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

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

  1. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    Most certainly. Those are from a rehearsal for the NBC-TV special which aired November 18, 1973. Photos by David Sutton. MPTVimages says it was taken at MGM. Here’s a less-cropped version of the first photo, and a color closeup of Kelly and Sinatra:

    [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2018
  2. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Long time, no posts!

    During the Tom Z. Shepard commentary of "Company", Dan remarked about not knowing where the cast exits before Elaine Stritch attempts her song.

    [​IMG]

    I may have misunderstood, but this seems obviously just the 30th st. SW main talent doors.?

    Also, PBS had a "Great Performances" episode on Hal Prince Nov 23; they showed a snippet from the Pennebaker film, but the sound seemed too good. I suspect they replaced the film sound with the cast album sound for this tiny segment. Anyway, there's some interesting stuff and it's online at PBS:

    Harold Prince: The Director’s Life | Full Film | Great Performances | PBS
     
  3. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I don't have time to find a photo to match right now, but that's what I thought. No, wait, here:

    [​IMG]

    Note the position of the boxes on the wall to the left of the doors. It looks like the box on the upper right (thermostat?) was replaced with a different model, but they otherwise match.
     
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  4. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    And an even longer time with no posts! Being away from home for essentially a month and a half leaves a lot of business to be taken care of upon return.

    What I intended to say at that point in the movie is that what there is on the other side of those doors, which are indeed in the SW corner of the building, is largely unknown to us, and there are no pictures that are specifically known to be that area.

    We know the front personnel door is at the other end of the hallway; we likely know there is at least a stairway going up to the next floor and also one going down to the basement, although IIRC at least one person who was there denies there were any stairways there; and we know there had to be a guard's station near the front door, although that is not remembered, either by some people who were there. I was lamenting the lack of specific knowledge of the space they are walking into.

    So that's what I intended to say but obviously not exactly what I said. You should try doing a spontaneous commentary and try to fit in all the things you want to say. I'm grateful it didn't turn out as poorly as I thought it had as I was leaving the restaurant. That was a humbling experience in several ways, although it's gratifying it went over as well as it did and I need to figure out how to make Tom's comments more widely heard. I've left the ball on the floor about that since I've been back, too.
     
  5. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    One thing that I have been doing, however, is going through my notes and attempting to organize them.

    One thing that I noticed in going through Goddard's papers were a few references to upcoming recording sessions. As I mentioned before, there was not one word that I noticed that would fill out our understanding of 30th St., which was hugely disappointing. However, there was another studio mentioned a few times, IIRC by Goddard's assistants Greta Rauch and (Paul) Tyler Turner, in their notes to various recording artists. In the letters in his papers, there are many by him, many to him, and many on his behalf (I guess) by his assistants to work out details of something, whether it's travel arrangements, recording arrangements, contract mailings either direction (not including the contracts but "Did you get the letter?", or "Have you returned the contract?", or arranging for copies of records to be sent or returned, and things like that.

    We've discussed Turner at some length in this thread but have only mentioned Rauch a couple of times, with not much detail because not much has been known. The several letters/notes from or to her in Goddard's papers do not elaborate much, but I've found a couple of things, which we'll get to in another post.

    There were several notes by both Rauch and Turner in which I noticed that they told the addressee that the recording session would be "in the Playhouse" or something like that. In going over my notes, on April 23, 1945, she wrote to Victor Babin (half of the piano duo with his wife Vitya Vronsky) that the Columbia Playhouse #5 is on 39th St. between Broadway and Sixth Avenue.

    Do we know anything about that place? I don't recall hearing about it before. Note that Luke's great post in the Liederkranz Hall thread says LH was at 111 E. 58th St, which is maybe a mile up- and cross-town from this.

    There was a Minton's Playhouse nightclub on 52nd St, and IIRC the Miles Davis video/TV show with Gil Evans conducting some cool music and Frank Rehak looking cool* was in something called the Playhouse that seemed to be a TV studio. This version doesn't have the credits but I thought I'd seen that. Neither of those seem like they would have been a recording studio in 1944, but who knows?

    Any ideas? If so, what were Columbia Playhouses #1-4?

    *Asterisk'd because I just learned that this looking cool was just before his spiraling heroin addiction drove him out of music.
     
  6. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Looks like CBS Playhouse #5 AKA Maxine Elliott's:

    Maxine Elliott’s Theatre - Wikipedia

    WOR Mutual Radio Theatre
    CBS Radio Playhouse No. 5
    CBS Television Studio No. 44/Studio 51

    Demolished 1960.
     
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  7. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Nice find, Gary!

    Here's the picture from the Wikipedia article:

    [​IMG]

    Interesting how it seems to sit a distance above what I presume is the roadway below, and how there's a mound of unfenced construction debris.

    This is long after the regrading of most of the island of Manhattan in the mid-1800's.

    The linked IMDB Broadway site puts dates on those various usages you cite:

    Built 1908
    WOR Mutual Radio Theatre 1941
    CBS Radio Playhouse No. 5 1944
    CBS Television Studio No. 44/Studio 51 1949

    Also, the end of it as a Radio Playhouse (and apparently as an audio recording studio) nicely coincides with the ascendancy of the 30th St. Studio as an audio recording studio.

    Looking around further finds that we already learned about Playhouse #5 from a post by Luke in 2017:

    Going through that pdf yields a couple of pictures of the theater/studio in 1949 and maybe 1950:

    [​IMG]

    The above pic shows the balconies, sidewall, and a bit of the stage, while this one

    [​IMG]

    from a "Talk of the Town" early Ed Sullivan shows the main floor, new control room, and first balcony.

    Posting these so we can look at our existing pictures a little differently to see if "remote" locations were actually "in studio" sessions.

    This also shows how hard it is to remember all these places, as well as shows how Columbia used their spaces nearly interchangeably for various purposes. And, since the referenced session with Babin/Vronsky occurred before tape machines, they must have used equalized phone lines to send the audio over to 799 for disc recording.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2018
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  8. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    I think the photo of Elliot's Theatre actually shows it on a normal sidewalk, it's just covered in snow and dirty winter slush, plus construction debris fills the roadway. There's some lens distortion. The sign says "The Chaperon - opening Dec 30" and according to the Internet Broadway Database (IBDB, not IMDB), that would be 1908. Winter. New building just about to open.

    The big version of the photo is great, though, very high quality for 110 years ago. There seems to be 2 guys working the cement trough!

    Oh, you also meant "Toast of the Town" instead of Talk of the Town.
     
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  9. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Yes, I always get confused between Ed Sullivan and The Pretenders. I'll get it right eventually, maybe tomorrow, maybe someday.

    It never occurred to me that they would let construction debris fill the roadway, or almost all of the roadway, but that's clearly what's going on. The streetlight that disappears into the windowsill of the photographer's perch is confusing, too, because it initially appears to be going over the sidewalk instead of the roadway as is normal, but now it makes more sense that the roadway is just this side of the debris pile.

    Would that be a New York Edison office building or a DC power generation station right next door? Since DC doesn't travel well over distance they had to have many local generators which is one factor which led to its demise.
     
  10. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Presumably this refers to that:

    "Still, there had yet to be any substantive progress in the effort to enter the midtown market, which offered the greatest potential for return on investment. That delay, largely political in origin, blocked the necessary street opening permits required to install the distribution lines, but allowed time for design and devlopment of the ‘‘Vertical Station’’ intended for urban lots where land was at a premium. Instead of the single-level approach in which boilers, steam engines, and generators were placed in ranks, it stacked them to reduce the area required and thus the cost of the property required for a power station. The generators were placed at the street level probably to minimize the length of cable runs while boilers were on an upper floor followed by the coal bunkers above - probably to simplify the distribution of coal by gravity. The concept was adapted to meet the needs of other municipalities where land was expensive near the ideal ‘‘load center’’ of the area to be supplied.

    A pair of these stations commenced operation on 26th and 39th Streets in late 1888. With the Sprague distribution improvements in both design and operation - the former with his mathematical modeling, the latter by use of the new three-wire system plus his motor to assure daytime load - the Edison Company had the income potential for continued expansion through the construction of additional stations. The largest in any city at that time was constructed at 55 Duane Street in 1891 to replace the obsolete Pearl Street station. It was followed by plants on East 12th and West 53rd Streets. Those, however, abandoned the vertical format as power demand exceeded the practicality of the arrangement. Large illuminated exterior advertising signs soon joined arc lighting to brighten the street scene and provide additional income in the areas supplied by the new stations."

    Manhattan Electrification - Engineering and Technology History Wiki

    And:

    "In 1963, a total of 23 rotary converter substations were still in operation but, by 1976, only two remained: West 26th Street and West 39th Street. These two were finally retired the following year, bringing an end to the rotary converter era for the supply of dc power in Manhattan.

    An interesting aspect of the longevity of the West 39th Street rotary converter substation is that it prolonged the use of an archaic means of controlling Broadway show lighting in the theaters of the Times Square area. These were known as “resistance dimmers,” and their use continued long into the age of computer lighting control because they were the only type of dimmers that could operate with the dc power services still in use in the old Broadway theaters."

    History | IEEE Power & Energy Magazine

    Unless there were multiple locations on W 39th St, that is. I haven't had time to look in further detail yet.
     
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  11. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Haven't had time??? You've had all of eight minutes!!!

    /humor(?)

    Nice, informative information.

    You totally need to go visit the place.
     
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  12. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Greta Rauch:

    She seemed to be in a similar role at Masterworks to Paul Tyler Turner, and at approximately the same time. Both are in Goddard's papers, although I am not yet far enough to know her timeline of activity.

    Looking her up with the assistance of Barney Google, all I can find is an obituary in the Central Opera Service Bulletin of Fall 1976, which seems to be put out by the Metropolitan Opera Association and is incredibly detailed and wide-ranging.

    Anyway, it reads:

    Public relations executive GRETA RAUCH (GOLDMAN), American, 74 years old, in New York 1/13/76. She was affiliated for many years with Constance Hope, and was publicity agent for such artists as Melchior, Pinza, Lotte Lehmann, Iturbi, and Ellman. She then worked as press agent for Carnegie Hall and for the past six years was associated with Jean Dalrymple. Her son, baritone Lawrence Shadur, is a member of the Metropolitan Opera.

    So, was Goldman her married name? While there is nothing about an association with Masterworks, there are many musical connections in her listed work. Her son, Lawrence Shadur, was born in either 1935 or 1938 (I found both in different places) and died in 1991. An article by tenor Michael Trimble (that's his picture next to it, not Shadur's) says that his friend Larry Shadur had Lauritz Melchior as his godfather, which might be an indicator that this is the right Greta Rauch since she was publicity agent for Melchior and others.

    I can find NO ID'd pictures of either her or her son.

    There are a few pictures in the Plaut archives at Yale of this lady:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    I believe that both are from 1954, which would be 9 years after the Babin/Vronsky letter referenced earlier, but that seems possible.

    The first pic is obviously in the old control room, and is part of the series of George Antheil's Ballet Mechanique conducted by Carlos Surinach and produced by Howard Scott, with Antheil in attendance. She is in other pictures with all of them.

    The second one is with Robert Fizdale of Gold and Fizdale and I believe is part of the Poulenc Picnic Cantata sessions that we figured out a couple of years ago. There are no earlier pictures of her in the Plaut collection, which makes me think maybe this is when she left Masterworks and Fred took pictures to remember her by. (Nice view of the concave baffles, too.)

    I have no evidence that this is who this lady is, although I think it would be nice.

    Please feel free to work your detecting magic on this problem. I did look up Jean Dalrymple, who is a famous theatrical presence and accomplisher of accomplishments, but no dice. JD's autobiography index doesn't mention Greta Rauch, Goldman, or Shadur.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2018
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  13. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    That "Eyes of a Generation" site certainly has interesting info - too bad they don't have as much data on CBS' recording studios.

    Too bad I did not have a decent camera in 1995, when Dan and I went to a Letterman taping in the Ed Sullivan Theater (CBS Studio 50).
     
  14. SixtiesGuy

    SixtiesGuy Ministry of Love

    I'm obviously arriving very late at this party, but the gentleman in this photo looks a hell of a lot like a young James Doohan, actor of Star Trek fame (Mr. Montgomery Scott).
     
  15. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    After looking at those pictures of Maxine Elliott's Playhouse and watching the So What movie



    a couple of times, it seems very possible that it could have been filmed on that theater's stage, with drummer Jimmy Cobb's back to the audience seating so that it is maybe just visible in the dark and blurry background behind Miles when he plays.

    In a couple of places, including ~7:59 and ~8:42 there are a pile of shiny things like mic stands visible in the background, like we see in 30th St.

    Since it was used as a TV studio in the 50's and demolished in 1960, this would all fit.
     
  16. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    That's an interesting coincidence and it would be fun if Turner and Doohan were somehow related though 30 (?) years apart.
     
  17. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle

    The more complete version of what seems to be the same video has the host stating it's Studio 61:
    So What- Studio 61
     
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  18. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    And does so within the first few words of the introduction as well as in the video title. And the link and a pretty good description are in Bobby Ellerbee's wonderful "The Eyes of a Generation" CBS Studios New York pdf.

    So that's the former Monroe Theater on First Avenue at 76th St, converted by CBS into a TV studio in 1952 and apparently never used as an audio recording studio.

    The shorter video is better quality, though.

    That Eyes of A Generation website is pretty interesting. Bobby Ellerbee is a former radio DJ who has done and is still doing all kinds of interesting music business things; he appears to know everyone. Lots of pictures of him with cool people over many years. Also lots of TV history, not just CBS. Very nicely done.
     
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  19. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Browsing through Getty Images; while we've seen a photo of this 1964 Marcos Valle session in the new control room, I notice there's a whole series that show some more details of the control room construction (halfway down the page of thumbnails and continuing to the next page):

    Cbs Photo Archives Pictures and Photos | Getty Images

    One of Frank Laico at work:
    171113345
     
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  20. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Not the most flattering photos, but lots of wonderful details not seen elsewhere. Here you can clearly see the step up just in front of the console:

    Brazilian singer and composer Marcos Valle and his wife singer... News Photo | Getty Images

    AKG D24 on percussion:

    Percussionists at CBS Studios on 30th St. recording the album Marcos... News Photo | Getty Images

    Lots more.

    Here's a shot at 799 Seventh Ave:

    A recording session with a full orchestra, probably at the CBS... News Photo | Getty Images

    U47s on the strings.
     
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  21. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    On Getty I also found a series of photos with Vincent Lopez recording in what looks like 30th st, with Howard Scott, in 1962 - except the caption says it's MGM Studios, NY, NY.
    Discogs says Lopez had an album out in 1961 on MGM, but I'm inclined to believe there are just some simple mistakes in the IDs.

    Series of photos here:
    Mgm Studios New York Pictures and Photos | Getty Images

    starting with this one:
    494691091

    Oddly, I think I recognize everything in the photos as 30th st, but don't see any actual CRI stencils.
     
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  22. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Those are remarkable to me for one reason: they are clearly using the old control room for recording, but the window to the new control room has already been installed. There are even people inside it in a few shots:

    Vincent Lopez recording session at MGM Studios with his Taft Hotel... News Photo | Getty Images
    Vincent Lopez recording session at MGM Studios with his Taft Hotel... News Photo | Getty Images

    I don't have time to study these tonight, but are these from a few different sessions? It seems like the piano is in different places. Or maybe I'm just not putting together the various angles.
     
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  23. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Ah, I see mdr30 already mentioned the Valle photo set last year, and identifies Val Valentin as another engineer.
     
  24. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    And DM showed us one of the photos last year. So hard to keep track of what's been shown....
     
  25. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Here's Maxine Elliot's/CBS Studio 51 in November 1951 on Getty. Gaudy!
    506090410

    I must say, browsing through other Getty photos of CBS studios, it must have been amazing to see what they built in the 30s-50s, on both coasts. Money must've been pouring in.
     

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