A documentary by Denny Tedesco. Rated PG.

Even among the members of the Wrecking Crew, there’s little consensus about where that term came from. In this entertaining and heartfelt documentary, it emerges that some of the members—studio musicians who played on half of the hugest hits of the 1960s—never even heard the term until long after the L.A. studio scene wound down.

First-time filmmaker Denny Tedesco’s late father, versatile guitarist Tommy Tedesco, was a key figure in that scene—a play-anything-anytime guy in the front row, alongside Glen Campbell, Al Casey, and Carol Kaye, who famously switched to electric bass when none of the boys wanted to. Her demonstrations of killer bottom lines from “The Beat Goes On” and many otherwise simple tunes illustrate their creativity on the job.

Everybody from Phil Spector to Sam Cooke, John Denver, and Nat King Cole made use of their talents. Among other veterans, Cher is aboard this breezy doc to recall their adventures. Nancy Sinatra explains that she and her dad cut the megahit “Something Stupid” with the Crew in a smidgen of time left over from Frank’s long session with Antônio Carlos Jobim.

Sax man Plas Johnson and drummer Earl Palmer (black men in a mostly white scene) somewhat reluctantly put aside their jazz preferences to make hits for others, and piles of money for themselves. Some came via the Beach Boys, once Brian Wilson realized that drummer Hal Blaine and the rest would be better for cutting complex stuff like Pet Sounds.

Other groups had a tougher time accepting the old-school model, and as the ’60s wore on, dissenters like the Byrds and the Monkees would prove the rule, not the exception; playing your own material would eventually be deemed better than perfection. For a while, though, everything this Midas Crew touched turned to platinum.