“This is Where I Came In” (The Contessas)

Your totally unknown classic Jimmy Webb song of the day is “This Is Where I Came In,” by the Contessas. No point looking it up; it didn’t chart anywhere.

Recorded and released in 1965, “This is Where I Came In” was one of the first songs composed by soon-to-be-legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb, and his first time in the studio. It’s not a great Jimmy Webb tune, but it’s not bad. (The man never wrote a bad song.) It sounds like a typical Brill Building Girl Group tune, which is not a bad thing.

The Contessas were a California-based girl group recording for Motown’s LA operation. The girls, all Caucasian blondes, included lead singer Suzanne Weir along with Suzy Horton, Sharon Johnson, and Alyce Wheaton accompanying. Ms. Horton was Webb’s high-school girlfriend at the time and instrumental in him meeting the other girls in the group.

The backing musicians for this session were from the group of LA studio musicians called the Wrecking Crew. In his autobiographical book The Cake and the Rain, Mr. Webb recounts how the session went, and the advice and encouragement he got from legendary drummer Hal Blaine:

I showed up at the little studio that day, my Contessas in tow and my heart in my throat. Technicians were running the spaghetti factory of wiring that was necessary to capture a whole orchestra, tripping over earphone boxes and cue lines that linked all the players into a single organism. The musicians jabbered in a completely dispassionate way about their lawns, their wives, their instruments, or the damn union in a huge chorus that threatened to engulf me and push me back into the earth.

I walked into the booth as pale as a white grape and went to where Bob Ross and the guys from Motown sat coolly behind the console. “What do I do?” I asked plaintively. Bob walked me out into the studio where the A-list players were poking and squinting suspiciously at the primitively copied parts with hand-drawn staves on their stands. “Are these the real parts?” someone bellowed conspicuously. Several huge guffaws followed.

Bob and I stood on a two-inch-high podium with a music stand sitting on it. “Uh, fellas, let’s show a little courtesy here. This is our arranger and conductor Mr. Jimmy Webb.” I was a nobody, a seventeen-year-old kid.

There were a few polite little taps of bows against the stands. I looked back into the rhythm section and got a big smile and encouraging nod from the great Hal Blaine. He flourished his sticks and said, “Mr. Webb, do I need to count this off for you? Where do you want this, looks like a ballad, right?” He clicked his sticks together in a moderate tempo and I seized this life ring with a passion.

“Has everybody got ‘This Is Where I Came In’ on the stand?” I asked in my first coherent sentence of the day. Uh-huh. Yup. Everybody had it.

“Yes. Well, uh . . . then Hal you could give us four counts . . . and, uh, we could start.”

The four clicks came like a metronome and the rhythm section came in as one man, all in tune, playing the way I always imagined a band could play: Joe Osborn with his head down concentrating on the bass strings, Larry Knechtel as casual as a rag doll with his long blond hair and movie star good looks playing an exploratory and rock solid piano. Tommy Tedesco with a sunburst Gibson jazz guitar. They were all playing the chords exactly right the very first time.

My heart leaped as halfway through the verse the vibraphone joined in. They could do it! They could read my homemade manuscript. As we approached the big chorus where the Contessas sang “So this is where you’re gonna leave me,” Hal played a nice drum lead-in, something I hadn’t bothered to write, and then, in a feeling that must have been a little bit like that of a skydiver seeing his parachute open the very first time, the strings, twenty strong, and the three big trombones came in right after a harp glissando. It was gorgeous. There was a smile on every face in that room. I looked to the control room; The Contessas were there, faces pressed against the double-paned glass with huge smiles and gigantic blue eyes.

Gil, the record promotion guy for Motown, came out on the floor at the end of the take and said, “It’s a fuckin’ hit!” George Clements [the record’s producer] had to be scraped off the ceiling. For the rest of my life there would be no thrill remotely approaching the high of hearing a professional orchestra perform one of my arrangements. I still get that narcotic buzz every single time it happens.

After the session, Hal Blaine motioned me over. “Hey, Jim. This is your first time arranging, right?” “Yes, sir,” I said. “You need to stick with this. This is a good thing for you, ’kay?” He looked at all the guys in the control room glad-handing one another and making deals. “I know this is all confusing, but you just stick with the music, ’kay?” His kind dark brown eyes lingered on mine. He smiled and walked away and just left that great big drum set sitting there. Imagine that. He didn’t even stick around to load his own drums.

Hal’s words meant a lot to the seventeen-year-old songwriter and he took them to heart. Jimmy Webb went on to become one of the top composers of the 20th century, penning hits like “Up, Up and Away,” “Galveston,” “Highwaymen,” “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” “All I Know,” former Classic Song of the Day “P.F. Sloan,” and what may be the best song ever written, the magnificent “Wichita Lineman.”

As to the Contessas, they didn’t last. Neither did JImmy and Suzy, although their short affair and breakup inspired many of his best songs, including “MacArthur Park,” “Worst That Could Happen,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Where’s the Playground, Suzie,” and “Didn’t We.” All those songs from one short relationship. Man.  

Jimmy Webb has had a long and storied career and still performs today, playing his hits and telling some great stories. Suzy Horton married Linda Ronstadt’s cousin, Bobby Ronstadt, and has had a happy life with him. She still listens to Jimmy Webb’s songs on the radio, and remembers the time they had together.

“Jimmy’s songs have followed me my whole life and we are still friends to this day,” she said in a recent interview. “Jimmy has a lovely wife and I have a wonderful husband. They have both had to deal with our histories. I mean no disrespect to anyone but I have to say, I have loved Jimmy for 50 years and I always will.”