Pretty sure that anything more elaborate than pencil and paper, eyes, and a handheld camera were prohibited. There is a list of prohibited/permitted items somewhere on that site, maybe only visible after you register as a researcher? There are two ways to get prints or scans of the pictures: the prints sounded like they were on regular paper, and were something like $5 each (I know that's the wrong number because I wasn't interested and didn't pay any attention, but it's something like that), or you could get a pdf for something like $15 each. You have to mark each contact sheet with what you want using sticky notes, and each box also. Plan on spending a week there, though, if you really want to go through it. We had 3 hours. Chuck got a few prints or pdfs, and I haven't heard from him what they were like.
Thanks, Chris, that is really an honor! I'm glad you are enjoying this. Since I was just there in September, I don't expect to be going again for another couple years. When I do, though, it would be great to get together with people who are interested because of this thread and look at pics and talk about what we are seeing. Having the things 4' or so across really lets you get into them and pretend you are there, and I like the sharing of perspectives and impressions. We're seeing how different people look at the same thing and see different things. I'll announce a trip when it happens, but in the meanwhile if people want to send me their email addresses I'll add you to the Friends of the 30th St Studio mailing list, and if something happens within that group you'd then know about it. I don't share email addresses for any other purpose, FWIW. And thanks again to all for the appreciation. I enjoy it a lot, and, along with you, am enjoying learning more about the studio and the people in it. It's really fun that we are finding out what has been long forgotten from conscious memory. I know Frank Laico would have gotten a kick out of all we are learning.
I was thinking this afternoon that I didn't really have anything more to add at the moment, so I was hoping Dan would come up with something new. While that's still mostly the case, tonight I was watching the episode of Pioneers of Television about primetime soaps. About halfway through there's a discussion about Mary Martin. What should pop up on the screen but this, from The Sound of Music: Richard Rodgers, Mary Martin and the kids listen to Theodore Bikel playing the guitar Can't get away from 30th Street, apparently.
Also worth noting that the Masterworks site has two entries for The Sound of Music. This one, which I linked to in my list: http://www.masterworksbroadway.com/photo-galleries/photos/17549 And this one, for the 50th anniversary edition, which has many more photos (but not the color shots from the first link): http://www.masterworksbroadway.com/photo-galleries/photos/22142
This sounds very curious. Are you sure that it was a unique master recording of Bing?? I would think it odd that RCA or whoever controlled it would let a unique master go out to an AES convention and have Jack Mullin play it casually on an old tape player. It could have snagged at any time conventionally. Also his lackadaisical reaction suggests it was not irreplaceable. Might it have been a backup copy or other nonessential copy?
That's funny! And you give me a challenge! OK, I'll bite, since apparently two posts in a day isn't enough for you. What I've been wondering about from the Masterworks site is Street Scene, from 1947. Many of the very early pictures on the Masterworks site have extreme contrast between black and white, so that the ceiling lights appear like they're not even on, and the people in focus are in pools of light with pitch black everywhere else. As we've seen before in this thread, reducing that contrast brings out detail that was hidden in the black. Did they do it that way because they wanted more drama? Was it the style of the day? Were they using film with super low ASA speed and needed flash only because the ceiling lights were too dim? I don't know the answers. Here are pictures from Street Scene that I've lightened up the shadows The people are all washed out, but our interest is in the studio itself, and what studio is this? The pictures seem to show a place that is in some phase of construction, especially the last one that clearly shows a scaffold in the background. Let's see, what studio do we know that was under construction during 1947? Is there any possibility that it is 30th St, and they did a recording there to see how it worked before they committed to purchasing? Also, there in what we think of as the old control room, there was clearly used wood around the window (there are a number of if not numerous shots showing an old hinge mortise in the window frame where there is no need for a hinge) if not in other places; why did they use old wood on that project? And where did that used wood come from? Could they have taken apart/modified this plywood-walled control room and turned it into the one we know? The window height in the second picture is similar to that of the old control room, but the door entry looks like it's at the back instead of the end. Anybody recognize it or know where it is? The other notable thing about Street Scene is that the poet, novelist, playwright, and columnist Langston Hughes was involved and is in a picture that unfortunately has no relevance to us as studio geeks. Not to mention that it exceeds our limit of 5 per post.
It may have been outtakes or something, I don't know that, but I definitely understood it to be an original recording from the appropriate early period. Where else would he have gotten a piece of tape with embedded oxide rather than surface-coated other than from back then? As far as I was concerned it was a priceless master tape that was ruined at my instigation, but not action. He did it himself and was not under any kind of duress, your honor. It took me a few years of thinking about it to realize that.
Door in the back, different shape of the window, different area to the left, and at least a few feet lower. Nearly certain that was Liederkranz Hall. http://fonderiausa.com/frank-sinatra-in-1947/
The caption in Sessions With Sinatra indicates "The final photograph of the interior of Columbia's historic 30th Street studio, 1981." Maybe you can ask Chuck where that information came from. Re-reading that section, a few more interesting bits to revisit. First, this quote from Howard Scott: "In 1949, Bill Bachman [director of the Columbia Sound Labs], Vin Liebler [head of engineering] and I went looking for a new studio. We found a church at 205 East 30th Street that was not in use. The front part of the church was a radio station - WLIB, I believe. Inside, it was just one big room." We know the date is off by a year, but interesting to note who he says scouted the site, as well as the stuff about WLIB. And interesting side note: Vincent Liebler engineered the Robert Johnson recordings. Next up is this: "At first, though, the 30th Street location was avoided by most Columbia staff producers and engineers. Bill Savory, involved in opening the studio, recalls: "Everybody that came in and listened to it said that it was too live. So finally we did something there with Goddard, one of those early Broadway cast albums [South Pacific], and he said 'This is just what I want! This is the most flexible place on Earth! You can make it sound like Broadway, or whatever you want.' After that, it became popular, and they dropped Liederkranz."" Two things about this quote: 1) The note about it initially being too live. Savory doesn't mention anything about changes, but we know that the polycylindrical diffusers were added after the studio opened, some time before South Pacific. And Kiss Me Kate, recorded before the diffusers were added, was not produced by Liberson, but by Mitchell Ayres. 2) Lieberson's supposed exclamation of "This is just what I want!" sounds quite similar to what Frank claimed that Mitch Miller said. Perhaps they made similar statements, but I really do wonder if Frank was actually thinking about Lieberson, but somehow attributed it to Miller at some point and it stuck. Of course, even then, Lieberson apparently wasn't talking about the state of the studio when they first moved in.
More on the diffusers (and other work): "After a year in Washington, he returned to New York and Columbia Records, this time as a member of the team that developed the LP and as fill-in recordist and engineering troubleshooter for location dates. Involved in the early stages of setting up Columbia’s legendary 30th Street Studio in a former church, Savory worked with William Bachman to help bring the acoustics of the enormous room “into focus” as he put it, part of which included designing special baffles, in particular a set of unique 8-foot parabolic reflector panels on wheels used by singer Johnnie Ray, among others." http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/jaes.obit/JAES_V52_12_PG1297.pdf I wonder if an interview exists somewhere with more. He left Columbia in 1953, however, so he wouldn't have know about further changes. Photo here: https://books.google.com/books?id=w...="bill savory" columbia "30th street"&f=false "Singer Johnnie Ray and producer Mitch Miller listening intently to a playback. Miller leans against one of the parabolic reflectors designed by Bill Savory, Columbia 30th Street Studio, 1950s."
I had no doubt that the tape itself was old stock. You also mentioned that the tape player was from the same time. Yes outtakes or some other tape determined to be scrappable like a test or practice tape that could be overwritten (assuming they had a recorder capable of writing to that type of tape). I was just trying to relieve your apparent trauma about something that I don't think is any big deal and JM's reaction would indicate that.
Hi Dan, I may have some answers for you, as photography is something I know a lot about. Back in the 1940s film speed was still fairly low, I would guess at about 50 to 64 ASA for black & white film and much lower for colour film. Compared to a modern day 400 ASA film, the old film needed four times more light, or four times the exposure time, in order to get a good exposure. For instance: photographing something using 1/60 second exposure time with 400 ASA would mean you would need an exposure time of 1/4 (one fourth) second for an 50 ASA film. That is simply too long for handheld photography and any subject moving even slightly will become blurred. Aside from long exposure time, unless you are outside in the sun, low ASA also forces you to use a wide open F-stop on the lens. That will let in the most light, but it will significantly reduce depth of field, meaning that everything in both foreground and background will be out of focus. If you wanted more to be in focus, you would have to stop down the lens, which in turn lets less light in and forces you again to use a longer exposure time. The only solution to both these problems was using a flash. A flash has the advantage of being both very bright (in some cases even brighter than sunlight) and very short (thus eliminating any camera shake or motion blur). This allowed photographers to use both a small F-stop (giving them great depth of field than rendered everything in the image in focus) and not have to worry about either exposure time nor low ASA films. The disadvantage of flash, on the other hand, is the fact that it completely manipulates the light of the scene and causes it to look nothing like the reality. Those "pools of light" you mention are caused by this. Also, because of how light falls off across a distance (according to the inverse square law, but I will spare you the details) anything that is close to the flash will be very bright and anything in the distance will almost vanish. That is why you cannot see too much in the background of those images. Also, because the flash is so bright, any lightbulbs in the room appear to be off. The Fred Plaut photos on the other hand are taken with a small format camera (probably a Leica), a faster film and a wide open F-stop (see how the background is always out of focus?) and no flash (using only available ceiling light, which also allows you to see into the studio and get a feeling for the atmosphere). However, there are photographers that used flash photography in a creative way, most notably Francis Wolff of Blue Note Records. He did all of those iconic jazz photos using a medium format camera with a slow ASA film and a flashbulb held off axis. Taking advantage of the way light behaves when using a flash, he managed to make use of an interesting effect. Since those photos were taken in Rudy Van Gelder's big Englewood Cliffs Studio, the foreground is well exposed, but because the studio walls in the background are so far away, they appear completely black. I think many people believe that Van Gelder had that sort of lighting in his studio, but that is false; photos taken by others (and including some rare Frank Wolff photos without a flash) show that the studio was lit just like a normal studio. I hope I didn't bore you with my excursion into photography and light...
Thanks for that! I've often wondered what the lighting at Rudy's studio really was like. Here's some examples of Rudy's studio with 'normal' lighting:
...and then there's some guy named McCartney recording ninety complete and incomplete takes of "Monkberry Moon Delight" in the Sacristy just to get the right amount of raspiness.
Yes. Are you aware of any pictures from that session in the space? I haven't been able to find any, but I don't look as well as some people....
Hi Crispi, That wasn't boring at all but rather was much appreciated. I like photography, too. Be careful about inferring that Fred's pictures were blurry in the backgrounds or anywhere else; I was taking pictures of them fast and didn't realize until partway through that I should stop my aperture down to get more depth of field on curving sheets. What I did may not have been enough. Thanks for the lesson, though, feel free to do more when you are so moved. Thanks!
Some of them most definitely are "blurry in the backgrounds", but that isn't a flaw, it's just a matter of having a shallow depth of field due to a large aperture. Not an error by you nor Plaut, simply a fact.
DMortensen, No pictures that I know of. During the sessions, the McCartneys also recorded at another CBS Studio B where there are pictures of them leaving the building. Scroll down here about little more than halfway: http://www.reevesaudio.com/vintagesessions.html
Yes, I've seen those, and was just thinking this morning that I should plug Jim Reeves' website again here. He updates surprisingly frequently and because he worked in 30th St for a couple of years has a lot of contacts who were also there and get him pictures. It's worth a visit. With a name like yours, I was hoping maybe you were connected and had something else, but hope's in vain, apparently. And yes, I've asked him and he doesn't have any of the sacristy which he says was called Studio D.
I was looking back at some of Dan's older posts again to see about things being out of focus, and stumbled upon this series, which I mostly just glanced over before. I don't think there's anything particularly revelatory about any particular photo, but what's nice is we almost get a panorama of the studio. For reference, see Dan's post here: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...nyc-many-pictures.388186/page-7#post-11372125 First up is the southeast corner of the studio: Note the vents on the south wall (on the right). The new control room would later be placed just a bit to the right of these vents. Dan, you may want to update your diagram to show the angled wall in that corner. Next up is the northeast corner of the studio: It seems like there were rarely photos showing this corner. If I'm seeing things correctly, the east wall ends behind the ladder, and then there's an angled wall to the large cabinet in the background, where there is also an HVAC duct. At least, I think. Also note the Bill Savory/William Bachman parabolic panels on the east wall, which Dan previously mentioned but I hadn't paid much attention to. Next, the northwest corner of the room: There's the old control room on the left, and its wall which extended all the way to the north wall. Note that the control room extended out into the room a bit, and the angled wall in this corner is hidden by the control room structure. And now back to the southeast corner, with the east wall to the middle-left, the south wall to the extreme right, and the angled wall (with pseudo arch) between them: More in a bit.
I'm not sure why, but I don't see that series of pictures when I go to your link, and can't find it anywhere else, either. I remember posting them.... Ah, it's on page 2, not page 7. Post 43. I'm having a hard time figuring where that angled wall is or could be; it almost looks like it's the North Wall, but that has to be flat until the ends. Do you want to try drawing a floor plan if you can visualize what's going on? Edit: oh, you linked to my floor plan drawing, not the pictures. OK, but I still don't see where the angle goes that isn't in the drawing.
