Bill Putnam, recording engineer of Ray Charles "I Can't Stop Loving You"

Ask me anything about the recording of I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU. It's still in my brain from when I was working on remastering it back in the late 1980s with Ray Charles.

 

Sounds like a big room, doesn't it? Nope, that's the SMALLER room at United, studio B. Bill was the master of echo and since he invented it for recording, he does it well.

Notice how he spreads the strings out? The high strings on the left, the lower strings on the right, Ray's piano on the left with the guitar and bass, drums and chorus on the right, Ray in the middle with all kinds of yummy bleed. Done live to two-track and single track. Ray did all of those songs for the album in one day at United.

Funny, I used to HATE the sound of I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU, all murk, no goosh but as my stereo got better the song's tonality got better until now I couldn't imagine it any other way..

 

Well, basically one could say that this applies to every recording I own but especially the Milton T. Putnam stuff!

 

Milton was definitely a knowledgable, capable, creative, forward-thinking engineer who deserves many plaudits for many accomplishments, and some of his recordings are amazing. I just wish he was better at resisting the urge to tinker and tweak sometimes. He could be too daring for his own good, and/or the good of the final product.

That said, he did do stunningly awesome things, like the recording with Patti Page singing FOUR vocal parts on a recording, all done pre-tape, via a combination of transcription disc and wire recording. Very few engineers could have pulled that off! Here's a truly awful transfer that somebody posted on YouTube, but in real life the sound is quite nice, and the song and performance themselves are gorgeous:


EDIT: This recording was originally billed as "The Patti Page Quartet" on vinyl!

 

Thanks for that. Peter Suthiem was my old boss at Pacifica (KPFK).

 

United Studio B, 1962. This was the room that I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU was recorded in, control room designed by owner/engineer Milton T. "Bill" Putnam.

 

Here one by "The Jane Turzy Trio" -- that's Jane singing three vocal parts (thanks to Putnam), with Putnam's famous echo effects (not reverb so much, more of a delay/Elvis thing this time), in a song WRITTEN BY PUTNAM (cool -- royalties!) right after his echo thing "hit" and he was in full promotion mode.

 

Did studio B ever get a 175b limiter, like studio A had? Compare your photo to these:

 

I know they had a stereo pair (you can hear them working nicely on I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU). I have a feeling they are in a rack somewhere..

 

(Pointlessly closed thread reopened.)

Ever Google BILL PUTNAM UNITED and see what comes up?

Ol' Bill, Sr., sure looks a lot like his kid!