), who wanted him to manage him and help him put on a show at RKO on the East Side.

“This is all while I’m in conversation with Mike Bloomfield and Barry Goldberg,” says Brooks.

Brooks recalls seeing some of music’s heaviest hitters at the top of their game.
 “At this show that we’re helping Murray the K put on is Wilson Pickett, Mitch Ryder, a lot of great acts,” says Brooks. “Wilson Pickett... I’m watching his rehearsal, and I’m hearing this drummer; a fatback, serious pocket drummer, and it was Buddy Miles. And Pickett’s going, ‘Drummer! Fifty bucks!’ He’s fining Buddy for every miscue, every mistake; Wilson runs a tight ship. But I’m amazed by Buddy’s drumming, so I tell Michael and Barry, ’cause I didn’t know that Billy Mundi was supposed to be the drummer. So, I invite Michael and Barry to come down and check out Buddy, and it was like, whoa!

Taking Bloomfield and Goldberg with him, Brooks went over to the America Hotel, where Pickett was recording.

“The idea was, we were going to talk to Pickett; we had already spoken to Buddy, and he said, ‘Well, Pickett’s pretty tough to talk to, and he’s not going to appreciate this,’” says Brooks. “Barry and I are sitting out in the lobby, and Bloomfield goes into the studio. Maybe 15 minutes later, Bloomfield comes running out with Pickett behind him, and Pickett is waving a gun! ‘Whatya mean you want Buddy Miles? He’s my drummer, not your drummer! I’ll say when he goes and when he doesn’t go!’ So, we ran out of there, ran upstairs. Two weeks later, I fly out to San Francisco, and Buddy meets me at the airport.”

So, lifelong New Yorker Harvey Brooks moved to Mill Valley, Calif., in late 1966.
“It looked like fairyland” Brooks recalls.

The Electric Flag burned bright but quickly and was done by 1968. The collection of jazzbos, soul and blues aficionados in the band didn’t have much in common with what was going on in Haight Ashbury and didn’t really make the scene, but still managed to indulge in the substances of the times.

“Our models were Albert King, Booker T and the MGs, Otis Redding, John Coltrane... that’s what we modeled ourselves after,” says Brooks.

Brooks got to jam with Jimi Hendrix (whom he had known earlier in New York) and Carlos Santana several times. He played the Fillmore West on a bill with Cream and produced the first record by Quicksilver Messenger Service. He also played one memorable show at The Fillmore East with Hendrix and Buddy Miles.

He had a brush with Hendrix’s potential success: “I had a deal for Jimi with Jerry Schoenbaum from Verve-Folkways Records. When I went to tell him about it, a week earlier he had signed with Chas Chandler.” So close…

The Electric Flag also played at the Monterey Pop Festival.

“The thing about it was that it was pure,” says Brooks. “There was nothing really but the music that was going on. Everyone was there for the music and was encouraging it, there was no out of controlness. It wasn’t forced control; it was by mutual consent.”

Brooks ended up hanging out with Hendrix and Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones. “We all, somehow — Hendrix, Bloomfield, myself, Brian Jones — we ended up in this room just talking about how grooovy everything was,” says Brooks. “What it was, was kind of sharing a moment. Nobody has anything brilliant to say; what could you really say?”

Brooks went on to play on the afore-mentioned legendary Super Session album with Bloomfield, Cooper and Stephen Stills. He was then asked by CBS records vice president Jack Gold to become an in-house producer, where he produced records for John Hall, Bobby Lester and a couple of other acts.

Most importantly, he got to know Miles Davis’ producer Teo Macero, which led to the legendary sessions that yielded Bitches Brew, Big Fun and On The Corner. First asked to record demos for Davis’ then-wife, funk goddess Betty Davis, Brooks soon found himself in the middle of some of the most famous jazz sessions of the period.
“Working with Miles was a privilege,” says Brooks. “We had one rehearsal for that. It was at Miles’ house. Joe Zawinul shows me this one lick he said we could do; we work out the lick, and Miles puts on Jack Johnson boxing films. That was rehearsal.” The rest is most definitely history.

Brooks’ career since those early, legendary highlights (they were legendary times) has spoken of nothing but quality. In 1969, he was tapped by The Doors’ producer Paul Rothchild to play bass on the band’s fourth release, Soft Parade.
He also played a couple of live shows with The Doors, including one at the Forum in Los Angeles.

“The Doors were a good band, in the sense that they created an interesting sound,” says Brooks. “It was a unique sound, and Jim Morrison was an interesting stylist. When I would talk to Jim, it’d just be regular conversation. I’d have those moments. The band members, they would have all the emotional moments.”
In 1970, Harvey rejoined Bob Dylan for the wonderful album New Morning, and in the early ’70s, he played on superb records by John Sebastian, John Martyn, John Hall, Loudon Wainwright III and the Jefferson Starship’s Blows Against the Empire. He was in the Woodstock, N.Y.,-based blues/rock/soul band The Fabulous Rhinestones from 1971 to 1976, with whom he recorded three records, touring with Sly Stone and others.

 “We came real close to getting over; we played a lot and rehearsed a lot, but somehow we just missed the train,” says Brooks.

He even played bass on John Cale’s Vintage Violence  LP from 1970, and produced Out Of The Blue by Electric Light Orchestra in 1977.

One of the highlights of Harvey’s work in the 1970s, and one that has had strong legs ever since, is his production work and bass playing on Karen Dalton’s second (and last) record, In My Own Time in 1971.

Dalton was a well-known, highly respected singer in the GreenwichVillage folk scene with an idiosyncratic voice whose range included folk, blues, soul and rock. Over the subsequent decades, Dalton’s Harvey-produced record became a legendary, much-sought-after touchstone recording, embodying a highly personal, free-form approach to Americana music making.

Harvey’s production seems to breathe the very air of the Bearsville Sound Studio in Woodstock, N.Y., where it was recorded, and it also contains some of his most sublime bass playing.

In the mid-’90s Harvey played bass and toured with Donald Fagen from Steely Dan, who he met while playing with The Little Big Band with Jimmy Vivino, of the Max Weinberg 7, house band for the “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” show. He also played and recorded an album with Danny Kortchmar, Charlie Karp and Rob Paparozzi in the rocking blues band Slo-Leak in 1996. In 2001, Brooks, along with Jim Dickinson, Chuck Prophet, Jules Shear and others recorded a one-off, rootsy record Raisins In The Sun for Rounder Records.

Brooks, vigorous at 64, remains active, still playing and recording. He and his wife, Bonnie, moved to Tucson, Ariz., in 1998. They run a guitar and music shop (17th Street Guitars and World Music) inside an international food market, the 17th St. Farmer’s Market, which is owned and operated by guitar player, and Tucson native, Tom Cusian.

Harvey and Tom play together in the 17th St. Band, a six-piece band that blows out an amalgam of blues, rock and soul. They have just recorded their first record. The future, Brooks says, “will determine itself.”

For further information about Harvey Brooks, see his fascinating video blog at harveybrooks.net, 17thstreetband.com, or treasureshidden.com for the 17th Street Guitars and World Music site.