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

In still more news, while I was in the neighborhood of the studio I went to the former Sheik Restaurant, which we agreed was at 132 Lexington, right?

The workers there had no knowledge of anything before them being in the same storefront, except that there had been a tile store there and there was still fancy tile in the floor.

It is indeed an Indian (Asia) supply store, and is an explosion of color and cool stuff inside. Here are some pictures:

View from front of store to back:



Exotic floor tile:



View through the front of the store that was in "On The Record" with Glenn Gould, Howard Scott, and Don Hunstein.



Hard to believe that narrow little place was a coffee shop.

The outside front of the store was too dark to get decent shots.

I did fill them in a little on who was there and what movie it was in, but I'm not sure they knew who Glenn Gould was...

And hey, this is page 100!

 

I think id’ve preferred a continuous video, sped up to fit the time!

 

I don't have the right kind of camera with me. I don't believe mine would keep shooting movies that long. Plus, I didn't plan it at all, just decided while there.

 

I remember seeing that mic in the mic cabinet at 30th Street. I'd never seen one before. And I never saw it being u8sed at 30th Street.

 

The mixing cubicles on the 6th floor of the building on 57th Street had KLH Sixes, mainly for the classical producers, who recognized the KLH's had a flatter frequency response than the huge Altec A7's. We put the KLH's on top of the Altec's.

 

I don't know about 1957, but when I started at Columbia in 1969, he control men chose the mics, plugged them in and positioned them.

 

To the west of the machine room (which was basically part of the control room), there was a rest room and shower, which I was told Goddard had built so he could shower after a day in the studio.

 

CORRECTION, I meant EAST, not WEST.

 

You got the position of Studio D correct. Maybe "Bruno Walter" was a name used for the bathroom and shower which Goddard had built for Bruno Walter?

 

That refers to the poster of Walter that was hanging in the machine room:

 

I don't remember any window to the left of the table. What I remember is that there was no table where one is shown in the photo. That was where the mixing console was, and to go into the studio, one would walk to the right (not shown in the photo), and exit from a door which lead to the narrow hallway. The door to the D studio was from that narrow hallway also, so to go from the control room to the (very small) studio you had to go through two doors. And the large patchbay was behind the console, and the photo doesn't not show any such thing.
Finally, the entrance to control room D was from a door at the left of the room, not the right, as shown in the photo. So, I would conclude the photo is not from Studio D!

 

You are right of course.

 

Moog synthesizer shown in Studio D, definitely. The John Cage session was for a recording of his music for toy piano. I was running tape machines for that session.
I've always wondered if Columbia issued it.

 

Hopefully these photos work:


John Cage, composer-in-residence at UC in 1967, helps pianist Jeanne Kirstein add bolts, pennies and cardboard to the piano strings in preparation to performing one of his uncaged works.(Photo: The Enquirer/Allan Kain)


John Cage, composer-in-residence at UC, listens to pianist Jeanne Kirstein perform one of his compositions in 1967. (Photo: The Enquirer/Allan Kain)

Our history: Short stays by the famous made big impact

"Pianist Jeanne Kirstein, also on the CCM faculty, performed Cage’s works on a “prepared piano,” in which objects such as bolts, pennies, and cardboard were placed between the piano strings, creating “a sort of psychodelic [sic] sound,” The Enquirer wrote."

The original story is in the July 9, 1967 edition of The Cincinnati Enquirer.

 

Hi Doug,

I heard someone, possibly Steve Epstein because I'm not sure who it would have been if not him or you, say that it was the Horowitz Room because it was built for him so he could relax in between takes. I also heard Frank Laico say that an executive had it built so he could have "meetings" with female people from a variety of professions, or so I understood from the way he said it.

Was the access to that room from the studio or the hallway/area behind the control room? Or from the hallway on the East side of the building from street door to studio? The building plans that I got the day we chatted behind the WTC (which you were the first one to see) showed a couple of doors in that little hallway but had no indication of what was behind the doors to the West.

As you know by now, we are always trying to figure out what was never in any pictures, and this is the first new info in quite a while.

Thanks!
Dan

 

I know this picture isn't unique, but this thread could do with some life! I saw these on the CD I'm listening to now.

The beautiful Altecs of 30th St:

 

She may have been doing vocal overdubs for the album. If I recall, back in the 50s and 60’s there were quite a few fake live albums as well.

 

I hope @DMortensen is doing well these days.

While somewhat randomly poking around Poseidon Productions today, James William Guercio's production company, I noticed this:


Moondog (2) - Moondog

That sure looks familiar. Sure enough:


"Recorded at 30th Street Studios"
Moondog (2) - Moondog

 

Amazing!

Moondog was a street artist, minimalistic, appreciated by Zappa.

This was in 1969, and the later cd remixed by John McClure who produced all the stereo Stravinsky recordings for CBS. An openminded man. Or aware of the commercial market?

Fascinating all the same. And some of Moondog's numbers are mesmerizing, if a bit repetitive.

 

Ray Moore: Moore on Moore: Reflections on the Studio Life, Columbia Records (1957-1995)

"Moore on Moore" is a somewhat misleading title as there isn’t much known about Ray Moore. An online search of his name will give you a lengthy discography and only reveal one picture of the man from fifty years ago. For someone who has six Grammy awards with 18 nominations and multiple Gold records, it is a surprise that Ray is a "virtual" ghost. In the music engineering world, however, Ray Moore is a giant. As a staff engineer at Columbia Records for 38 years, Ray worked with everyone from Pierre Boulez to Johnny Cash and was a student of composer Karol Rathaus. I knew about Ray because he was the mixing engineer for Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, an album I wrote a book on [Listen to This: Miles Davis and Bitches Brew]. Through contacts with the engineering group, Friends of 30th Street (30th Street Studio was a studio Ray worked at and spent a great deal of time trying to save), I was able to get in touch with him for help with my project. Then in the summer of 2018, a few years after my book was published, his son Tom got in touch with me with an idea about a memoir on his life.

 

This is so great, thanks for posting. Will have to read that article later when I have some time.

In the book "The Label" about Columbia Record's golden age, I love how hiring people with proper musical training was always prioritized at the organization. That culture slowly died out during the 70s as priorities changed.

dan c

 

Great read! I have a subscription to Tape Op but I guess that was on-line only.

 

Hi Everyone,

Sorry to be MIA; that daily thread about what happened in 30th St. that day was really great but really burned me out on the subject for a while. This is neither my life nor my work, just a fascinating topic that still has no end of interest but clashes with a desire to do other things for a change.

What I came here to post fits very nicely with this likely being the last post on page 100 (in this view):

Sometime this weekend, Frank Laico's widow Collette turned 100! There was a party planned for her that at first I couldn't be at because I had a gig 200 miles away, then with the Covid both the gig and the party were cancelled.

We haven't seen her since August, alas, but she is as spry and with it as ever; you wouldn't think she was over her early 70's, but you would think she was more fun and engaged than a lot of 30 year olds. We talk once in a great while, and I'm trying to call her now to wish her a happy new century, but her line is unremittingly busy, as it should be.

I hope you all are well, and thanks for all the great times here. I hope you are still having them and with other subjects that you enjoy focusing on.