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

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

  1. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Yep.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
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  2. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Dang! The Magician of the Forums does it again!

    Here is a description of him and his art from the YouTube video below, which unfortunately is not that album but gives an idea of what that instrument (and the many drums is one instrument) sounds like:

    "Born in 1928 in the East Bengali part of North India, the musician, composer and teacher, Pandit (Master) Kamalesh Maitra, has been living in Berlin since 1977. He may be the last and greatest master of the tabla tarang, a nearly forgotten classical instrument from North India. The tabla tarang, is a melodic percussion instrument consisting of between ten to sixteen tuned dayan drums. In a tabla 'pair' instrument, the dayan is the treble drum and the bayan is the bass drum. Tarang means "waves". By hitting with the hand at the center of the different dayan drums notes of different pitches are produced."

    I love the sound of this:



    Thank you for finding it out.

    Oh, and regarding the album you found by Uday Shankar:

    He is the older brother of Ravi, who started his career playing sitar in his brother's troupe.

    Here is a lovely video showing Ravi and his family (including daughter Geethali Norah Jones Shankar) watching a video of Uday and troupe, including very young Ravi, performing in Paris in 1932. I have to think Man Ray was there somewhere.

    Pt. Ravi Shankar cherishes Pt. Uday Shankar

    That one picture you ID'd not only leads to a very rich cultural experience but highlights again how the world crossed paths in 30th St. Thank you again.
     
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  3. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    While following up on Sandy Speiser, who I knew was a photographer but didn't know all he did, I found this link to a webpage that is doing for producer Tom Wilson what this thread is trying to do for 30th St., i.e. assemble all known information about the subject and have as many pictures as possible. It's a wonderful read and very informative:

    Tom Wilson, Producer

    He says Marshall Crenshaw is working on a movie about Wilson. Oh, and he has the picture of Dylan with Roy Halee in Studio A that has run in this thread, albeit a cropped version that cuts out Sandy Speiser, and says it is June 1965 for the "Like a Rolling Stone" session. He didn't know who the guy in the back is, and I sent an email saying it's Pete Dauria.

    [​IMG]

    Edit: His version is clearer....

    [​IMG]
     
  4. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    I'm too late to edit but my original post with Pandit Maitra misspelled the name of the second instrument, although there are several correct versions:

    Tanpura - Wikipedia
     
  5. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Try this one:

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2017
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  6. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    Some great pics!!
     
  7. mdr30

    mdr30 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gothenburg, Sweden
    Roy Halee, Tom Wilson, Albert Grossman and Dylan... made me think of Paul Simon's funny Dylan parody A Simple Desultory Philippic where these people (and others) are mentioned in the lyrics ("I've lost my harmonica Albert").
     
  8. mdr30

    mdr30 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gothenburg, Sweden
    Man to the left: Stephen Bishop Kovacevic?
     
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  9. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Maybe?

    [​IMG] [​IMG]


    Mouth and nose sure look the same. Maybe eyes and cheekbones, too.

    That is a brilliant catch if it is. I could believe it, based only on those two pictures.

    What do you think?
     
  10. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    At this point I'm going to say "no". As noted, that photo would be 1970 at the latest, and in 1970 he (then known as Stephen Bishop) had shorter hair:

    [​IMG]

    Mozart* - Allegri Quartet*, Stephen Bishop*, Jack Brymer, Patrick Ireland - Stadler Quintet / Kegelstatt Trio

    It would appear it wasn't until the late '70s that his hair got a bit shaggy.
     
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  11. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    I'm with Luke on this one. Also, there's no connection to CBS. (I realize that is not a 100% disqualifier.)
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2017
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  12. Wingman

    Wingman Bored of the Rings

    Location:
    Europe
    Is it possible for me to join Friends of 30th street? I worked there in the early seventies when I was a concert tuner/tech for the Steinway piano company. I have very fond memories of my time spent in that legendary studio and of the wonderful people who worked there.
     
  13. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Yes, of course.

    There is a stringent entrance exam, though: you have to send me your email address and real name. We don't go by handles in the group.

    You can send me that in, I think, "Conversations" , which is somewhere in the tabs at the top of every page. Or Private Messages, or something.

    If you have pictures of your time there and share them with me or us you will get the extra-special gold-embossed name tag that is attached to your email address somehow.

    Thank you for asking, and I look forward to meeting you and hearing your stories.
     
  14. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Was there both Ernie Altschuler and Bob Altshuler as producers at CBS? I'm finding both names.

    That finding is in the process of doing an intro movie for my AES talk. At this moment it's scheduled for an hour, so I won't have time to name many people. I thought I'd do a swarm of names for about 5 minutes and repeat it a couple times if there's time. The way I'm imagining it there's room for 840 names, which will make repeated viewing still interesting because there's no way you'd see them all the first time.

    When I get a prototype I'll put it on my youtube so it can be posted here and you can offer opinions.

    There are 6 visual tracks in my mind's eye and I have one done and am working on the second.
     
  15. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    In working on this names project, I see there were no sessions in 30th St from Sept. 6, 1979 to October 22, 1979, which was plenty of time to redo the floor and other things. And there was a "Studio C Orientation" that day, which indicates things were different.

    And there was a CBS-TV event on November 5, 1979 for 6 hours, with little more detail. Maybe that was Carol Burnett?
     
  16. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I don't believe Burnett had any TV projects at that time.

    It's possible the floor was refinished then, but the old control room was definitely already gone by then. It seems likely both were done at the same time, but I suppose anything is possible.
     
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  17. DaleClark

    DaleClark Forum Resident

    Location:
    Columbus, Ohio

    Crystal Gayle Had a CBS TV special that aired in early December in 1979. I remember my Dad videotaping it so my mother (who was working) could watch later. Looking the special up, IMDB states the show was filmed at 2 locations...Nashville and NYC. I wonder if the 6 hour block mentioned above could be such

    The Crystal Gayle Special (TV Movie 1979) - Filming Locations - IMDb
     
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  18. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Here's the special:



    There are various shots around NYC.
     
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  19. All Rights

    All Rights Senior Member


    Mostly Bethesda Terrace and Fountain in Central Park.
     
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  20. DaleClark

    DaleClark Forum Resident

    Location:
    Columbus, Ohio
    Worth a try. The annual CBS Johnny Cash Special was filmed in Nashville that year
     
  21. Wingman

    Wingman Bored of the Rings

    Location:
    Europe

    Thank you for your quick response although I haven't quite worked out how to send you a private message just yet. This forum is a little confusing for this new member. I did look into my old log books from my Steinway days and found that I worked at 30th Street studios on at least eleven different occasions (for various artists including Bill Evans and Menahem Pressler) in 1972 and 1973. Due to the nature of my work and position at the time, I never took any photos. So, save the gold plated email for someone more worthy.
    regards,
     
  22. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    I started a Private Conversation with you, which is in the Inbox at the top of the page. You should have a "1" in a red box visible, showing that there is a conversation waiting for you to read/reply. Click on it or the inbox and you'll see my secret message.

    If you send me the dates maybe I can find something interesting for you to talk about and for people to relate to your work ("You tuned the piano for Bill Evans to play ----??? That's pretty cool!" Or whatever.)

    I'm curious if they had the pianos there tuned before each session or if it was a once a week thing or something else. Do you remember how many pianos were there? Was one the one that most people wanted, or were they more equally used? Was there an upright, too? Seems like I saw a picture with an upright in use but grands in the background.

    There are other questions that could be asked, too. How often were you called in to tune because the player heard something, so they were right there while you were tuning?
     
  23. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Following up on this:

    Engineers IN ADDITION to Fred Plaut are J.P. Sen and Milton Cherin.

    J.P. Sen is also listed as being an engineer on George Harrison's song "The Inner Light", The Inner Light (song) - Wikipedia , although the Google search result says that it's Paul McCartney's "The Inner Light".

    The Wikipedia page says the song was recorded in Bombay and has tabla tarang on it! But it doesn't mention Sen by name.

    Here is a Beatles Bible entry that names him as engineer in Bombay, along with SN Gupta. So some of the Uday Shankar album must have been recorded in Bombay?

    Milton Cherin is a frustrating search. He was nominated for 6 Grammies and won twice, all for various classical albums. He seemed to be a Columbia engineer and worked with Buddy Graham and Ray Moore on projects including Glenn Gould, George Szell, and the Cleveland Orchestra. But I can't find anything else about him or especially a picture. Can you?
     
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  24. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!


    Congratulations for your recognition.

    I have nothing of use to add to this thread, but keep those pictures coming!
     
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  25. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    This post is a two-parter, I think. Two mysteries.

    [​IMG]

    This is one of several similar shots, none of which show the actual artist sitting at the piano. It appears that the artist as well as the orchestra are on a break.

    But wait! What's that piano bench doing sitting in the middle of the floor? Why isn't it at the piano?

    Zooming in, we see

    [​IMG]

    There is some kind of funny chair at the piano. Glenn Gould used a funny chair to play the piano. Is this his chair?

    Looking at a known picture of Gould from somewhat later (new control room vs. the old control room as shown in the previous full picture

    [​IMG]

    Ignoring the more advanced state of decay, the proportions of the two chairs look different to me. Do they look the same to you?

    If not, who else used an idiosyncratic chair for recordings?

    These other two are more straightforward: Someone I have no clue about who it is:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Think that's in the new control room, so after 1962, which looks to match up with her clothes and hair.

    These are the only two pictures in that series, so no context whatsoever.

    Any ideas?
     
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