Dobie Gray "Look At Me" from 1962, Gold Star Studios. Tracking down the master on this 1 wacky song.

I thought a few of you might find this interesting. I had never heard this "Northern Soul" classic in my life until I started working on the Crusader Dobie Gray stuff a few years ago. I was just tonight laughing and thinking over in my mind how crazy it sometimes is trying to find the "right" version of something, even a minor song like this. Should be easy if the tapes have survived (like this one) but it's not always that cut and dried.

The piles of tape reels on just this one song had me scratching my head. Nothing was clearly marked "final" anywhere. The song was recorded at Gold Star in 1962 by Larry Levine and released on Fred Darian's CorDak label locally. In my line of working, digging out something like this is always interesting. It's either there (in master tape form) or it's not there, simple as that. But with Gold Star, ANYTHING is possible and usually (MAKE THAT ALWAYS) when something is marked "Master", it is far from it!

Artists (some) loved recording at Gold Star. The talent loved it because of the relaxed atmosphere and the producers loved it because of the low rates and the ability to skirt by union rules regarding overdubbing and experiementing.

So, Fred Darian (singer, producer of "The IN Crowd", etc.) did this one session at Gold Star for his new label.

It started out as music only, no vocal because Fred didn't have a clue which of his artists was going to record it. So on 5/15/62, he got his usual "early Wrecking Crew" guys together and laid down the rhythm track of "Look At Me". I have TWO REELS of that attempt in twin track stereo. I mean two FULL 10" reels, 15 ips, about one hour of music.

They picked (get this) sections from many takes to piece together the 2 minutes they wanted to use for the song and that edited part is at the end of reel two.

So, now it's time for the trombone and trumpet overdubs. That's on the 6/10/62. The twin-track "pieced" version is now bounced to another twin-track stereo machine on the left channel while the new horns are recorded live on the right channel. You guessed it, another reel & 1/2 of that! At the end of the second reel is the "pieced" version of what they thought were the best parts of all.

After lunch they came back and Fred decided that the track needed some punching up so they brought back the great drummer Jesse Sailes (Chris Montez' "Let's Dance" and a million other wonderful hits) to overdub some drum wacks.

So, again, they bounced the rhythm and the horns to a new tape while overdubbing Jesse's drums on the second channel. A full reel of that with the final version take 10. No edits this time.

Confused? Wait. Now it's time for the vocal attempts. Dobie Gray is going to do the lead vocal and on 6-11-62, he is brought in to Gold Star to do it. They take the twin track bounce down, and redub AGAIN to the left channel of a NEW twin-track stereo tape while Dobie sings his lead on the right channel. Two more 10" reels of this with the final version being a pieced version of 5 different takes.

Now, the next day, the background singers come in. Another three reels of them recording their "answer" voices to Dobie, in another bounce, this time keeping the "stereo" intact by recording on the same channel as Dobie and keeping all the music on the left. Larry Levine didn't do this for "stereo" playback, he did it so he could control the vocals in the final mix.

So, they edited together what they felt were the best segments of the girls attempts and that was that for a little while. A week later, Larry mixed the thing to mono.

First he did a regular mono mix from the final pieced twin-track. All those mixing attempts are on another FULL 10" reel, with the last marked as best try. The day after, he dubbed THAT best try on to another tape with a different EQ, boosting the bass, etc. There is a full reel of THAT as well, with different EQ patterns, etc. One was picked (the middle one).

That was the final single version that was cut for CorDak. The single sold some but not much. It later (1965) ended up on the Dobie Gray "In Crowd" LP on Crusader with yet another dub from the EQ dub of the mono master of the twin track, this time adding some more top end (that it didn't need).

All that for just this one song. All of those crazy (and aurally degrading) tape to tape bounce downs, something no major studio would have ever done. I have 15 more Dobie Gray songs with the same amount (or more) of backup reels. It's crazy. However, since they had the good sense to save the twin-track stereo version of this song (which sounds wonderful, much better than what was used to cut the 45 or the LP), one day hopefully, you can hear it.

So, Gold Star was the King Studio of doing this kind off spontaneous production and that's one of the reasons why a producer like Phil Spector liked the place (and the engineering legends Larry Levine, Stan Ross, Dave Gold, etc. that made it all happen.) The engineers were willing to do all kinds of stuff to get what the producer wanted, didn't have to be live all in one take, it could be done in stages with no union rep breathing down their necks. Perfect for Phil's Wall Of Sound.

This is also why some (most) of the Spector stuff sounds so ragged, tone-wise. So many bounces, etc. When Fred Darian and Dobie did "I'm In With The In Crowd" (original title) at Gold Star in 1964 they pretty much did the same thing again, production wise except this time there was a three-track machine in there (thanks to Phil Spector) to help it along a bit. But the song didn't start out on the three-track, it was done as a mono backing track without any lyrics or a clue in the world as to what it would become or how much of a hit it would be. So even more of a crazy creation, this time taking almost 3 months.

So this is LOOK AT ME. Counting all the tapes and sessions used to record this record, there must be combined about 30 edits in this 2 minute song! I can still hear each one of them go by. My curse...

 

12 full reels, dude!

 

Well, I don't want to lose the feel of the original by doing some digital bullcrap recreation (basically my own remix) so I'll use the twin track "final". It was mixed by Larry and has his style all over it. Larry was a personal friend of mine and I miss him all the time...

 

Sure you can, on each phrase, the beat goes a little "off" whenever there is an edit piece, usually before the horns go "ehh ehh".. Try again. :^)

 

Yeah, it's a neat song. Gold Star Studio magic at budget rates!

 

Fascinating stuff Steve, it sounds like you need the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes in order to track some of these tapes and what they did down.

 

No idea about what still survives on the Spector stuff. Bill Inglot would know. Mamas & Papas, nothing.

The reason the Dobie Gray stuff survived like that is because it was stored at Gold Star all of these years as a personal favor to Fred Darian. When the studio closed, Dave Gold called Fred and told him to come get it all and he did. When Dave called others (a few famous people) and requested they pick up their tapes they said they couldn't care less, if you can believe it.