Recording: Baby Face by Wings

Sea-Saint Recording Studio, New Orleans
Producer: Paul McCartney
Engineers: Alan O’Duffy, Ken Laxton, Roberta Grace

Wings worked on the track ‘Baby Face’ on 13 February 1975.

The session followed a riverboat cruise along the Mississippi hosted by Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney.

‘Baby Face’ had been recorded in London during the One Hand Clapping sessions. Paul McCartney decided to record overdubs. He enlisted the Tuxedo Jazz Band, who had performed at the day’s earlier event. Each of the performers was paid $100 for the session.

The band members were Gregg Stafford and Ted Reilly on trumpets, Walter Payton and Herman Sherman on saxophones, Frank Naundorf on trombone, Joe Torregano on clarinet, Emile Knox on bass drum, and Laurence Trotter on snare drum.

The musicians were unused to studio recording, and struggled with recording the overdub.

I took the track and asked these fellows to overdub, and like these guys don’t know what earphones are; they’re a trad band right? A genuine, New Orleans brass band. They couldn’t get the tempo for a while, but then they started to get it. They’re brilliant. The drummer plays bass drum with his… melon… and he has a coat hanger in his left hand, and the bottom half of a hi-hat, which he hits with his coat hanger. So it’s boom, chick-a-boom, and his mate has got the snare drum. They have this ethnic talent – it’s like a Morris dancing act.