The Importance of a Varied Diet

Tracing a few of the steps studio legend Emil Richards took in 1974

If a documentary film crew had been able to shadow percussionist Emil Richards doing his work in 1974, the highlight reel would probably include glimpses of a tour with Frank Sinatra and another with George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, sessions for Harrison’s Dark Horse album, Carly Simon’s Playing Possum, Maria Muldaur’s Waitress at the Donut Shop and others. There might be footage of Richards surrounded by mallet instruments and prayer bowls and gongs, rattling seashells during recording sessions for the detail-rich soundtracks of Chinatown, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and other films.

This would just be a partial highlight reel.

From one year.

In a dizzyingly productive career that spanned over 50.

Richards, who died at age 87 in 2019, was a towering figure in the Los Angeles music world. Like many others there, he operated in several sub-worlds – for one thing, he was part of the legendary studio collective The Wrecking Crew that brought so much spark to the pop records of the 1960s and ‘70s. And, crucially, he was in demand more widely: He recorded with Michael Jackson, Judee Sill and Harry Nilsson, and joined Herbie Hancock and Jaco Pastorius in the band for Joni Mitchell’s 1979 Mingus.

Not to overlook Frank Zappa. In this brief clip, Richards recalls the Wrecking Crew’s involvement in Zappa’s orchestral work Lumpy Gravy (1967). At the sessions, some of the classical musicians were “snobby” about the job – until, through Richards’ diplomacy and Zappa’s ability to play their “unplayable” parts on guitar, they began to recognize there was genius at work.

After bringing the haunting sound of the Waterphone to Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Chinatown, Richards and his growing collection of exotic instruments became a trusted resource for film composers looking for unusual sonorities and textures. Richards contributed in memorable ways to hit TV series themes: That’s him doing the fingersnaps on The Addams Family, the near-frantic bongo that propels Lalo Schifrin’s original Mission Impossible theme, and providing the xylophone pixie-dust on the opening of The Simpsons.

Concurrently, Richards was active as a creative artist, first with a group he co-founded with trumpeter-composer Don Ellis called the Hindustani Jazz Sextet (clip below). Later the percussionist formed the Microtonal Blues Band, which really did pursue microtonal sounds, and participated in assorted period-piece experiments; the most lampoonable of these is Cosmic Sounds: The Zodiac, a clumsy faux-psychedelic celebration of astrology with narration.

So, Richards was busy. In constant demand; he told an interviewer that during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, it was not uncommon for him to have three recording sessions in a day. He was happiest when challenged by the music: “My ideal situation for a session would be playing the hardest mallet parts conceivable…I like to go home exhausted from playing good, hard music. By hard I mean difficult, because it’s a challenge. I love a challenge.”

This perhaps explains Richards’ association with the composer Harry Partch. Beginning in 1963 and until the visionary instrument inventor and composer’s death in 1974, Richards took part in most of the composer’s live performances and recording sessions. He’s on the 1969 Partch “breakthrough” record issued by Columbia, the staggeringly original The World of Harry Partch.

Not only did Richards relish the musical challenges embedded in written scores, he manufactured some of his own. He departed that 1974 Sinatra tour while it was underway – in order to travel through Guatemala, Cuba, Peru and Brazil to study (and collect) marimbas and indigenous percussion instruments, learning the ways these instruments were used in folkloric music. (A portion of his vast collection is available to rent in Los Angeles, the next time you need a set of chromatically tuned anvils).

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What got me thinking about Emil Richards was an unexpected encounter with a record I heard decades ago and never found again: Come To the Meadow, the second work of impressionistic chamber jazz by pianist Roger Kellaway’s Cello Quartet. It was recorded and released in 1974, and has been mostly out of print since. That’s a shame, because its flowing, lyrical melodies and intricate group passages stand apart from almost everything filed under “jazz composition.”

I have quibbles with the mix – the picturesque percussion parts, which find Richards changing instruments from section to section, are a bit underrepresented. Still, it’s possible to catch Richards delicately framing out the tunes (check “Seventide”!), putting bows on sections as they finish, sending the group into higher realms with nothing more than well-timed cymbal events. There’s an education to be had just within the choices Richards makes to punctuate phrases, and the ways he executes those obviously improvised choices. He’s a ninja of the small print, doing his thing from the back row, articulating details in ways that serve but never overpower the music.

That record made me wonder about other recordings Richards made in 1974, that have languished in semi-obscurity or vanished completely. There are several. All are worth hearing regardless of whether or not they clear Spotify’s arbitrary threshold for payout.

[Speaking of Spotify, Richards anticipated the current fight over streaming credits. For years, he worked with the LA musician’s union to compel studios to list musicians in the end credits. Noting that despite work on hundreds of films, he’s only seen credits on a fraction, he told NPR in 2012: "The guy who brings the porta-toilets gets his name up there…And the music is such an important part of a movie. My name is on about six movies."]

Freda Payne’s fifth U.S. release utilizes Richards on vibes throughout, alongside pianist Joe Sample and guitarists Dennis Budimir and Melvin “Wah-Wah” Ragin. The backing is poised, particularly on “I Get Carried Away” and Leon Russell’s “A Song For You,” which was covered constantly during this era.

Musician and activist Daniel Valdez made one record – Mestizo, for A&M, which includes his stirring minor-key lament “Brown Eyed Children of the Sun.” He then became involved in film, doing music supervision for the 1987 film La Bamba and scoring an IMAX documentary, Mexico.

We’ll close with a slice of Detroit proto-disco that benefits from an incredible studio crew. Richard “Popcorn” Wylie was a fixture in 1960s Detroit, and on these plush but not too smooth arrangements by McKinley Jackson, the keyboardist is surrounded by legends and future legends, among them Motown bassist James Jamerson, drummer James Gadson, and guitarists Dennis Coffey and Dean Parks. Richards is listed as part of a team of percussionists on this tremendous date. Listen for five minutes and you may find yourself wondering how, exactly, did this one escape notice?

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There are probably musicians working today who are as busy as Emil Richards was in 1974. (Hope so!) There are certainly session players with his kind of reading skills, and his ability to execute on the first take.

But I’d be surprised to learn about any single player who is traversing the stylistic range Richards did on a routine basis. In 1974 he was involved in the making of enduring, revered and beloved music in countless genres: sunny pop records, soul records, chamber jazz records, singer-songwriter records, Latin records, records rooted in Eastern religion and mysticism. On days when he wasn’t making audio, he was helping to create the soundscapes for films like Chinatown. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was studying the music of South America, expanding his tool kit.

This particular strain of discipline is something unusual. Maybe instinctual. It goes beyond the contagious clock-ticking pressure of studio work, taps into the long arc of eternal rhythm.

It’s the opposite path of the musician who knows everything there is to know about Afro-beat, say, but doesn’t know how to play the blues.

Here’s a musician who had to know how to make sound on hundreds of exotic instruments, not just one. Day after day, he encountered the wild ideas of composers and arrangers who notated a vague idea of a specific effect, leaving Richards to translate those notions into magical, profoundly complementary sounds. These expanded the music. Snapped it into focus. Gave it shape and feeling, regardless of the genre.

We have to hope that this orientation to music-making isn’t some kind of lost art. But after checking what Emil Richards did during just that one year, and thinking about the way records are made now, it sure looks that way.