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
    This weekend is another in which I am physically "at work", but as long as equipment keeps working I can work on projects. This time I've been going through copies of the Plaut pictures that are on two separate computers which have been worked on separately, so one has information the other doesn't, and trying to get them to line up.

    Trivial triumphs so far include identifying Mary Martin's second husband, Richard Halliday, who is in a couple of pictures taken in the early 50's in 30th St and had been a mystery until know.

    While trying to find any info about Katherine Anne Porter's recording project with Columbia that Goddard seemingly put together, a task whose conclusion is still eluding me, I found this nifty bio of Goddard:

    "Goddard Lieberson was born on April 5, 1911 in Hanley, Staffordshire, England. The family moved to Canada and then the United States in 1915, settling in Seattle, Washington. Lieberson attended North Queen Anne School between 1921 and 1925, and later, Ballard High School in Seattle. George McKay, a composition professor at the University of Washington arranged a scholarship that allowed Lieberson to attend the University as an undergraduate beginning in 1929. He studied at the University of Washington until 1932, after which he moved to pursue composition with Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

    "Lieberson lived and worked in Rochester, New York until 1936. During his time there, he was as a music critic for local publications and a music teacher at Harley Day School. By 1939, Lieberson had moved to New York City, where he became quickly enmeshed in the musical community. He joined the Musicians Union and the Society of Professional Musicians, helped found the American Composers' Alliance, and became a critic for the popular publication Modern Music. After befriending John Hammond, who was then a record programmer in the Popular Music Division at Columbia Records, Lieberson was hired by Columbia as an assistant to Moses Smith, Director of Masterworks.

    "Lieberson rose through the ranks at Columbia, as documented in this Columbia Records biographical sketch, printed in July 1964:

    '"In 1939, [Lieberson] joined the Masterworks Division of Columbia Records, then newly acquired by the Columbia Broadcasting System, as Assistant Director. Subsequently, first as Director of that department and later as Vice President in charge of Masterworks Artists and Repertoire, he developed Columbia's distinguished classical artist roster and catalog. In 1949, Mr. Lieberson was appointed Executive Vice President of Columbia Records and, in 1956, he became President. At the same time, Mr. Lieberson became a Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. …"'"

    Goddard got hired at Columbia because he knew John Hammond!

    Hammond was amazing his ability to recognize talent and in the connections he put to good use in helping that talent to rise to its level!

    Another post on a separate subject in a second.
     
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  2. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Another ID project that I continue to work on with no success is trying to figure out who this fellow is, who I've posted here before:

    [​IMG]

    This picture was part of a little series showing E. Power Biggs at a concert in Boston, I believe, and a poster here ID'd the hall and IIRC the date and resulting recording. We thought maybe this was E. Power Biggs' wife, and I said I thought the man looked like a salsa musician. Since then I've found some more pictures of him, today with Katherine Anne Porter, and he must have been some kind of Masterworks employee to be in all the pictures and situations he's in. He predated David Oppenheim, but I think he's not in any pictures with Charles O'Connell, if that tells you anything.

    I'm calling him "Masterworks Slick".

    I finally found a picture of Moses Smith, who I think was the first Director of Masterworks, and this is not him, but I have no idea who he is. Suggestions are welcome.
     
  3. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    And check out these pictures that I finally connected today:

    [​IMG]

    That SURE looks like Howard Scott, but where did all that hair come from? As we know, he was forever a victim of male pattern baldness, which many people find quite attractive, but there are no pictures of him with hair in the middle up there. That, plus the look on his face, made me think for the last few years that this picture was of someone else. I thought maybe Efrem Kurtz...

    Today, going through the collection fairly quickly, put that picture in my head so when I saw this picture

    [​IMG]

    of Morton Gould on the left and clearly Howard on the right, it jumped out: Howard on the right has just shaven the top of his head and there is a little stubble there! Both of those pictures are of him, and that first one, which is in Liederkranz, is a very early shot of him. The second one is part of a series that shows some U47's in use, so it's after 1949 and is definitely in 30th St.

    Cool, huh? Do you agree?

    These pictures on this page so far are from the Plaut collection at Yale.
     
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  4. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

    Location:
    NYC
    beats me why he'd shave off what hair he did have to look more bald.......
     
  5. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Reliably-haired individuals may not understand it, but some people choose to go fully down the path they find themselves already on rather than living halfway between two worlds...
     
  6. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

    Location:
    NYC

    LOL.......I would rebut that by saying, as a "Hair Challenged" individual, if youre lucky enough to have it.....keep it!
     
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  7. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    Apropos of your comment about the mustachioed unknown above, who was director of Masterworks prior to Oppenheim between 1947-50? I saw Richard Gilbert referenced upthread but below is a picture of Gilbert on the right with Stokowski and Farrell in late Dec 1947 on an RCA recording. He was listed as recording director there. So it is unlikely he went to Columbia before late 48 at the earliest. I could find a Feb 1949 Masterworks record but he is simply listed as Producer.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2018
  8. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    It was Charles O'Connell, I believe. He was fired after writing an execrable tell-all-in-the-most-insulting-way book about the people he worked with.

    Who was Richard Gilbert? I'm not familiar with that name. I have a picture of Ernest Gilbert who was "Director of Artist Development" for Masterworks, but the picture must be from the 70's or so (got it from Al Q's site) and he certainly doesn't look old enough to have been active in the 40's.

    Neither of them look slick enough to my eye to be "Masterworks Slick".
     
  9. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    No I wasn't saying Gilbert was Mr Slick. You said that Slick's photos preceded Oppenheim. If you search your posts upthread you listed Richard Gilbert as Masterworks Director in 1949. But I see him only as a record producer at RCA then Masterworks. O'Connell is only listed as a Recording Director in your post under Lieberson. Did he become Director of Masterworks Division in the late 40s as opposed to a Producer? I was just trying to see who was corporate Director when Slick was putting his arm around women. :)
     
  10. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    You're right, that was a list of names and dates from Howard Scott, transcribed from his handwritten notes.

    I haven't entered them into my spreadsheet, and I haven't seen Richard Gilbert's name anywhere else. Those names that were unfamiliar apparently went in one eye and out the other.

    Looking at the list again, though, one name that "Slick" could be is Paul Tyler Turner. However, the only search result I can find is in the composer Alec Wilder's bio about a goofy guy he knew in school by that name, but nothing about Alec seeing him later in life at Masterworks. Nothing else about him whatsoever, that I can find.

    I can't find much about Richard Gilbert, either, although there is a Billboard article in the November 5, 1949 issue which says that
    "Richard Gilbert, recording director of Columbia Records' masterworks department for the past year, has been appointed director of the master- works department. ... During the past year he supervised the recording of such works as Madame Butterfly, Facade and Salome and has worked with many symphony orchestras".

    But I can't find other evidence of this, and the picture you posted of him is good but doesn't seem to be Slick, like I said. Good that we have it, though.

    It does seem like Howard was a year late on his dates....

    Edit: And I say that Slick was prior to O'Connell because all the pictures of him are in Liederkranz or somewhere else, AFAIK.

    Fake Edit: OK, I just smart-searched the pictures for him, and there are a few pictures of him in the Old Control Room with what I think is the original console. I'm not very far into the archive to label him specifically, though. I should get further tomorrow and will report back if he is later than I thought.

    So that tells us he was there at least until 1952, but didn't make it onto Howard's list.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2018
  11. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    That was a good find. That does support the notion that Gilbert came over from RCA as a recording producer then was quickly promoted to Masterworks corporate director then quickly left that position.

    It's very unlikely Slick was a corporate Masterworks director given that he overlaps both Gilbert and Oppenheim.
     
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  12. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    Looking at that book passage it indicates that both Wilder and Tyler Turner were in their early teens. Since Wilder was born in 1907 that would make Turner 40 something in the post WW2 period which agrees with the photo FWIW.
     
  13. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    You think he looks that old? I'd say mid-30's at most, but what do I know?

    (Edit: And it seems they used the word "director" to both mean "Producer" and company director, which is confusing.)

    I've also just realized that I have numerous pictures of a woman from the '50's in many or several Masterworks situations. I'm looking for her now, based on the names Howard Scott gave us.

    Edit 2: That didn't take long. Couldn't find one word or picture about or of Greta Rauch.
     
  14. yasujiro

    yasujiro Senior Member

    Location:
    tokyo
    Just curious. Why did Columbia avoid the use of Neumann M50 when other companies like RCA, Decca and EMI took it as one of the key mics?
     
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  15. MMM

    MMM Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Lodi, New Jersey
    They did use the M49 a lot for many years at 30th Street...
     
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  16. ad180

    ad180 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I assume that there would be more city noise with a wide-open omni (M50) vs having the flexibility of three directional options with the M49. I'm no expert, but I think the M50 was used by engineers in concert halls to record orchestras, while the M49 had more flexibility for studio work (even a large room like 30th Street). I'd love to hear what a 30th Street engineer would say about this topic.
     
  17. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    There are competing philosophies of recording and what mics you use are part of that. Decca even had in-house competing philosophies with its Phase 4 series. Just to be clear, Neumann M50s are not ruler flat mics either, revealing only sonic truth. Of course we as listeners can have our preferences too.
     
  18. MMM

    MMM Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Lodi, New Jersey
    Re M50's, the below likely relates, from the article Luke posted upthread:

     
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  19. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Sorry, I misunderstood your quoted question and my quoted response is inaccurate.

    O'Connell was fired just after the publication of his book in 1947. Here is a picture composite of the Billboard article that I referenced earlier:

    [​IMG]

    The way I read the article, Goddard was in charge of Masterworks from O'Connell's firing in 1947 until Gilbert's hiring in 1949.

    The article is also enlightening in that it names the heads of the Recording divisions, as well as assistants:

    -Pop, headed by Manie Sachs, assisted by Joe Higgins and Hugo Winterhalter;

    -masterworks (this and the rest don't deserve capital letters), headed by Richard Gilbert, assisted by TYLER TURNER!!;

    -hillbilly, blues and rhythm and American folk, Arthur Sattherley and Don Law;

    -foreign and international, George Avakian;

    -children's, Hecky Krasno.

    I obviously emphasized Tyler Turner's name, since he went by that and not Paul Tyler Turner, and that has to be Slick! Right?

    Looking for Tyler Turner instead of Paul Tyler Turner is almost equally frustrating, EXCEPT for two potentially relevant finds:

    [​IMG]

    Not a great picture, but it was the best of the two I found. Anybody have this record?

    This picture is from

    https://www.amazon.com/This-High-Fidelity-Comprehensive-Intermodulation/dp/B012HP26QG

    and it says there's a 28 page booklet with it. That could be an interesting read.

    The other find is

    PAXX001: This Is High Fidelity

    which I hope you can see, too. I say that because it says you can download the album for free there; I don't have Flash on any computer and went there with my iPad to see if I could get it with that, but the site isn't visible at all on iPad, apparently it's offline altogether.

    I was able to grab the text, though, and here it is:
    ================

    Track listing for "This Is High Fidelity"

    Track 1 - "Extended Frequency Range" (7'48") - includes:

    RAVEL La Valse

    R. STRAUSS Death and Transfiguration

    BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 in E flat major Op. 55 "Eroica"

    TCHAIKOVSKY Cappricio Italien

    BACH Magnificat

    CHOPIN Mazurka Op. 33 No. 2 in D major


    Track 2 - "Balanced & Unbalanced Ranges" (5'39") - includes:

    MOZART Quartet in G Major K. 80

    SCHUMANN Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 54

    BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 8 in F major Op. 93


    Track 3 - "Distortion" (9'35") - includes:

    TCHAIKOVSKY 1812 Overture

    BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 8 in F major Op. 93

    BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major Op. 58

    RAVEL Rhapsodie Espagnole

    CHOPIN Krakowiak Rondo Op. 14

    DVORAK Symphony No. 9 in E minor Op. 95 "From the New World"

    STRAVINSKY Pulcinella

    FRESCOBALDI Music for Organ (not otherwise defined)

    LISZT Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major

    BRUCKNER Symphony No. 9 in D minor


    Track 4 - "Studio Acoustics & Microphoning" (6'36") - includes:

    CHOPIN Waltz Op. 34 No. 2 in A minor

    BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor Op. 15

    BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 8 in F major Op. 93

    MOZART Symphony No. 25 in G minor K. 183

    BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major

    R. STRAUSS Don Juan

    KAY Western Symphony

    ==============

    And then the text:

    ==============

    Introducing "This Is High Fidelity"



    Peter Harrison

    I have several thousand LPs in my collection, but if I was asked which one has had the greatest influence on my life, I'd have no hesitation in answering: "This Is High Fidelity".

    That may seem an exaggerated statement to make. Can any recording have a 'great influence' on someone's life? Yes. This disk changed the direction that my career would take. And it switched me on to a lifetime's love of classical music.

    "This Is High Fidelity" ("TIHF") was released on LP by Vox Records in 1955, and was sporadically, expensively, and usually only with difficulty available in the UK for a few years thereafter. It was always an import, was never pressed outside the US, and cost twice as much as any 'normal' LP. It became legendary, especially when supplies ran out and it was clear that no more would be made.

    My best friend and I, in our early teens and wasting our youth by home-building amplifiers from second-hand military components and loudspeakers from discarded radiogram cabinets, were loaned TIHF by his uncle. To a teenager who had grown up in Cornwall and whose exposure to classical music had been almost zero, it was a revelation. There was all this wonderful music that I didn't know about! And from a technical viewpoint, I decided then that what I really wanted to be was a sound engineer - what the narrator on TIHF calls "a recordist".

    The loaned disk was returned, and disappeared. For over forty years I hunted intermittently for another copy, haunting second-hand record stores especially when I got the chance of working in the US. The usual response from dealers was, "Ah yes, I know of it, of course. But I've never seen one." (Try eBay and the chances are you'll search for a year without seeing a copy for sale.)

    Finally in 2002 I located a copy at a dealer in California. I bid for it. I won! I was warned: the box is tatty but the LP itself seems OK. The package arrived. There was the tatty box; there was the glorious full-size 28-page book with its extensive, opinionated, essay and its fascinating charts; and there was the disk - in almost mint condition. I could hardly believe it.

    That is the LP from which this transfer and restoration has been made.


    About the Record

    "This Is High Fidelity" was the creation of three men: Tyler Turner who wrote and produced it; Arthur Hannes who narrates it and whose voice is the only one we hear; and Ward Botsford, music enthusiast and co-owner of Vox at that time.

    All are legendary figures in their fields.

    Thirty seconds into the first track and you know you're in for something special. Bang! - you've been hit by Ravel's 'La Valse' and then the basso profundo voice of Art Hannes declaiming: "This Is High Fidelity..." From then on you'll be guided through the audio hot topics of the day - frequency response, distortion, acoustics, microphone technique - with example after example illustrated by extracts from a wide range of classical music from Frescobaldi to Hershey Kay's 'Western Symphony'.

    It's important when listening today to remember that this disk was conceived more than fifty years ago at a time when the long-playing record was just six years old and 'high fidelity' a relatively new and unfamiliar term. The musical extracts - obviously - had to be taken from previously issued recordings and though some still sparkle, others definitely show their age. They are, of course, all in golden monophonic sound.

    The problems facing recording engineers as well as enthusiasts for 'music in the home' weren't then about subtleties of directional interconnect cables and green pens being used on the edges of CDs, but about major challenges like getting anything better than a shriek for sound above 5 kHz, or getting the hum down to a not-too-objectionable level, or even getting the pickup to stay in the groove during loud passages on the disk! (At one point in TIHF there is a demonstration of music with and without harmonic distortion, and I recall looking at my best pal as we played the disk on our supposedly hi-fi equipment and asking: well, can you hear any difference?)

    The Vox disk of TIHF contained three tracks on side 2 that are not included in this restoration. The first is a series of frequency test tones (which however we used to check the calibration of our pickup and pre-amplifier). Then followed two tracks whose topics are 'the choirs of the orchestra' and 'the nature of sound' (mostly about chord structure) which are, frankly, boring, and not really concerned with high fidelity reproduction. We don't think that omitting these tracks is much of a loss.


    About the Transfer and Restoration

    This transfer and restoration have been made over many hours at very high quality so as to preserve as much of the original sound as possible, without adding tweaks or gimmicks. It would have been tempting for example to re-make the restricted frequency range samples, because the analogue filters in use in 1955 were nothing like as precise as a modern digital filter and when you're told that here is the sound "below 100 cycles" there's actually an awful lot of sound still there that's way above that value. We've tried to resist 'fixing' that. We have not touched the frequency balance of the original. On the other hand we have attacked the clicks, crackles, rumble, hum, swishes, vinyl roar, and pre-echos - all of which are diseases that the long-playing record was prone to catch. Our objective was simple: to let you hear this vintage recording at a quality closer to the master tape than anybody has heard it outside Vox's studio in 1955.

    You will, for example, hear background hiss which varies in level between the musical extracts, and between the music and the narration. That's original tape hiss you're hearing: if you wish to hear the LP's background noise, listen to the few seconds between the end of one track and before the start of the next. It's rather quiet.

    Shining the bright light of modern digital restoration on the recording has also revealed some problems and deficiencies that even the best analogue hi-fi equipment of the day wouldn't have shown up. For example if you listen carefully it's possible to hear two faults with the recording of Art Hannes' narration: a low-level 3rd harmonic hum at 180 Hz; and a curious very low-level metallic tonality which I recall one particular type of microphone could create. I also wonder about one note in the 'intermodulation distortion' sample, for although I've never encountered a pickup that could reproduce it cleanly, all give precisely the same fluttering effect - could this actually be intermodulation distortion generated in the cutting room not in the playback, I wonder? And on one of the samples the very beginning of the first note has been chopped, presumably by scrappy tape editing.

    So this is not perfection, and by modern standards it's not really 'high fidelity' either. It's a historical record of the state of the audio art at a particular time, by a particular record company. But it can still entertain, fascinate, educate, and occasionally challenge (if you can identify every musical sample, you're pretty knowledgable!).

    I hope you enjoy it.

    Peter Harrison

    disk2disc February 2006

    =============

    Clicking the "disk2disc" embedded link took me to some kind of cosmetics site in Chinese. Couldn't easily find anything about Peter Harrison.

    He says the three guys who put the record together are legendary, but doesn't say why.

    Looking for the other two, Arthur Hannes was the announcer for the Ed Sullivan TV show for many years, and narrates and maybe plays piano for an introductory to various composers, e.g., the Bach one

    Frank Laico worked with Ward Botsford after he left CBS. Wish I could ask him about this.

    Harrison says the 28 page book has an extensive, opinionated essay. Can you doubt that Slick authored it?

    And he would have worked with the type of music used in the examples of High Fidelity.

    Not definitive, but maybe indicative, that we have found the Slick's name. It would be cooler yet if he were Alec Wilder's youthful buddy.
     
  20. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    Thanks for answering the question. I hesitated to pester you about it.:angel:

    OK so Lieberson followed O'Connell then he got Gilbert to take it followed soon after by Oppenheim. It is probably safe to say that Tyler Turner and Oppenheim didn't get along so Tyler Turner exited to somewhere else by 52 but showed up with Popular science and Vox Records to produce a HiFi album. I gather there is no picture of Tyler Turner in the booklet. I really really don't want to take my computer to a Chinese cosmetics site so I won't revisit your search. The initial link was at the Pristine Audio website. Not sure if you are familiar with them, they do audio restorations of historic recordings.

    Here are 4 other recordings associated with Tyler Turner at Discogs:
    Tyler Turner
    UI don't think there is any doubt that the CBS Tyler Turner was indeed the friend cited by Alec Wilder. Perhaps Tyler Turner left under clouded circumstances so that is why Wilder didn't draw attention to him there.

    This is certainly nothing relevant but I did see an obit in 1970 for a Paul Tyler Turner in the annals of the Electric Railroading Association.
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2018
  21. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    You and anyone else should always pester me when I'm wrong or mistaken!

    Your summary sounds correct, except perhaps about Turner's exit "by" 1952. Not sure about that exact timing, could be right or it could be something different.

    DANG! I stopped writing this and looked around more; finding nothing on Google, I wondered if Goddard maybe had written to Turner at some point; searching the guide to the Lieberson collection at Yale, he DID communicate with "Rev. Paul Tyler Turner"!!!

    Searching for the reverend got exactly nothing, but maybe somebody else can find something.

    Did Turner turn to the cloth at some point after leaving Columbia?

    Hey! Three of the four albums in your link have liner notes by Tyler Turner! All are organ albums and he seems quite knowledgeable about the subject. It was interesting to read them, thanks for finding that.

    None of them were recorded in 30th St, almost needless to say.
     
  22. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    I did run across that but it seemed a dead end. That Paul Tyler Turner was an Anglican churchman who changed his name to Alexander Turner. He was a Western Rite bishop in the 40s and I doubt CBS Records would have had a bishop of any kind in the corporate suite.:)

    Society of St. Basil - Wikipedia

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2018
  23. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    From following that link and several other related links, I see that this is Bishop Turner. Not a great shot, but the head and bone structure do sort of look like Slick, although as you point out, it seems unlikely that an active Bishop would be assistant at Masterworks. And this Paul Tyler Turner had previously been an Old Catholic (the sect, not his age) priest before being elevated to bishop and founding a church in Mount Vernon, NY, and then becoming head of the sect in 1947.

    Does indeed seem unlikely, but Goddard did have some communication with Rev. Paul Tyler Turner, and that is a remarkable coincidence if they are not the same person. Would an assistant Masterworks guy have been in the corporate suite? As opposed to in the studio.

    It is also a remarkable coincidence that the Armenian Orthodox Church had a space in The Church building (albeit long before PTT would have been on the scene), and that the Society of St. Basil sect merged into the Greek Orthodox Church in 1961. Yes, Greek and Armenian are different, but Orthodox is similar.

    It would make for a more interesting story if it was the same guy.
     
  24. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    I wonder if this Rev Paul Tyler Turner, while not the Bishop (Alexander) Turner, instead became an ordinary priest of some kind. The St Basil Turner was a Bishop by this time (who had changed his name to Alexander) and I am not sure if the simple honorific Reverend would have been applied to him. It is usually the written address for an ordinary priest. So it is possible that the CBS Turner did become a priest in some denomination without making him the Bishop Turner. There is also the issue of the record liner notes from the 50s not including some religious honorific before his name either as would be customary.

    What is the date of the letter?
     
  25. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    The index only shows that there is correspondence between Goddard and this person. No indication of quantity or t0/from.

    I've been mulling this over all day, and think there are too many coincidences to be explained away and that all the Turners we are talking about are the same person.

    One thing that we haven't quite addressed is the contents of the Alec Wilder bio mention of Paul Tyler Turner, in addition to simply mentioning the same possibly unusual name.

    Here is the passage in the book in its entirety (St. Paul's being Wilder's hated school or boarding school):

    [​IMG]

    So we see:

    A) Turner was about Wilder's age, who was born in 1907, so in the 1940's both would have been in their 30's to 40's.

    B) Turner at age 14 was drawn to both religion and music.

    C) Turner was drawn to organ music at 14, and was frenzied ("wild wavings of arms" while "conducting") to imagine it.

    D) Turner in his 30's-40's-50's wrote liner notes for several organ albums which were opinionated and authoritative, showing significant study of the subject.

    E) That picture you posted looks to me like the shape of his head and attitude. Here is the one I earlier posted again:

    [​IMG]

    Scroll a few posts up to look at the one you posted. Don't you think they look the same in head shape and demeanor?

    Now I'm going to seal the deal.

    I kept looking this evening, trying to find more info about the Bishop and his history, and found this:

    www.reu.org/public/ssbdocs/ssbhistory.pdf

    This link downloads a pdf of what seems to be an exploded book, called

    THE SOCIETY OF CLERKS SECULAR OF SAINT BASIL (The Basilian Fathers)
    HISTORY OF ITS FORMATION
    (History of the Formation of The Society of Clerks Secular of Saint Basil)

    It's kind of a goofy pdf in layout; it consists of sequences of two pages side by side, one with a low page number and the other with a high page number. The lower page numbers get bigger as you scroll down, while the higher ones get smaller. Both alternate from left to right and vice versa as you go up or down.

    Here is page 192:

    [​IMG]

    He looks younger on the right than on the left, but both look exactly like him.

    Here are some passages (emphasis added, spelling in original) starting from page 41:

    "In North America, Father Tyler Tuner, S.S.B., chancellor to Archbishop Ignatius, who was in ill health, replaced Archbishop Ignatius as Superior General of The Basilians in 1937, and remained in that position until his death in 1971. As the health of Archbishop Ignatius continued to fail, he, with Syrian Bishop Timothy Mathew as co-consecrator, consecrated Father Tyler Turner, S.S.B., as Archbishop Alexander, S.S.B., in the American Orthodox Church."

    So in 1937, Turner would have been around 30. The link you found talked about him already being a past Episcopalian and current Old Catholic priest. He would have been able to do that by age 30. When he died in 1971 he would have been around 64. I haven't been able to find any kind of obituary. This book is the only thing I've found indicating his death.

    More:
    "In 1944, Archbishop Alexander, S.S.B., established St. Basil’s Orthodox Seminary (Mount Vernon, New York), as the needs of both the American Orthodox Church and The Society of Clerks Secular continued to grow. But during the 1950's, the financial strength of both the American Orthodox Church and of The Society of Clerks Secular were severely diminished."

    He needed a paying gig. Later, in the early '60's, he merged his church/sect in with the Antiochian Church.

    "Because the Antiochian Church in North America had no provisions for married Bishops, and Archbishop Alexander was married, he was not allowed to function as a Bishop within he Antiochian Orthodox Church, but as a Mitered Archpriest, the Right Reverend Alexander Turner, S.S.B., superior general of the Orthodox Society of Clerks Secular of Saint Basil, and head of the Western Rite Vicarite of the Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of all North America (and New York). This was a unique position which ended with his death."

    It would be awesome if that was his wife in the picture. I couldn't tell if it was E. Power Biggs' wife with any certainty.

    Much later in the book is this passage:

    "1971 - Father William Francis Forbes, S.S.B., a priest of The Society of Clerks Secular of Saint Basil since 1952, became Superior General of The Basilian Fathers on the death of Archbishop Alexander. (5.1.1971)"

    I can't tell if May 1 is when he died or if that's some kind of publication date or something else.

    That is all pretty definitive for me. Slick is Paul Tyler Turner, also known as Tyler Turner, also known as Rev. Paul Tyler Turner, also known as Bishop and then Archbishop Alexander (Turner).

    One more thing: Maybe the black shirt/black pants/white tie was his version of ecclesiastical garb?

    We already knew that 30th St. had a lot of extraordinary people associated with it, and here is one more.
     
    vanhooserd and lukpac like this.

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