History of CBS Records 30th Street Studio NYC (many pictures)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by DMortensen, Oct 21, 2014.

  1. BZync

    BZync Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Yes. Am I am wondering why that would be a new thing for this studio. It just seems to me that, as a practical matter, when the weather was nice this would have been done all long. Not a really important point, I know. Just adding to the conversation.
     
  2. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Are we sure the Kiss Me Kate photos are from 30th St? I have a feeling they are actually from Liederkranz Hall.

    It would be a new thing for that studio if Columbia had just started using the studio.
     
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  3. BZync

    BZync Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Ah! Okay, that is the fact that I missed - the timing aspect.
     
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  4. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    I spent an evening Googling Buicks (and a smattering of other cars) of that era, both before and after 1949, and those three round holes, the shape of the horizontal side chrome line, and the shape of the side sheet metal are unique to that 1949 model. I think the windshield height and angle vary by year, too, with that photo matching the 1949 Super and not other models.

    If it had been an earlier year's car the mystery would deepen, but it being a 1949 seems like maybe it narrows it down.

    HOWEVER, now that I think about it, don't car model years come out in the Fall before the actual year? So if it's a BRAND NEW car, the picture could have been taken in the Fall of 1948, which would mean that CBS/CRI was in there a year before we had been told they were. It would have to be a full-blown being there, though, as they put the plaque on the wall.

    They would also be there a year before the Certificate of Occupancy, too, but contemporaneous with the Public Assembly permit.

    It does look like a brand-new car, to the extent that we can see.

    I think the next thing I'm going to post about will be the interiors of the control room, and the varying tape recorder models in there at different times in hopes that Ampex experts can comment about when those machines were current.
     
  5. crispi

    crispi Vinyl Archaeologist

    Location:
    Berlin
    I love this thread and I love Dan's detective approach. Thank you guys :love:
     
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  6. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    The weather appears to be pretty nice, so I tend to doubt it was in the fall of 1948 after the new car models were introduced. And Matt's suggestion that it was from 1947 for Finian’s Rainbow seems to be impossible. And this confirms it:

    "Recorded Mar. 30-Apr. 10, 1947, Liederkranz Hall, New York City; bonus tracks 14-15 recorded 1973."

    http://buncombe.nccardinal.org/eg/o...y=Wayne Donald ;qtype=author;expand=marchtml

    That said, I was wrong about Kiss Me Kate:

    Produced for records by Mitchell Ayres
    Recording engineer: Harold Chapman
    Recorded January 13, 1949 at the CBS 30th Street Studios, NYC


    http://www.sondheimguide.com/porter/kissrecordings.html

    According to this, the New York Philharmonic started recording at 30th St 12/20/1948:

    http://books.google.com/books?id=t0...onepage&q=columbia "30th street" 1948&f=false

    And:

    2) 20th Dec. 1948, Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York(monaural) * with Charles Munch / New York Philharmonic * LP ; Columbia 33CX 1118 / 33FCX 119 [​IMG] / ML 4298

    http://fischer.hosting.paran.com/music/Casadesus/discography-casadesus.htm

    So while I doubt that photo was from 1948, Columbia was definitely using the facility by late 1948.
     
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  7. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Luke, this is all fantastic! Thank you for looking it up and posting. Please continue.....

    I have started a spreadsheet with recording session dates and will add this info to it. I found a Sondheim site that I haven't yet gone through and added data; not sure if it was the one you found (and it's on another computer) but this site looks like a treasure trove.

    Regarding the weather in NYC, I have been there in September, October, late December, January, March, and early April. There are many beautiful shirt sleeve days in October, even late October, and imagine that there have been some in November. Even January has many wonderful sunny days, although the best when I've been there have still been light jacket and not shirtsleeves.

    Cars are intro'd in September, so there could very well have been beautiful days in the Fall when it was nice to go outside and hang out in a lovely residential street in the sun, and been noteworthy occasions for pictures at the new studio.
     
  8. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Chervokas, that is a wonderful find! You are exactly right, and even the same pictures as those at Yale! Too bad Masterworks isn't posting the recording dates....
     
  9. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Yes, I think you are right about the accidental jump. Not surprising, since the contact sheets in folders and boxes were not at all chronological and neither was my photographing of the contact sheets, although I didn't jump from one contact sheet to another and then back. I *did* go left to right and then right to left and then left to right when trying to race through them.

    Good ID'ing of the people.

    Janis Paige really was photogenic; IMHO she really grabs the camera in every pic in the series. Reading Wikipedia, she was born in Tacoma, WA, so that must be where her photogenicness comes from...
     
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  10. ti-triodes

    ti-triodes Senior Member

    Location:
    Paz Chin-in
    Thank you for this extraordinary thread. There's an amazing amount of great info in it.
     
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  11. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Another thing: We can name almost all of these Original Broadway Cast recording dates (if not all) because the Masterworks site states the show opening date and the original album release date. We know that they did all the recordings on Mondays, which were dark days at the theater so the cast would be available that day and almost no others.

    So using The Pajama Game as an example, it opened Thursday May 13, 1954, and the album was released Monday May 24, 1954. The only Monday in between is May 17, so it had to have been recorded that day.

    Sweet.
     
  12. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    You're close, but according to this, it was Sunday:

    "Columbia Records recorded The Pajama Game on May 16, 1954, just three days after the show opened at the St. James Theatre."

    http://www.broadway.com/buzz/10931/the-pajama-game-on-disc/

    Also:

    "Recorded on May 16, 1954; bonus tracks recorded on Apr. 25, 1954."

    https://www.library.yorku.ca/find/Record/2141304

    FYI on the earlier bonus tracks:

    "Tracks 17-22 were taken from the 1954 CBS Radio production "Stage Struck," hosted by Mike Wallace."

    http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Pajama-Game-Original-Broadway-Cast-Recording/release/4613470
     
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  13. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Crikey!

    I think I've been very wrong about dating those car pictures.

    Not because of the car, which I still believe is a 1949 Buick Super Convertible, but because of the dating of The Pajama Game people, and where those pictures were relative to the Buick pictures in my collection. Also, I just realized that some pictures that I thought were unrelated to the Pajama Game pictures had to have been from that session, including the Buick pictures. All of them were consecutive in my picture taking at the archive, and the first couple in the series (which I haven't shown you) are different versions of the Goddard-sitting-alone-in-the-studio-smoking pictures.

    I also think I'm recognizing people in the exterior pictures as being in the Pajama Game pics, not least of whom was Goddard dressed the same way as the interior pics.

    Which also means that CBS left the WLIB sign on the building 2 years after we've been told WLIB had moved out of the building.

    Sheesh!
     
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  14. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    That's funny, because I thought I recollected Frank Laico talking about doing the recordings on Sunday, but I just went to a couple of Broadway ticket websites to confirm that Sundays are dark, and the only dark day is Monday. There are matinees on Sundays. That changed at some point?

    I defer to history.
     
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  15. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    Music director Hal Hastings:
    Screen shot 2014-11-10 at 10.40.56 PM.png Screen shot 2014-11-10 at 10.41.05 PM.png
    (Both 1954.)
     
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  16. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

  17. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    I suspect there is more on page 111, but it is not visible online:
    [​IMG] Screen shot 2014-11-10 at 11.07.05 PM.png
     
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  18. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

  19. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

  20. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

  21. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

  22. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

  23. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Matt, you are amazing!

    This one seems the best of all of them; this is contemporaneous rather than remembrance (like Mimi Trepel's story), although I don't get the part about "Coincident to the sale", the two church congregations merged into the Adams-Parkhurst Memorial Church, since that was the name of the church that was sold into servitude as a studio. But whatever, when have newspaper articles been 100% right? Or threads on websites....

    Your Google-fu is extraordinary and powerful!

    Regarding the addresses of NOLA Recording Studios, was 1657 Broadway the Brill Building or something?

    Looking it up, the answer is "or something". It's now a Duane Reade, but isn't that where CBS had studios? If yes, what does this mean in 1950?
     
  24. BZync

    BZync Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Wow! Pajama Game was recorded on May 16 & the album released on May 24th? 8 days? That's crazy fast. Was that kind of turnaround typical of the time?
     
  25. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    1657 Broadway used to be the address of WMCA studios, pictured back on page 2:
    [​IMG]
     
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