1959: Today at the 30th Street Studio

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by DMortensen, Jan 15, 2019.

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  1. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    I realized today that we are now 60 years after what many people consider the Golden Year for Columbia Records and their 30th Street Studio.

    There is another thread in these wonderful forums which talks much more generally about the time of the studio's life and what happened there, but I thought that it would be nice to have a separate thread that tries to show the breadth of people and projects there, and that doing a thread where I share some of my research into the life of the place that's organized by the progression of days would be a decent way to decide what to write about.

    So here it is.

    I also want to show that although there were immortal recording sessions that occurred that year in that place, there were also a HUGE number that were sometimes instantly forgettable and others that took a while to be forgotten. I think that's interesting, too.

    We are nearly halfway through January today, so this first post will be a recap of the days up till now.

    I need to point out that the information I have now is from one source, my visits to the Sony Archives which now encompass both Columbia/CBS and RCA, and there are multiple sources within that one source but for this thread I am only going to use one information source from the Archives, the American Federation of Musicians reports which were generated to be certain that their members were paid appropriately.

    There was not a report for every single session, I'm not sure why, so this thread will not necessarily be exhaustive nor complete (I'm mostly going to limit to one session per day because that will be more manageable) but will give an idea and hopefully will be interesting. Even though I find it fascinating to see who was in the building in the same day at different times, looking at one session per day will be enough work.

    I hope some of you may be interested enough to look into who these people were and report back. I don't have time, although I do have the inclination, to look up each person or group and see what they did during their careers. (When looking at session information I often find myself going down rabbit holes and getting completely sidetracked and not solving the initial problem or question, and I'm going to try to refrain from that for this thread if possible, so please feel free to flesh out anything you find interesting.)

    So, in January of 1959 the first session in the books at 30th St. was on the 5th, with Schola Cantorum and Igor Stravinsky and his orchestra recording his composition "Threni (Lament of Jeremiah)", from 10:30am to 1pm. There was a large orchestra for this, I count 43 players in total for this session and one the next day. Some players were only one day and some were both.

    Now I'm going to already break my one-session-per-day rule because there were other interesting sessions on that same day.

    From 3-7pm, Robert Craft, Stravinsky's right hand man in many ways of his life, conducted pretty much the same orchestra recording Schonberg's "Five Pieces for Orchestra,Op. 16" and Alban Berg's "Altenberg Lieder". There are mentions in some Stravinsky bios about how Craft and Stravinsky piggybacked Craft's sessions on Stravinsky's to get recording time and save money doing so. It's interesting to see that first hand.

    To give you further flavor of how busy the studio could be, from 7-10pm Kai Winding and Sextet recorded "Charleston", "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe", "St. Louis Blues", and "Lower Boneville".

    And from midnight to 3:30am (not sure if it's actually the morning of the 5th or the 6th; the studio appointments would include the wee hours as being part of the night before so that crew would know they were staying up late that night rather than getting up early the next day), George DeWitt with Joe Sherman and his Orchestra recorded "That's Amore", "It's All In The Game", "Come Closer To Me", and "Non Dimenticar". I know nothing about George DeWitt but Joe Sherman was a staff producer at Columbia, and "...and his Orchestra" was a common way to describe either an actual orchestra or a group of session musicians working on that session, who would be a different group on the next "...and his Orchestra" session.

    That's all the 5th.

    On the 6th there was another Stravinsky session at the same time working on the same material with some subset of the 43 players.

    On the 7th David Oppenheim and the Budapest String Quartet recorded Brahms' "Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in B Minor Op. 115" and Mozart's "Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in A Major (K. 581)" over two 3-hour sessions. Also there was another George DeWitt session, this time with Ray Ellis and His Orchestra.

    The 8th had another session of David and the BSQ working on the same pieces.

    They were at it again on the 9th in the morning, as well as Sammy Kaye and His Orchestra in the evening recording "Leave the Door Wide Open", "Madonna In the Rain", and "Dah Dee". Pianist Charles Rosen was recording Ravel in the afternoon.

    The 10th had The Startime Kids with Sebastian Mure and His Orchestra recording "The Railroad Song" and some others. The Startime Kids seemed to be cast members of a local NYC TV show who were seeking stardom (Connie Francis and Andy Bey seemed to be members at different times), but as near as I've been able to find the show stopped in 1957 so I don't get what this 1959 session was about. Sebastian Mure was better known as Billy Mure, who was a guitarist and composer. There were pictures posted in the 30th St. thread showing a bunch of kids in the studio that we couldn't identify, and they may have been these people.

    There were no sessions on the 11th, that may have been a Sunday.

    On the 12th, 13th, and 14th, guitarist Rey de la Torrey recorded Rodrigo's "Zarabanda Lejana" and eight other songs.

    Also on the 13th, 14th, and 15th, Percy Faith and His Orchestra (of 42 pieces) recorded "Catfish Corner", "A Woman is a Sometime Thing", "Summertime", and a bunch of other songs from Porgy and Bess.

    Finally for this post, the 15th also had the Gerry Mulligan Quartet recording in the evening "Festive Minor", "What Is There To Say", "My Funny Valentine", and "News From Blueport".

    Hope this is interesting; I guarantee the next post on the 16th will be shorter.
     
  2. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    January 16:

    There were two sessions today. The second one, from 7-10:30pm, was with Kai Winding and sextet. Songs recorded were "Shuffle Off to Buffalo"; "Kalamazoo" (definite city theme to this session!); "Mobile"; and "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas".

    Since I'm only going to write about one session today, I took the time to look up trombonist Kai Winding on Wikipedia, since, as I mentioned, I don't know anything about him.

    He was born in Aarhus, Denmark to a U.S. citizen father and Danish mother. (Aside: The TC Electronic headquarters and factory at least used to be in Aarhus, and my wife and I took an ocean-going ferry across from the island that Copenhagen is on to visit the factory, so it's cool to read that a famous person was from there. Kai Winding wasn't discussed while we were there, however.)

    He often worked with JJ Johnson, and did the first recording of the song "Time Is On My Side" in 1963, predating Irma Thomas' and The Rolling Stones' recordings of that great song.

    OMG! There's even a Wikipedia page about that wonderful song!

    Back to this session: These recordings were indeed for an album of songs about American cities, and it has a Wikipedia page, too. The others were recorded on January 5 (mentioned above) and in late 1958.

    The sextet on this session was made up of

    Trombone
    - Winding
    - Frank Rehak
    - Rodney Charles Levitt
    - Richard Hixson

    Piano
    - Hank Jones

    Drums
    - Osie Johnson

    Bass
    - Milton J. Hinton

    (Someone in the other thread commented about another session that it was fun to see the formality of these names. That totally depended on the secretary writing the report; there are years of other reports where all that we see is "R. Levitt" or the equivalent and no statement of their instrument. I'm hoping to get familiar with names and instrumentation so I'll be able to fill in those blanks in the future.)

    I wanted to take a minute and talk a little about Frank Rehak. He was also a sideman to Miles Davis and probably others at this time, and there are videos on Youtube of the Davis/Gil Evans recordings (although not done at the sessions) for "So What", "The Duke", and probably others. (Cool, the chalkboard at the start of The Duke shows that Rod Levitt was on that one, too.).

    To me, Frank looks So Cool in the So What video when he's not playing, chatting and smoking in the background while waiting for his part to roll around. In fact, the rest of his life was a mess complicated by his heroin addiction, which ultimately caused him to quit music altogether and work helping others overcome addiction.

    But looking him up for this thread this minute, I now know that's not entirely accurate.

    Thanks to a website created by Doug Robinson, who met him while volunteering at Synanon in 1969 at age 15, there's much more to his story. There are a lot of stories, recordings, and videos there; I feel better from reading it. Frank did a lot of good for people later in his life, and he didn't quit music altogether after all.

    Killer quote from Doug on the site: "I watched him evolve from an obviously talented but sad mess, worn ragged by addictions and all of the accompanying problems, into a generous and joyous teacher, husband, mentor and friend. It is no exaggeration to describe Frank as an inspiration to thousands of other addicts who came to Synanon, desperate for one last chance. Over the years, Frank's story and personal demonstration proved that it was indeed possible to come back swinging hard."

    Nice, huh?

    There were no sessions January 17 and 18, so the next post will be the 19th.
     
  3. Chris C

    Chris C Music was my first love and it will be my last!

    Location:
    Ohio
    I like this thread already, thanks!!!
     
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  4. +1!
     
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  5. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    January 19th:

    There were two sessions today.

    The first, from 2:30-5:30pm, was another by Rey de la Torre (n0 "y" at the end like I mistakenly wrote earlier), classical guitarist.

    The only song fully recorded was Albeniz' "Torre Bermeja (Serenata)".

    Additional takes were made of:

    -Tarrega: "Minuetto"
    -Falla: "Homenage a Debussy"
    -Albeniz: "Luyenda"
    -Grandos: "La Maja de Goya"
    -Tarrega: "Mazurka"

    If you look up those song titles I believe you will find they are all on the Epic album "The Romantic Guitar", which conveniently for our purposes came out in 1959. The earlier January sessions were for this album as well.

    Rey de la Torre's full name was Jose Rey de la Torre, and as his Wikipedia entry linked there says, he was born in Cuba and was a child prodigy guitarist there. His family sent him to Barcelona at age 14 or 15 to study with Miguel Llobet. His Wikipedia entry talks about de la Torre, too, and we learn that Llobet was a student of Francisco Tarrega, whose music de la Torre recorded at this session.

    Here is an active website called Classical Guitar which has an interesting thread that includes someone who knew Rey and someone else talking about owning de la Torre's original guitar, and still another person saying they were the broker for that guitar sale.

    Here are the notes from another Rey de la Torre album, the only one I could find on CD. It has a more expanded view of his life and work.

    Many of these articles talked about how much the classical guitarists had a difficult time getting recordings in which they liked the sound of their guitars. They must have loved 30th Street.

    The second session this day was in the evening with the Teddy Wilson Trio, and since they also recorded on the 21st but there were no other sessions that day, we'll talk more about him in a couple days.

    I find that I'm having a ridiculously easy time misspelling many names, so my apologies if there are mistakes not yet corrected.
     
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  6. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    January 20:

    There were two sessions today, too.

    The first, from 10am-1pm, was with David Tudor, who we met in the other thread when he was playing an electronically tricked-out bandoneon with Gordon Mumma piecing together the electronic processing. (To be fair, "piecing together" was SOP for audio processing in those days, including anything beyond the most basic non-broadcasting mixing console.) Tudor's Wikipedia page is fine as far as it goes, but I felt I learned more from this much more complete and detailed chronicle of his life and work, which not only extensively discusses Mumma but also has several sections written by him.

    Today, however, DT was playing his primary instrument, the piano, since this is before he mostly lost interest in it and entered other pursuits. This session recorded Karlheinz Stockhausen's pieces "Klavierstucke Nr. 5, Nr. 7, and Nr. 8". In that second more complete Tudor bio link, we learn that he was a favored performer for both John Cage and Stockhausen, and that someone else was quoted as saying that Tudor "could play the raisins in a slice of fruitcake". The author further explains that "in New York, ... Tudor had long been regarded less as a performer than an instrument, an exploratory instrument for musical experimentation."

    He later became more of a composer and electronic music circuitry experimenter and originator.

    Wikipedia says that Stockhausen had dedicated his composition "Klavierstucke 6" to Tudor in 1955. Although it was not on today's program, he was back in 30th St. later in the month recording a Klavierstucke which (alas) the secretary did not feel the need to enumerate.

    The Discogs summary of Klavierstucke releases only contains two Swiss releases, neither of which seems to have been recorded at this session or in New York, so I'm not sure how to listen to these pieces as recorded in 30th St.

    Karlheinz Stockhausen was a student of Darius Milhaud, and there are LOTS of pictures of Milhaud in 30th St. and Liederkranz at various times in his life, so I wonder if Stockhausen was there, too. Now I sort of know what he looks like I'll try and keep an eye open for him. Skimming quickly through Google Images for him, I don't recognize any as being in 30th St, although there are lots of enjoyable shots of him in front of mixing consoles and improbably-curved graphic equalizers.

    The other session today was with Jimmy Mundy and His Orchestra, but since they were back on the 22nd and there were no other sessions that day we'll talk about him then.
     
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  7. ad180

    ad180 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I love this thread, Dan. Thanks for doing it... and I'm always interested in learning more about Stockhausen.
     
  8. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    That's great, ad; I don't really know anything about Stockhausen or most of these people. What you're seeing is what I do when I find someone I don't know: I look them up and read a bit and try to find pictures of them and what they did.

    Wikipedia is great but finding that second thing that had much more extensive info about Tudor and the writings of Mumma about made me flip. I love finding that kind of stuff, and it was only a few minutes work if that.

    Please post your favorite bits about him (and anyone else that comes up*), particularly recordings that either relate to 30th St. or are especially notable examples of the work. Like I said, seeing pictures of him in other situations with mounds of electronic gear of various types was enjoyable.

    I think finding out the things that made these people who were in 30th St qualified (that maybe should be in quotes) to be there, that's interesting and fleshes them out and gives them dimension.

    Glad you are liking this.

    *This bit goes for everyone with an interest.

    Edit: One other thing:

    Is it working to have all these links to further information about a subject? I'm doing it obviously to give more info without having to strain it through me, and also without having to have posts that are typewritten pages and pages long.

    Also, the interested reader now has links to the same sources I'm finding when I look up someone that I'm unfamiliar with, which covers a LOT of people. And I don't have pictures already of most of these sessions or people, so if I post pictures they would just be pictures that I find at a link. So this thread is not likely to have a lot of pictures visible.

    The drawback is that these links may cease to function at some point, so this thread may not be forever.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2019
  9. This.
     
  10. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    January 21:

    There was only one session today at 30th St., and it was the second of a short series of two by The Teddy Wilson Trio, with Arvell Shaw on bass and Burt Dahlender (sic, in AFM Report, actually Dahlander) on drums.

    The songs recorded over these two sessions were all written by Gershwin, and resulted in this album:

    [​IMG]

    The liner notes were written by Irving Townsend, which would indicate perhaps that he was the producer:

    [​IMG][/url]

    and you can see what songs were recorded over the two days (7-10pm on the 19th, 7-11pm today).

    In case W. B. is reading this, here is the label for side two (side one was a little blurry on the Discogs site for this album)

    [​IMG]

    Hey, there's pictures in this thread!

    It seems appropriate that we should be talking about Teddy Wilson today, which happens to be Martin Luther King Day in America.

    In 1936, he became (according to John Hammond on p. 159 of his autobiography) "the first Negro musician to join an all-white band" when he became part of the touring Benny Goodman band.

    To be sure, Wilson had been on at least several of Goodman's recordings since at least 1935, but having black musicians on white bands' records and having them play at live performances on stage were two very different things and Wilson with Goodman was the first to break that barrier.

    Their relationship was not entirely roses, however. As Hammond says in his autobiography (p. 148):

    "...Benny and Teddy knew each other well and complemented each other's talent marvelously, although they never really got along. Wilson was suspicious of everybody, particularly whites, even though, as I believed when I first met him, he was uniquely qualified to handle the delicate challenge of working with white musicians in public. ... That he handled the role (ed.: being the first) successfully there is no doubt, yet he and Benny were never at ease with each other. At the Chicago telecast of The World of John Hammond, filmed in the summer of 1975, Esme (ed.: Hammond's wife at the time) and I were sitting with Teddy waiting for Benny Goodman to arrive. 'They're really rolling out the red carpet for Benny,' Esme observed to Teddy. 'Yes', he said, 'and it ought to be live coals.'"

    Wilson was music director for The Dick Cavett Show, which I think is notable.

    Bassist Arvell Shaw was best known for being Louis Armstrong's bassist for 25 years, spread out between 1945 and the late '60's. Here is a brief undated interview with him.

    This obituary of Swedish drummer Burt Dahlander says he came to New York in 1958, while this album on cassette description on Phil Schaap's website says he moved to America in 1954. Regardless, he played with a lot of great musicians of the era during his 83 years.

    John Hammond was a significant figure in music on many levels and during many eras, and Googling him or reading books about him is time well-spent. In skimming his autobiography today with what I know now compared to what I knew a few years ago when reading it, I see lots of avenues for pursuit that didn't occur to me then. Did anybody here know that in 1933 Columbia had a recording studio at 55 5th Avenue in NYC? (p. 114) I didn't.

    I need to read it again and take notes this time.
     
  11. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    January 22:

    Only one session in 30th St. today in the AFM reports, with Jimmy Mundy and His Orchestra. This is a duplicate of the one on the 20th, with nearly the same players (see below) and nearly the same times, from 2:30pm both days and ending at 5:30 on the 20th and 6 today.

    I like his bio on Allmusic by Scott Yanow better than the Wikipedia one, and here it is, with the addition of some paragraphing:

    "One of the finer arrangers of the swing era, Jimmy Mundy never became a big name to the general public, but musicians of the era certainly knew who he was. He played tenor in various local bands and when he was hired by Earl Hines in 1932, he originally played in the orchestra. However, it was his charts (including his original "Cavernism," "Everything Depends on You," and "Copenhagen") that gave him a strong reputation.

    "In 1936, he became a staff arranger for Benny Goodman, writing arrangements for such pieces as "Bugle Call Rag," "Jumpin' at the Woodside," "Swingtime in the Rockies," "Solo Flight," and "Sing, Sing, Sing." He also wrote charts for Count Basie, Gene Krupa, Paul Whiteman, Dizzy Gillespie (1949), and Harry James, among many others, and remained active into the 1970s. Jimmy Mundy led relatively few sessions: a small-group date in 1937, four songs by his short-lived orchestra in 1939, a few existing broadcasts of his 1946 Los Angeles band, and he led two obscure Epic albums during 1958-1959." (The links within that quote are from Allmusic; we'll see if they translate when copy/pasted.)

    (Edit: Hey, the links work!)

    Strangely, Allmusic doesn't know anything about the second of those "two obscure Epic albums", but Discogs does.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    With any luck you can read the uncredited album notes and can see the song titles, but the author doesn't name the remarkable group of studio musicians who made the music on all the songs. Hmmm, Irving Townsend got credit on the other album, I wonder what happened here?

    Actually, I do have some schedule information for 1959, and looking at that see that Jane Friedman was the producer. I'm afraid I know very little about her other than that she was a producer at Columbia around this time. After first learning about her, I found an article that someone named Jane Friedman who was about the right age was leaving the right kind of job to leave from after having worked at CBS; I sent an email describing my 30th St. project but never got a reply. As always, if anyone knows more about her please contribute.

    The musicians for both sessions:

    Contractor and sax: Budd Johnson
    Trumpet: Harry Edison
    Trombone: Jimmy Cleveland
    Sax: Jerome Richardson (22nd) Haywood Henry (20th)
    Guitar: Kenny Burrell
    Drums: Don Lamond
    Bass: Joe Benjamin
    Piano: Jimmy Jones (22nd) Dave Martin (20th)

    Harry "Sweets" Edison was a famous trumpet player with Count Basie, and was a prolific studio player in his later years. I have to admit to being confused, because his Wikipedia page says that he relocated to the West Coast in the early '50s and was very busy there. If so, would he have been at these NYC sessions?

    But there was a link on his Wiki to an album with Budd Johnson, and it shows that they were both in NYC in 1960 recording that album, so apparently Sweets went to NYC periodically.

    The rest of the players are undoubtedly also worthy of further exploration, but I need to stop today.

    I'm liking having pictures of the albums here, and will do my best to continue.
     
  12. jamo spingal

    jamo spingal Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    Dan, you could also be writing a reference book with virtually the same text. I’m sure there would be an audience for a hardback volume.
     
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  13. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    I like hardbacks.

    How would the links be handled? To me that ability adds a lot of depth, if the reader is so inclined.
     
  14. jamo spingal

    jamo spingal Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    References, but in reality you'd probably have to describe a fair bit of the material so it would be a lot more work to create a hard copy.
     
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  15. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    January 23:

    There were three sessions today; the one I'm going to go on about is the first one of the day, from 10am to 1pm.

    It's listed as "Morton Feldman compositions played by String Quartet". Players were:

    -Matthew Raimondi, leader and violin;
    -Joseph Rabushka, violin;
    -Walter Trampler, viola;
    -Seymore Barab, cell0.

    Songs recorded were:

    Morton Feldman: Structures for String Quartet (4 parts);

    Morton Feldman: Three Pieces for String Quartet
    -No. 1
    -No. 2
    -No. 3

    There are no numbers associated with these recordings, which is unusual. Ordinarily there are some unique numbers with each song on these sheets. Those numbers were used to follow a recording throughout its life, so that you could know exactly WHICH recording of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy or whatever that you were dealing with: was it the one by the Andrews Sisters recorded in 1943 or whatever, or was it the one they recorded in 1962 or whatever, or was it the one that someone else recorded in 1985? The number let you know for sure.

    The only album I could quickly find with these songs and players on Amazon is a compilation one, with both Feldman and John Cage's music. The second review indicates there was an earlier Columbia album, and looking at Discogs, where I should have gone first, shows there was indeed an earlier release on the "Columbia Odyssey" label, which I haven't heard of until now. But I'm not able to quickly find a picture of that release. This one looks like this:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    and we see the same songs at the bottom of the list.

    Those who read my other thread here, about the 30th St. Studio, know that we saw pictures of the Cage sessions taken by Fred Plaut. The Discogs listing has dates of the sessions and tells us that in addition to today's for the Feldman pieces, there were two more, on December 31, 1958 and February 12, 1959, while the Cage sessions were in 1969. Liner notes and producer for all sessions was David Behrman, and engineering all sessions were Fred Plaut and Tim Geelan. Since Fred's career covered all the dates but I thought Tim's was later, I wonder if Fred was recording engineer for all and Tim was the editor for all?

    The other sessions that day were with The Joe Wilder Quartet, from 7pm-midnight, with

    Bass: Milton Hinton;
    Drums: John Creci, Jr.;
    Piano: Hank Jones

    They also recorded on January 18, but it was filed under the 23rd and that's why I didn't report it then.

    Also this day were Vic Damone with Abe Osser and His Orchestra, from 2:30-5:30pm.

    Finally for this post, last night I realized what I'm doing with this thread: identifying which albums were recorded in 30th St., beyond the "Kind of Blue" and "Take Five" level. As we've seen from the covers, they don't always say where they were recorded and having the song titles and dates makes it comparatively easy to suss that out.
     
  16. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    There were no sessions on January 24 or 25.
     
  17. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    January 26:

    Only one session today, from 10am-1pm. It was apparently a followup of the session on the 10th with The Startime Kids, with Billy Mure and His Orchestra.

    Here is what I wrote about the session on the 10th:

    ..."The Startime Kids with Sebastian Mure and His Orchestra recording "The Railroad Song" and some others. The Startime Kids seemed to be cast members of a local NYC TV show who were seeking stardom (Connie Francis and Andy Bey seemed to be members at different times), but as near as I've been able to find the show stopped in 1957 so I don't get what this 1959 session was about. Sebastian Mure was better known as Billy Mure, who was a guitarist and composer. There were pictures posted in the 30th St. thread showing a bunch of kids in the studio that we couldn't identify, and they may have been these people."

    I just looked at those pictures in the other thread and they are clearly from before 1956.In fact, The Startime Kids TV show actually went off the air in 1955, so the session today was NOT the Startime Kids from the TV show. Also, that show was run by George Scheck; when it went off the air he became the manager of Connie Francis and that relationship extended for 30 years.

    The session on the 10th had a large and distinguished orchestra:

    Leader and possibly guitar: Sebastian (Billy) Mure
    Contractor: Edward Goldberg
    Sax: Jerome Richardson, Curtis Ousley (later known as King Curtis)
    Guitar: Art Ryerson, Al Caiola
    Piano: Joseph Irving (seems like it was probably Irving Joseph, though)
    Drums: Jack Saunders, David Francis (possibly Panama Francis)
    Bass: Milt Hinton

    The session on the 10th was from 2-6pm, but resulted in 6 songs:

    -The Railroad Song (with the Startime Kids)
    -The Railroad Song (march) (with the Startime Kids)
    -With Plenty of Money and You (with the Startime Kids)
    -I Don't Want To Walk Without You, Baby (with the Startime Kids)
    -Stardust (Billy Mure and His Orchestra)
    -Conga Blues (Billy Mure and His Orchestra)

    Today's session had a much smaller orchestra, went from 10am-1pm, and only recorded one song:

    Leader and Guitar: Sebastian Mure
    Contractor and Percussion: Edward Goldberg
    Sax: Jerome Richardson
    Drums: Philip Kraus

    -The Railroad Song (a redo?)

    Billy Mure, based on his Discogs and Wikipedia pages, was clearly a go-getter trying all kinds of things to make a career in music and succeeding on numerous occasions in being involved in top projects.

    I have looked over multiple days and have been totally unable to find any information about this Startime Kids project of his, though, other than finding a picture of a promotional 45 of The Railroad Song:

    [​IMG]

    Each of those musicians is worthy of much discussion, but it'll have to happen in another place at another time.
     
  18. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    January 27:

    One session today, from 2:30-6pm, by another musician who is a legend in his world but probably unknown to most people outside that world.

    The artist's name on the recording report is Agustin Castellon, his full name was Agustin Castellon Campos, but he was better known as Sabicas. I have just read many reports from knowledgeable people that he single handedly changed the world of Flamenco Guitar playing.

    Most or all of the songs recorded today and on February 5 (there may be another session as well that I haven't gotten to) resulted in the album "Flamenco Puro", and here are pictures of the original Columbia release from that wonderful linked Discogs site:

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    They even have a picture of the Matrix/Runout stampings:

    [​IMG]

    for those who are into that.

    The Columbia label "Adventures In Sound" has not appeared in the other thread or here before; anyone know what that's about? I assume it's the International part of Columbia USA but is it really?

    The CD that's for sale on Amazon (reviews above) is on the "History del Flamenco" label, but that album has been issued on many different labels from the beginning, per Discogs.

    Here is a very enjoyable video of him playing much later in life (ignore the wig):

    Flamenco guitar - Sabicas - Granadinas - Veojam

    One other thing that I'm really enjoying: one of the reviewers on Amazon complains about a very serious low frequency rumble. Steve Epstein and others have talked about how the furnace in 30th St emitted a nasty low frequency rumble while in use, and I have to assume that this is what the reviewer is talking about. What better album to hear that unadulterated and unmasked rumble than solo flamenco guitar? I placed my order today. I also commented to the reviewer to maybe clear up what that was and why it was there in January/February in New York City.

    Lastly, my plans have changed and I think I'm not going to spend the whole year doing this thread every day. I'm planning to get through January so there is a record of the variety of recording at 30th St., and then pursue the book idea that was floated up-page. It seems like a good idea to have a bound reference rather than simply a thread. I appreciate the burst of likes today, as I was thinking that maybe this is fascinating to no one but me. Glad that I'm wrong.
     
  19. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Columbia Adventures In Sound Series | musiceureka

    It's possible, although I wouldn't necessarily assume that.

    Looks like Sabicas must have been signed to Hispavox, and this was recorded/released in agreement with them.

    Hispavox
    Sabicas - Flamenco Puro
     
  20. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Michael P likes this.
  21. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    January 28:

    One session today, from 10am-1pm, with David Tudor continuing his work on Karlheinz Stockhausen Klavierstucke (see January 20 above), with no further enumeration.

    Since Mr. Stockhausen has come up again, I'll share some pictures that I found of him with mixing equipment, although none are at 30th St and were probably not taken today in 1959:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Since three of the pictures seem to show him mixing his music at some kind of performance, I posted this series at a live sound site that I frequent but nobody offered any ideas what the gear was. Anybody here know?

    The first one is the most interesting to me, since it shows him in front of what look like graphic equalizers, but the sliders on each must be about 10" long, which is preposterous compared to any graphic equalizer I've ever seen.

    #2, 3, and 5 are the live gig ones, and 2 and 3 look like very homemade equipment, with only volume controls, although I found a story someone sent to a website saying that he (the writer) had been a sound operator at a theater and Stockhausen needed a remote tape transport controller built to allow starting and stopping of remote tape players from the house mix position, so the guy did build that and it worked fine. So maybe this stuff in the pictures is analogous to that.

    #4 is self-captioned, so we know that it's 1971 in Cologne in that studio.

    #5 appears to be relatively recently (he died in 2007) at a more modern mixer, but I can't quite see what brand.

    Sorry about the size variations, but these are what I found.
     
    bluemooze likes this.
  22. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    They do? I assumed they were all studio photos until I read what you wrote.
     
  23. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    I also wouldn't necessarily point to the furnace. I'd think the mastering engineer would roll off rumble for a flamenco guitar recording, both when going tape to lacquer, or tape to CD; in 1959 or today.
     
    lukpac likes this.
  24. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle

    The EQs are more accurately just filters, shown halfway down this page:

    Stockhausen: Sounds in Space: Stockhausen on Electronic Music (1952-1960) --------- WDR Electronic Music Studio Tour (2015)

    Click on the pic for a blow-up.

    Zillions of photos of Stockhausen and his gear with some Googling.
     
    DMortensen and lukpac like this.
  25. MattyDC

    MattyDC Forum Resident

    Location:
    The DMV
    This is waaaaay better than my "Baseball 365 Trivia Desk Calendar"!!

    A massive effort but one that certainly is appreciated by me.
     
    jamo spingal and DMortensen like this.
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