Sinatra's Capitol mixer John Palladino: "Have Mike, Will Record" -UPDATE: John has passed away*

Just a couple of days ago, I was talking with somebody about old Sinatra stuff, and mentioned John, and again brought up that in all of John's work that I've heard, I have never been able to detect a single "fader move" during a recording. Now, I guarantee that John had to knob-twiddle during these live-to-mono recordings, but he did it with such finesse that absolutely nothing ever comes across as being adjusted in any way. Jump ahead to A Swingin' Affair, which somebody else mixed, and there are audible "mixing moves" all over that album.

The guy was an artist, plain and simple.

 

John was a master at his craft.

 

I believe John Kraus mixed A SWINGIN' AFFAIR. Not 100% sure though..

 

Oh, you've heard it, Paul, and you can hear it just fine. You just haven't noticed it. Allow me to ruin this album for you! (I'm kidding.)

Like I said, the "mixing moves" are all over this album, start to finish. Here's the very first one on the very first track of A Swingin' Affair, and it requires a bit of set up, so bear with me:

•This is a MONO recording, so little adjustments can "hide" fairly well because nothing gets sucked to the left or sucked to the right. All that happens on these straight-to-mono recordings is that things become either a little more pulled forward when a mic is "potted up" (turned up a bit), or a little more pushed into the background when it's "potted down" a little.

•On parts of this album, everybody who is playing is playing LOUDLY. When that happens, EVERY instrumental section is, to a degree, getting audibly picked up by EVERY microphone, with the exception, maybe, of the minimally-leaking strings and maybe some quieter parts of the rhythm section, such as the upright bass and guitar. In other words, the drums are leaking like crazy into every mic and, in return, the blaring trombones are leaking into the omnidirectional mic that's right above the drum throne, and so on. What does this mean in practical terms? The mixer could literally turn OFF the drum mic, and we would still hear the pounding drums on the loud parts. He could turn the sax mic way down and we'd still get some sax sound through the drum mic or through Frank's vocal mic or through the string mics. (Yes, the sax sound would change/degrade, but it would still "be there.")

•Back when I was a kid, I remember going to Seattle SuperSonics basketball games, and there was this jazz group that played during timeouts called the "Sonic Six," (can you imagine a jazz combo playing at NBA games today??????!!!) and even as a dumb kid, I used to notice that there was a single mic on the drums, and when the band was really swingin', the drums (as coming through the PA system) sounded like they were on the back 40 somewhere, but if they played some pop ballad like "Traces" or something, suddenly the snare sounded closer and clearer on the speakers. Why? On the ballads, the mic balances/ratios were all different, and whoever was doing the mix would turn up that drum mic a bit (at least in relation to the other instruments), while on the driving, hard-swing stuff, that drum set was bleeding like crazy through every other mic (and "through the air," at least to where I was seated), giving the big snare "whapps" a dark-ish, non-present, "colored" and distant tone that was just the opposite of the clean-and-clear-and-present sound that was on the ballad numbers. This same sort of thing happens with the drums on A Swingin' Affair.

•I talked to John Palladino about the demons of trying to record a "big band with strings and vocals" session (such as his own work on Songs for Swingin' Lovers, and A Swingin' Affair, which John did not mix), and the gist of the conversation was that it was always a battle. The strings were challenging, because they had to be miked as a section, not as individual players, so the mic(s) could not be too close to any one player, and as a result, "the band" was leaking into those high-overhead string mics like crazy, so you'd have to just try to "dodge" those spots (by gracefully/carefully fading the string mics up and down in level), and, of course, NOTHING could be allowed to "bury" Sinatra's vocal, so you could bring things "up" in the mix, but not too far up! (...and being straight-to-mono, nothing could be remixed/fixed later. Good judgment had to be used LIVE on each take.) The vocal level was always the defining part of the mix, and it had to be prominent. That's a real juggling act, I think we'd all agree.

•John made those little (and not so little) adjustments in balance with a very graceful, subtle touch. I think that he instinctively knew (or, at minimum, "figured out over time and with experience") that there was a balance to be made between "presence" (sparkle) on the assorted sections and consistency from start to finish on a given song. To my ear, there's no question that A Swingin' Affair has more "hi-fi" sparkle than does Songs for Swingin' Lovers. To my ears, Songs for Swingin' Lovers has a sound that I'd characterize as "like it would sound from about row K" at a large performance theatre with no PA system boosting anything. A Swingin' Affair, on the other hand, is more like I am standing on stage, constantly, trying to step a little forward, step a little back, cock my head a certain way -- all so that at any given time, I can hear that little extra "bite" in the trumpets, or breathiness in the tenor sax, or shimmer of the hi-hat cymbals. It's a cool little game to play, but I'm never going to find that one spot on the stage that really works for everything. The added presence/sparkle (etc.) is really cool, but it can't be maintained. I mean.....maybe I'll lean my ear in right by the hi-hat on a quiet section so that I can go, "Ah...I love hi-hat cymbal...." but then two measures later, the drummer is playing "thwack thwack thwack" on the snare at full volume. Do I still want to have my "ears" (the mic) positioned (turned up) in the same way? Do I want to go deaf (or overpower the other players, or distort the tape)? Of course not! When the whole band is swinging away, do I really want, say, 70% of the total sound I'm hearing to be the drummer going "thwack, thwack, thwack?" I might want to hear what the saxes or trumpets are up to, since their part is probably a whole lot more interesting. These are the kind of "philosophical" recording questions that, IMO, John Palladino dealt with by using great restraint, i.e., never getting "all that close-in and present" -- but just close enough to not sound distant -- reducing the need for "gain riding" (adjusting levels on the fly depending on content). Whoever mixed A Swingin' Affair was, IMO, after a more present, close, clear, detailed sound, and it's achieved pretty well, but there's no way that with all that "human involvement" going on, and all the changes in instrumental balances, to keep things CONSISTENT on most of the songs. Whoever recorded it was constantly reaching for the rotary faders on each mic, keeping Frank prominent, bringing important things to the foreground, and letting other things slip to the background to keep things from distorting. John's way was much more relaxed, I'm sure!

So, let's listen to a bit of A Swingin' Affair, track #1: https://app.box.com/s/n0q4uoq4v2nqwkrallxli735p6x69qak

Here's what you'll hear:
•First thing: You'll hear the first LOUD drum figure repeated five times, so you can hear that this is NOT a close-miked drum sound! That's an "across the studio" drum sound, i.e., much of that drum sound is just the snare leaking into other mics. There's a lot of reflected "room sound," and it's quite distant, probably coming through the brass mic(s) to a large degree, and maybe a little from Frank's vocal mic and maybe the other rhythm section mics.

•Next: despite all that's going on, focus on the tick tick-y tick tick-y tick of the high-hat cymbal. Frank sings:

<<you are the One
Only you 'neath the moon or under the sun>>​

Look at which letters are underlined in those lyrics. Focus on the high hat, and you'll hear that right at the end of the word "moon" the hi-hat cymbal gets "potted up" -- becoming noticeably more up-close/clean/crisp compared to the measures that preceded that spot. Somebody's knob-twiddling!

That example is fairly subtle, and I only chose it because it happens right out of the gate on track one!

How about a more obvious example? Let's listen to a bit of Stars Fell on Alabama:

•Clip 1: https://app.box.com/s/9y2zxlvd17pyqy30b0uhqeba0rmbgini Nice balance, no? The drum mic is evident (clarity in the cymbals); saxes sound good (note the super clear baritone sax at the tail end of the clip); the trumpet mic is clearly on, as the muted trumpets are nice and clear

•Clip 2: https://app.box.com/s/428a6kx8fb81c6poewdabxb9w6om2xci In which the mixer says to himself, "Oh, ****, here come the loud brass, and I need to hear the string section that's about to come in," and turns the string mics up and everything else, except Frank, way down. (Now....did he actually do BOTH, and to what degree? I don't know, but in terms of ratios [one to the other], the string mics are now wide open and their sound is dominating, to the detriment of literally everything else in the mix, except for Almighty Frank, who must be kept "out front" at all costs. Note how dark and un-detailed and un-sparkly the brass sound is. Very, very dull.)

•Clip 3: https://app.box.com/s/0db2r4ggovf2f5kl2tcpsgr7b57327ro The brass "presence" is brought back for a few quick trumpet-y interjections.

•Clip 4: https://app.box.com/s/x0tccjd4zt66mo0d7u27g0u1g2y9a9vu ....and just as quickly, the brass section is wiped back off the map again, sounding like they are playing in the rear corner without a mic, probably to keep them from covering Frank, distorting, etc.

Here are all four clips in continuous playback: https://app.box.com/s/bibv31wbkfn4j1agsuwdcoh5mgqi88ov

Once you start to take notice of this stuff, you'll hear it slathered all over every inch of this A Swingin' Affair, but, to my knowledge, it never pops up, not even once, during John Palladino's work on the previous albums.

 

@MMM - do we know how much of the electronics were actually new in 1956? The mixing boards look like the ones I've seen in photos from Melrose; the mics were, I'm sure, all hauled across town and transplanted; probably the Ampex tape machines and Scully lathes, too. Capitol's "old" studios were only 8 years old when the tower opened (and were basically unused for that first year, due to the union strike), and had already upgraded their Ampex machines as needed.

I ask out of sheer ignorance, nothing more.

 

John Kraus told me basically that it sucked in there when they moved in, sounded nothing like Melrose and that many engineers were crying about it. Trying to get it to sound more "natural" in there was impossible, so they changed their mic style, positioning style and winged it for several months/years (depending on who you ask.) In my opinion, every "revision" they did made it sound worse in there (Tower). Compare a dry session from 1956 (Cole/Stardust) to a 1958 Cole/Non Dimenticar. The 1958 recording is noticeably degraded sounding, full of distortion, etc. compared to the 1956 recording. I'm speaking of the dry stereo versions that really show what it sounded like in there without reverb. Even the monos sounded, well, different.

Don't think they ever got the hang of that new place.

 

John Palladino and I talked about the lengthy "gestation period" that went on there, especially where stereo was involved.

Odd as it may sound, my own theory on the cause of some of the problems is that they took a bunch of mixers who were used to doing their "big projects" in a long, skinny facility with a stage and a seating area that really allowed the music to bloom and breathe, and plopped those same guys into a studio that was essentially a cube/barn. (I also suspect that the big room at Melrose was "excellent by accident," in a way similar to CBS' 30th Street, while Tower Studio A was excellent in a "textbook" kind of way, and maybe was better on paper than in reality.)

Criticisms aside, there were still, of course, some beautiful mono recordings done in the early days of the tower. For instance, I'd pit Billy May's Music for Fancy Dancing against just about anything that ever came out of Melrose (and I love the Melrose sound in general).

 

And of course AFTER MIDNIGHT is one of the best sounding mono recordings to come out of the Tower, if not the best.

But (and I can't remember if you've been in the studios there or not, so forgive me for stating the bloomin' obvious) the Tower rooms, even now, done over with the mods over the years are basically "soundless" inside. Nothing to add character, or any life to anything, that all has to be done via reverb or whatever. It's so damped down in those rooms, the musicians might be able to hear themselves without cans on but it does not translate well to microphones. And this is said with love and respect because I do love the place to death. But it sure isn't Melrose.

 

@MMM - I think you are right about the Ampex 300s, although Capitol did do the 200---->201 upgrade (making the machines, as I understand it, essentially a 300 in a 200's clothing) pretty early in the Melrose days, with additional upgrades not long before moving to the Tower (recording upgrade in October '54, playback tweak in '55).