One of the first successful female session musicians is bass guitarist and guitarist Carol Kaye; she preferred the name “the Clique” to the Wrecking Crew, and she is credited with appearing on 10,000 recordings.  Kaye once commented that at her peak, she was earning more money than the President.  Wikipedia reports:  “Her intense solo bass line, reverberating in quiet moments in [Phil] Spector’s production of [Ike and Tina Turner’s] ‘River Deep, Mountain High’, lent drama to the song’s ‘Wall of Sound’ and helped lift the record into the Grammy Hall of Fame.”  Her work for Quincy Jones so impressed him that, in his 2001 autobiography Q, he wrote (as quoted in Wikipedia):   “. . . women like . . . Fender bass player Carol Kaye . . . could do anything and leave men in the dust.” 

His old friends from the Wrecking Crew lent a hand on several of his records; for instance (from Wikipedia):  “[Carol Kaye] also came up with the famous intro on Glen Campbell’s greatest hit ‘Wichita Lineman’.”  I have collected numerous albums by Glen Campbell over the years, and they are all first-rate from beginning to end. 

(February 2015)