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

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

  1. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Thanks, Luke, glad you enjoyed it. Just a reminder that this one is the Seattle Dry Run, and there were about 6 revisions to the presentation after it, with many of the points brought up at this one incorporated into the final. The JBL studio monitor find was also in the final.

    It was really interesting how many people at the dry runs and final insisted that this needed to be made into a book, and in thinking about it, the story of the studio's life from beginning to end seems self-contained enough to maybe work as a book. Before now, I've been enjoying the breadth of discussion and finds in this thread and not seeing how that would make sense to put in book form. Birth-Life-Death seems more finite and clearer, as long as there's enough celebrities included to be interesting to the average person. The ones who get really into the subject (like those reading this thread) will benefit more from something else. Maybe a book is the entry drug....

    Before leaving for the trip, I found a DVD of the Glenn Gould On and Off the Record for a reasonable price online, and forgot about it until last night. We watched it, and it's remarkable how much clearer the picture is than the Youtube videos we are so familiar with.

    A couple of things that jumped out, which may have been pointed out much earlier here but still struck me:

    -There were multiple shots where Fred Plaut was doing something somewhere, then a quick cut would show Harold Chapman behind the console but nowhere else. They wouldn't both have been there, would they? The shots must have been from different days or something and assembled together in a way that made visual sense but not staffing-wise.

    -The recorders on the back wall (three track?) had all the knobs on the upper electronics removed. Just the pot shafts were visible sticking out of the front panels. Why was that?

    Here they are behind Chappy:
    [​IMG]

    -The studio attendant whose picture was posted here earlier

    [​IMG]

    who no one has been able to identify is hanging out in the background of seemingly LOTS of shots, and is clearly used to hanging out there. He is also shown sweeping up dust with a broom and dustpan at one point.

    Nothing earth-shattering, it was just nice to be able to see more details than I've noticed before.

    Still absorbing the impact of the trip, but hope to get back to this thread soon and post more puzzles.
     
  2. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    As far as a DVD goes, I would assume it's the same transfer that the National Film Board has on YouTube, which is actually 1080p, and should be a bit *better* quality than a DVD. Here's On The Record:



    Yes, the shots were from at least 2 different sessions. Here's the previous analysis:

    As far as the 3-track machines go, that was so levels could not be accidentally changed. Presumably levels were calibrated with the desk, so there would be no need (or desire) to further adjust them on the tape machines.
     
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  3. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Interesting. Certainly part of my attention to detail is enhanced by watching DVD's on a 70" screen and Youtube on either a 13" or a 40".

    The other part is that, after watching the beginnings of both again, the DVD has been cleaned up a bit (not completely), while the Youtube video has some more film dirt in comparison. There is still a bit of dust type noise on the DVD, but much less than what's online. Contrast and blacks seem similar, though, so the net experience may be the same. Still, the DVD is more enjoyable as an experience.

    Having been in NYC recently, there are some amusing things in the video (both versions):

    -Third Avenue is two-way in the movie rather than one-way going uptown as it is now.

    -The film crew really went all over town to show a full New York experience, and didn't just stay near the studio. The one street sign I could identify was at 33rd and 6th Ave (Avenue of the Americas), and I think the shoe shine scene might have been on Broadway near St. Paul's Church. Or it could very well have been somewhere else.

    -There were lots of views of taxis on Park Avenue that were then on what looked like 5th Avenue.

    -The fence to the West of the studio is, I'm pretty sure, the same fence that's there now. But in the video you can clearly see the stairway that goes from sidewalk level down to maybe basement level, while now there is a sidewalk-level floor on the studio (condo) side which has a bunch of garbage cans.

    Now that I'm thinking about that fence and the area behind it, I bet that was how they got the coal into the building during coal days. On second thought, the coal bin was in the basement roughly centered in the rear, set under the otherwise unexcavated studio/chapel portion (thanks to Gary Louie's cleaning up of drawings), so it was more likely there was a coal entrance on either side of the main center entrance, which stuck out onto the sidewalk but had fence and what looks maybe like open space down to the cellar on either side. Hard to prove either way, and I'm still not ready to share the building drawings with the world yet...

    Thanks for the reposts. It's easy to forget the details uncovered in this long thread.
     
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  4. silvertone

    silvertone Member

  5. crispi

    crispi Vinyl Archaeologist

    Location:
    Berlin
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  6. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Thanks for posting that, Larry, and linking to that interesting article. My condolences to Anahid and her family.

    His life would make an interesting book; that article hit a lot of high points but you know there had to be others.
     
  7. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    FWIW, I'm finally almost through processing all that happened on that epic trip and am getting ready to get back to normal here.
     
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  8. jamo spingal

    jamo spingal Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    The Glenn Gould video is 100% fabulous. Well perhaps take off 0.2% for Howard Scott's patronising.
     
  9. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I didn’t find Scott patronizing at all. He’s just joking with Gould.
     
  10. Sfritz

    Sfritz New Member

    Location:
    Florence, Oregon
    As a new forum member, I happened to come across the posts on page 40, starting at post 978 questioning the identity of devices being loaded into the back of a station wagon, with the suggestion that they may be some early recording equipment.

    Since I'm a casual collector of recordings of antique mechanical musical instruments, I instantly recognized the boxes being loaded as 19th century table top disc music boxes.

    In the 1960's, Columbia issued a couple very popular music box recordings from the collection of Rita Ford who owned a world-famous Manhattan music box store. The first recording, from 1961, was “A Music Box Christmas” CS 8498, which featured some of the music boxes from her collection.

    I thought the woman overseeing the loading of the delicate and valuable boxes might be Rita Ford herself, but after I contacted Gerald Wright, the current owner of the Rita Ford business, he confirmed that the woman is not Mrs. Ford, nor could he identify any of the individuals pictured.

    However he did confirm that those particular boxes, a 15 1/2-inch disc size Regina and the other a 17 3/4-inch disc Stella, were both recorded on CS 8498.

    As to the location, if it is not the 30th street address, Mrs. Ford's store at the time was at 57th and Park Ave., but Mr. Wright pointed out that the street in the pictures does not look quite large enough to be 57th Street.

    I think it's interesting that Columbia reissued “A Music Box Christmas” through every decade and it is currently available on CD, a recording having a continuous, nearly 60-year run. Audio of the music boxes can be heard on Amazon.
     
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  11. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    First off, amazing!

    Second, here's the first post of Dan's with photos:

    Only one thing: I don't think the photos could have been from A Music Box Christmas. The license plate on the car is from 1953, well before both stereo and when the album was released. So...some other music box recording, apparently?
     
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  12. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    FWIW, my parents' 1962 Mercury Montego maintained its dated, 1962 license plate well into the 1970s, albeit in a different state.
     
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  13. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I thought of that, but it appears NY had new plates by 1955:

    Vehicle registration plates of New York - Wikipedia
     
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  14. Sfritz

    Sfritz New Member

    Location:
    Florence, Oregon
    Assuming the license plate and its date is valid, I searched the Columbia discography between 1953 and 1957 and did not see a recording in the GL or CL series in either the 10 or 12-inch formats which featured any kind of mechanical musical instruments exclusively. (A recording of that nature could still exist, however).

    It's possible too, that music box 'segments' could have been recorded by an artist to be incorporated as part of a larger orchestral work during 1953.

    Rita Ford opened her New York store in 1947, so she still could have been involved. In any case, the identification of the boxes is confirmed.
     
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  15. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Thanks for this, Sfritz; you have solved an abiding mystery.

    Looking up images for Stella and Regina music boxes, I can easily believe that the one with the center section of lid held up by the little decorative things is a Regina. Those seemed to commonly have that feature and the swoopy sides and lid. The other one without the decorations on the lid is also swoopy-sided, and the Stellas don't have that. They all seem to be flat sided and flat-lidded, albeit with tiered flat vertical relief.

    Wait, are there three music boxes in that photo sequence, or just two? The last two pictures look like variations of Reginas, while the big one that Buddy Graham and maybe a studio attendant are putting in the back is much larger and very flat sides and top.

    Here is another picture of the lady, in case it helps ID her:

    [​IMG]

    Apparently I put it up on Flickr but didn't use it as one of the five in that post. Sorry it's uncropped.

    And as you say, the street they are on is definitely neither Park Avenue or 57th St. It could be down the street from the studio, or it could be around the corner from the music box store. It is a one-way side street.

    Thanks again for telling us about this!
     
  16. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    In other news, I'm coincidentally going to give my presentation in a few minutes to some live sound friends of mine, 3 of whom also do a bunch of recording. Been looking forward to this for some time...
     
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  17. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Thanks to those above who thanked me for giving the presentation again. You guys, :edthumbs:

    It went pretty well and was one of the most fun ones I did, since I didn't have to worry about time and it was pretty low key, since I've known the attendees for 20-40 years...

    I should probably talk about the presentation itself, since it's been so long since I've regularly posted here. That is at least in part because the two experiences in New York (Don Hunstein Memorial and AES Convention/presentation) were pretty overwhelming in a variety of ways: the former because I got to meet and see again some really good people (including MMM), and also because ID'ing people in the Hunstein pics when nobody else present could made me realize how expert I'm becoming in knowing that place and time; the latter because of the pretty intense four month period getting ready, the pressure of talking for over an hour and a half on many occasions, how well the presentation went in spite of the presenter and the intensity of audience response to it, and some other things that I've been puzzling about for years really falling into place at the convention ( e.g., I'm learning how to coordinate the operation of many wireless microphones together, which is both a hardware and software intensive process, plus needing a lot of brain power, and thanks to several people and companies a lot of the puzzle came together there), plus there was a bunch of paying work waiting when I came home. All those things together made me feel it was time to take a break from 30th St., but the presentation the other night made me realize joyfully that the time has come to get back to it.

    So, the presentation was an overview of the studio's history from original building construction until the demolition. The eras that I posted in the first or second post in this thread are actually not too far off from what I think we think now:

    1875-1947: Pre-studio, life as a church.
    1947-1949: Studio construction, old control room, early year or so as a studio, no acoustic treatment.
    1949-1956: Polycylindrical diffusion on walls, concave portable baffles.
    1956-1962: "Leave It As It Is". Polycylindrical diffusion ripped out, patched mounting holes left visible, concave baffles replaced by more absorptive flat ones.
    1962-~1971: New control room, refinished studio floors and walls, new mixing console (rotary faders).
    ~1971-1982: Again refinished studio floors, walls, and draperies, new mixing console (linear faders), refinished control room, etc.
    1982: Demolition.

    Within those eras I chronicled ongoing changes in the mixing consoles (there were a total of four that I'm aware of, two in each control room), microphones, tape machines, and outboard gear as best as I've been able to find. There was also discussion of studio monitors, but in the interests of time I barely addressed them and if I had more time and space would add that as a category.

    As mentioned, the whole was a pretty intense hour-and-three-quarters of almost non-stop talking by me, and I have proven unable to give the exact same delivery twice in a row. My buddy Gary, who now posts here and contributed much to both the material and to the preparation by sitting through it multiple times and offering suggestions, was vexed that each one was different and therefore harder to polish. Reading verbatim and making it sound interesting is, alas, not one of my strengths, so my outline stayed an outline and details differed each time.

    We, I and you all, have uncovered so much in this thread and elsewhere that it was a real problem to leave fascinating things out and be left with not as interesting of a talk which nevertheless was still difficult to fit into the time allotted.

    There are multiple presentation "tracks" at the papers part of the AES Convention, with all subject matter grouped under one of these tracks:
    Technical Papers;
    Software;
    Broadcast Audio;
    Tutorials and Workshops;
    Broadcast/Streaming Media;
    Spatial Audio; Game Audio;
    Networked Audio;
    Product Development;
    Recording and Production;
    Audio for Cinema;
    Sound Reinforcement;
    Archiving and Restoration;
    Audio for Cinema.

    Which of those was right for my talk? Yes, you're right, it obviously belongs in Archiving and Restoration, which is how to store media for archiving purposes as well as how to fix damaged stored media.

    There was no Historical track, which was disappointing since I would like to see what other projects there are to save the memories of other times, places, and ways of doing audio, and I have to assume based on the response to this thread and many others on this wonderful forum that many other people are interested in that, too. I've offered to help put that together for the next New York AES Convention which should be sometime between September and November this year, but we've not yet talked in detail. Since suggesting is often the same as volunteering, I think I need to have some idea of what should happen and seek input from this forum. However, that has nothing to do with this thread so I'm going to start a new one, "Fantasy Audio History Presentation Program" to see what ideas there are and to share mine, in case we get to work on this.

    Before that, though, there'll be another post of some pics I've puzzled about recently.

    Thanks for reading all this and for being such a big part of the reason I've been able to do this 30th St project in such detail. :thumbsup:
     
  18. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    These first two pictures MIGHT be in the Plaut residence, although I'm not sure they had the penthouse as early as these likely were taken.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    They are obviously the same string quartet in the same small room, which Fred Plaut has helpfully pointed out is "naturally reverbs" or "reveords" or something similar. They look familiar but I can't place any of them. Can you?

    Oh, and based on the pictures these were with, I'm guessing they were taken around 1945.

    The next two were unfortunately taken when I had bumped the controls on my camera and didn't notice till 20 or 30 pictures were way underexposed, and these were two of them. Many were New York night scenes and therefore barely relevant to why I was there, but I didn't take the time to start over on that section and have to live with the results.

    This fellow seems to be someone who knows Fred, and is in a record shop of some sort, possibly on or near Park Avenue uptown from Grand Central, since that was the area near the surrounding pictures.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Is he grabbing that particular album because it's his work? I can't tell. Anybody recognize him?

    Last for now, this is a mic locker somewhere, either in the studio or somewhere else.

    [​IMG]

    I'm seeing an RCA77 on the top shelf, along with some 44's and one of the skunk mics (RCA KU-2A) on the right. Anything else interesting, other than the Cannon P3 connectors and the fact that the mics are just heaped up?

    It's nice to write again that these pictures are from MSS 52, The Frederick and Rose Plaut Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University. Gathered by me in October 2015 with help from Emily Ferrigno and Richard Bourse, very capable and d helpful librarians.
     
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  19. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Crap, the last year in the timeline should be 1981, not 1982. Sorry.
     
  20. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Huh, just noticed the first quartet picture is reversed. Wonder why he would have written on the negative backwards?
     
  21. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    Love this thread so interesting..
     
  22. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Dan, help me remember...what came up that pointed to the floors being refinished in the 62-71 period?
     
  23. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Primarily Frank saying that he was the first to use the new control room after the studio room had gotten redone, and it didn't sound the same at all.

    I suppose it could have been at the change to the linear fader console, but my guess has been that that was an additional time the floor got refinished. When they put in the new control room they had to do some serious cutting in the wall, as well as creating steps up, so I don't doubt that someone like me would see that as a time to redo the floors, too. "As long as we're..."

    And don't the wall patches disappear around 1962, also? I confess I've not done a timeline for wall patch pictures.

    You are, of course, well aware that I often get things wrong, even in the last few posts, so your skepticism could be entirely warranted.
     
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  24. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Do you recall where that quote was? I can’t really go hunting now, but in my head I had it that Frank was simply the first to use the *studio* after the floors had been redone. While it’s certainly possible I’m forgetting something, I’m not recalling anything specific about a control room.

    Of course, it seems likely, although not a certainty, that the floor was redone circa 1975 when the old control room was removed. That made the most sense to me, although it’s still somewhat a shot in the dark without more information.
     
  25. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Pretty sure he said it in that first meeting I did with him, which is the one that is in two parts of video on my Youtube channel.

    When I wrote the earlier posts I was in Portland OR with my wife, and when we were driving home this afternoon I was thinking about this and feeling like the floor refinishing probably took place after Goddard was not president anymore, because one would think that he would continue the "Leave It Alone" policy as long as he was actively working there.

    A quick look at his Wikipedia page: "He was promoted to president of Columbia Records from 1956 to 1971 and again from 1973 to 1975. In 1966, in a reorganization, Columbia Records became subsidiary to the newly formed CBS/Columbia Group.[8] In 1967, Lieberson promoted Clive Davis to president of Columbia Records."

    He and Davis couldn't BOTH have been President from '67-'71, could they? Since ~1971 was when the linear fader console appeared AND when Goddard left CBS, I wouldn't doubt an hypothesis that the floor and studio were totally redone in '71, although that would also have been a good time to tear out the old control room. My notes, probably from you, say it disappeared sometime between 1974 and '78, which doesn't line up with any of those change points.

    Hmmm.
     

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