The conductor does appear to be Noah Greenberg to me. Here's a photo of Seymour Barab, who was on the viola da gamba: Additional photos at the link. Bernard Krainis on recorders: I haven't been able to find any photos of Paul Maynard, who is listed as playing harpsichord. Is is possible that odd looking keyboard is some sort of claviorgan? That's a bit of a shot in the dark, and I haven't seen any photos of claviorgans that are similar, but it's the best I've got at the moment. I think the woman with the dark hair is probably in fact Ruth Daigon: And it seems to be Russ Oberlin in the black suit: Presumably that's Arthur Squires with the glasses and bow tie, although I haven't been able to find a photo of him from that period. Here's a later one: When I started looking for him, I thought there must be another Arthur Squires, because I was just finding things about a chemical engineer that worked on the Manhattan Project, but it turns out it was the same person: Squires: Very good. I would say he recognizes talent, he recognizes brains and he knows how to use them almost beyond their abilities. If people thrive under this kind of thing, he can be very sweet. There is a streak of sentiment. I should give you another side of his character and I can illustrate it again with my own experience. Starting in ’52, I have always been an amateur musician, but a curious sequence of events led to my starting to do professional music and this got more and more and more time consuming. I am a singer, but then later I worked with New York Pro Musica. I don’t know if you now the group or not. Norm Greenberg is the conductor. Groueff: I’ve heard the name but— Squires: I was one of the original members in this group. Groueff: You’re a singer yourself? Squires: Yes. Groueff: Tenor or bass? Squires: Tenor. I’m a good singer. I’m not perhaps as good a singer right now. I’m a little bit rusty as I have been, but I have been. Groueff: As a young man also? When you worked for Kellex? Squires: During those four years I didn’t sing a note. Maybe at an office party, but I just didn’t have time. We were working fifty, sixty, sixty-five hours. I was playing concerts and opera and music is sort of my first love but I had done a lot of, you might almost call it semi-professional music during college days. I directed church choirs and sang in churches and did things like that. I had experience and positions of responsibility, to sing a solo every Sunday in church, direct the choir, and that kind of thing. Early in the 50s, this interest—New York is a marvelous place to meet people and things develop and you get asked to do things, so you do them and suddenly find that here is something that is happening and you’re caught up in it. New York Pro Musica has become one of the leading chamber music ensembles of the world. They just came back from an eight-week tour of Russia. I’m proud of this past association with them. I was a charter member. I hung on just as long as I possibly could. I think my last concert with Pro Musica as a regular member was in April of ’58 but there were about six years there that I was taking enormous quantities of time off. I’d just go in and say: “I’m going to be gone next week. We’re going out on a concert tour.” And off I’d go to Wichita, Wisconsin, and whatnot, and I’d be gone a week and that was that. Well, of course that would come off my vacation, and by the time two weeks are gone there is no more vacation left. Another week would come and another week, and when you add it all up I was probably out of the office five weeks a year there towards the end. He was terribly sweet about this. Mr. Keith fancies himself as a poet. I have never seen his poetry, but I’ve been told this. --------------------------------------------------------------- Short answer, I would bet on the photos being from the session for the album I mentioned above. Not that there aren't still some outstanding questions.
Dang, the readership of this thread is really amazing! I can't tell you what a thrill it is to read these last batch of posts. Very humbling, too. My wife just read Luke's quotation of Mr. Squires' interview and kept saying "Yup, music and science, music and science". (She's a piano teacher.) Thanks, you guys. I've got another puzzle for you but it will have to wait till later today.
Also, in trying to pin down a date, I noticed there are 3 M49s in front of the ensemble (along with a U47 on what is presumably the harpsichord), suggesting stereo, but the 1979 reissue of the album was mono, which would seem to indicate it was recorded in mono. Unfortunately, there's not much in that corner of the studio to go by to help with dating the photos.
OK, here's today's mystery session: This is lots of percussion and one piano. Notice the piano just left of center, with the lid open away from most of the percussion so as to give some isolation from the racket. Here's a shot at another time with the piano all the way to the right of the frame, with the lid open toward the din They must have either figured out that this would be too much bleed or that the other way was not enough. Here is the big noisemaker: I count 6 tympani in this picture and in another shot I count 7. Is there a piece for tympani with accompaniment? This fellow is conferring with the tympanist and may be the composer. He's not the conductor. Here's more percussionists There's at least three marimbas or vibes and a snare? drum in this one picture, and I think there's more out of the picture. Any ideas who these people are, and/or what they are recording? These are all from the Plaut collection.
None of those shots in my last post showed the conductor, assuming there was one; here is the best picture of him This fellow who might be the conductor seems thicker than the one conferring with the tympanist, but who knows? Pretty sure I couldn't pick him out of a crowd.....
Looks a bit like Cal Tjader on vibes? Hair colour seems too light tho' Vic Feldman on other set? (he sometimes wore glasses…)
Each session for Ping Pong had either 6 or 7 percussionists. 7 are pictured. (I'm merely saying I wouldn't rule it out. Nothing beyond that.)
The guy on the left may, indeed, be Saul Goodman. Below is a 1981 photo: Undated, unbespectacled photo:
I've seen Vin (Vincent) Liebler mentioned here a number of times as an important engineer at Columbia. Just the other day I was looking at the credits for the 1998 Columbia Legacy/Sony CD reissue of the 1961 LP 'Robert Johnson-King of the Delta Blues Singers', which compiled some of the recordings of Johnson made by Don Law of the American Record Corporation. For the first time I noticed that Liebler was credited as the engineer for these immortal recordings made on location in Texas in 1936-37. Quite a claim to fame.
Given that all the instrumentation lines up, and that the timpanist is centered in the ensemble rather than off on the side, and that it certainly looks like Mr. Goodman, I think you have done it! You are a remarkable person, as is terry toww. I am truly in awe.
I had seen that, too, in the book "The Label" by Gary Marmorstein. In my estimation, that is an incredible claim to fame and I truly wish we knew more about the circumstances of how he came to do that and actually did it, as well as what else he did around that time. There must have been more. Equally remarkable to me was how it was mentioned kind of off-handedly in one sentence rather than screamed out in a torrent of paragraphs of fact and speculation.
Here's the trick: The only thing weirder and older than me is the music I listen to! Always glad to contribute to this terrific thread, Dan! Thanks for shepherding us through the maze.
I've read "The Label". Must have forgotten that was mentioned in the book. Don Law, by the way, is in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Liebler was an engineer with ARC/American Record Corporation, and when CBS purchased ARC, Liebler came with. For a while he was Columbia's head engineer.
The notes mention the celesta (we see it far left in the pics) and there's a piano in the Harold Farberman piece. Good catch! I'd love to hear the record sometime.
