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

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

  1. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    I don't know that we've concluded if outboard mic preamps were used in the 1950s at 30th st. I think Lukpac or DanM will eventually chime in.
     
  2. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I wasn't chiming in because I don't know any specifics, but I would assume they were custom along with the rest of the CBS desks. Is it possible they borrowed another design, or actually integrated third-party gear? Maybe?
     
  3. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Sadly, nearly everyone who knew that setup at the time is gone.

    In other news, I heard the familiar strains of "Company" last weekend on NPR, and it turned out to be an interview of Patti LuPone in the Elaine Stritch role in the latest Broadway revival of Company (and a note of how the pandemic delayed the production and the passing of Sondheim right after seeing this revival).

    The clips NPR was playing were apparently from the 2018 London revival, also with LuPone, recorded at RAK Studios London. It would be interesting to compare the techniques used from 30th St, but I haven't seen any video or photos of the 2018 sessions.

    The entire 2018 album is of course, available for free on YouTube.
     
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  4. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    I had lunch a few years ago (3?4?) with a service tech who started at 30th St before it closed and was still with CBS then, although IIRC he was going to retire later that year. I recorded the conversation but haven't listened to it since; need to find it and remember his name.

    My faulty memory is that the consoles were not quite built in-house but were done by somebody else, like Harvey Electronics or something like that, to CBS designs.

    HEY, looking through the email on this computer and I just found our email exchange and sent him a note, and will post if/when I hear something. It was 2018, which kind of seems like a long time ago in another place.

    Hope you all have a happy Holiday season.
     
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  5. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    He wrote back and said that when he started in 1968, they were just starting to make the transition from the old rotary pot Columbia-designed consoles to the inline fader Columbia-designed consoles, so he never got familiar with anything about the old consoles. We are more familiar with them than he is.

    So no go there.

    I thought of one other guy who might know, George Schowerer, but don't have his email on this computer, maybe on the other one. That'll have to wait.

    Sorry.
     
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  6. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Alright, Lukpac sent the correct email and I wrote to George, who wrote back:

    "Most electronics in Columbia’s equipment were Langevin preamps and line
    Amps, which were the premium brand most often found in studios. Line amps in the remix rooms were Langevin 5117’s The console equalizers were designed by Columbia
    And made by a subsidiary of Harvey radio in upstate New York."

    That must have been George who described all that to me, and maybe it's in the video I made of him back in about 2015 or so?

    It was 2014, and was recorded while George and I were waiting for MMM & buddy to show up for what turned out to be a really delightful 6+ hour conversation and dinner among the 4 of us. George is at



    Glad that I remembered the Harvey connection mostly right...

    Edit: Lukpac will probably chime in that some details of what George describes in that video could not have been exactly as described, and I have no reason to doubt that, but when you're dealing with memories of old people, and I speak as a currently old person, you have to leave some room for adjustment in what you hear.
     
  7. warpedwing

    warpedwing Forum Resident

    Location:
    Astoria, NY
    I just spent the last few days reading this entire thread. Fantastic stuff! I've always been intrigued by the old CBS studios here in NYC, and this has been sucha great read. Thank you for all the excellent info! It pains my heart that these rooms don't exist anymore. What a shame.
     
  8. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Happy belated New Year to thread readers!

    It is mentioned somewhere about the studio (I thought it was in the Wikipedia entry, but that's been revised to remove all pre-studio information :shake: ), that the church building that was later the studio was built by the fairly nearby Madison Square Presbyterian Church to be its religious outpost in the "relatively un-churched Gas House District" (not quite a direct quote).

    As an amateur student of New York City/Manhattan history, I've been looking or at least on the lookout for references to explain what that quoted phrase means, and have finally found something.

    I'm currently reading what is essentially part II of the book Gotham , which is called Greater Gotham. The first one is about 1100 pages and covers the area that turned into the City from its geological formation through 1898, and the second one is about the same length and covers from 1898-1919.

    Since the first one covers more than 2000 years in the same amount of pages as the second one which covers only about 10 years, the resolution of the second is much finer than the first and there are LOTS of details about New York centric activities, projects, and people.

    In any case, I found a couple of references to the Gas House District, and now we will know what that means.

    First, at that time, gas for cooking etc. was made from coal, not natural gas like petroleum. The gas was easier to burn than the coal and to get from a source into an individual house or apartment, needing, for gas, only a huge main storage tank with piping and metering system between the tank and the user rather than, for coal, storage of tons of material at the warehouse/yard and the individual user's point of use, with frequent wagons, drivers, and horses in between.

    So there were large tanks in the neighborhoods served, and in this case the large tank (the biggest in the world at the time) was on East 20th just west of Avenue A (p. 207), which is now in the middle of Peter Cooper Village housing project but then was just another part of town.

    There's another reference in the book that I can't find right now that says the Gas House District was from 14th to 27th and from Gramercy Park or so to the East River, but since there's no line or wall marking neighborhood boundaries, fudging it to 30th St. is not inconceivable. And perhaps that fudging was only done by whoever said the church building was in the Gas House District.

    What's confusing to me is that the parent church, the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, was also technically within the Gas House District or maybe a block or two out of it, in the same way that 30th St. was, so why did they need an outpost not that far away? At most 30th and 3rd is 4 blocks North and 4 blocks East from the parent church, but that was far enough for them to build a new church that would run in parallel to the parent.

    There you go.
     
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  9. bluemooze

    bluemooze Senior Member

    Location:
    Frenchtown NJ USA
    Just finished that a few days ago. For me, extremely interesting and enjoyable. :righton:
     
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  10. Land Ruck

    Land Ruck Active Member

    Location:
    Fresno, CA
    Catching up on this fascinating thread! A bit new to the learning process, particularly distinguishing CBS Studios from 30th Street Studios, in particular establishing what was recorded where. Naming one, 'LOVE, DEVOTION, AND SURRENDER' album by John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana. Which studio? Any photos of that particular room they recorded in? Thanks so much!!
     
  11. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Not 100% certain, but that was engineered by Glen Kolotkin, who was working in CBS's San Francisco studio at the time, so my guess is it was recorded there.

    GLEN KOLOTKIN: Recording Santana

    This suggests the album was recorded in New York and San Francisco:

    Columbia Pt. 2: Mysterious gonks and reigning loonies

    My *guess* is the New York sessions were at Studio B at 49 East 52nd Street, but that's just a guess.
     
  12. Land Ruck

    Land Ruck Active Member

    Location:
    Fresno, CA
    Thank you!
     
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  13. Robbie California

    Robbie California Forum Resident

    I'm reading through the 360 Sound book from 2012 ... so fascinating. Great pics.
     
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  14. bing808

    bing808 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oahu
  15. GLouie

    GLouie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Bump.
    I see the US Library of Congress National Recording Registry has added the 30th St recording of Terry Riley's "In C" this year.
    2022  |  View Registry by Induction Years  |  Recording Registry  |  National Recording Preservation Board  |  Programs  |  Library of Congress

    I think I previously posted a bit on the album, which a friend of mine played trombone on.

    Also, I checked the Wikipedia entry on 30th St, and someone does edit that. The last date says March 29, 2022, and there is no longer mention of the size being 100x100x100. Absolutely no mention of this thread.
     
  16. MTP20

    MTP20 Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Does anyone know if there was an engineer active during the 60s with the initials AT?
     
  17. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Adjutor Theroux was still active in 1958 and 1959, not sure when he retired. He was the only AT that I could find in my files, out of 13 with last names starting with T.

    Why?
     
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  18. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    I have now also finished it a few days ago, and although it was slow going in parts, I thought it was an incredibly informative and detailed read about many if not all aspects of life and society in those times in New York City, along with going overseas when necessary to flesh out background or effects of what happened in NYC.

    A very meaningful part for me was near the beginning (p. 10) which kind of highlighted why it came to be so special to be in NYC during the time of the book and especially after WWII when the forces which started moving during the book exploded into what they were during the time of the 30th St. Studio. From the book:

    "Gothamic neighborhood names became nationally, even internationally, recognized as synechoches -- stand-ins for international-level functions indelibly associated with the metropolis– Wall Street (finance), Madison Avenue (advertising), Times Square (entertainment), Fifth Avenue (both high society and great department stores), Greenwich Village (cultural radicalism), Union Square (economic and political radicalism), Broadway (theater, movies), Coney Island (amusement parks), Ellis Island (immigration), and the Bowery (poverty)."

    I thought that was a nice summary of how many cultural and societal areas NYC was pre-eminent in, and made me think how well the 30th St Studio fit in the world during its time.

    It was crazy to read the end and learn that the author had intended it to go to the early '40s but realized that part of the book would be just as long as the first 20 years, so there will be a sequel.

    While there were many mentions of Rev. Parkhurst in the appropriate places and one or two mentions of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, there were none about its little outpost on 30th St that I could find or notice.

    PS It took me this many months of fairly diligent reading to get through it, minus a couple weeks where I read another book for a different project (Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN, by Carter Alan). Totally worth it.
     
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  19. bluemooze

    bluemooze Senior Member

    Location:
    Frenchtown NJ USA
    Glad you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks for sharing. :edthumbs:
     
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  20. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Just watched this video for the first time:



    It's part of a series of radio documentaries by Paul Gambaccini, who I was otherwise unfamiliar with until now (true of many things, as you've observed in this thread), from 2005 in which he has interviews with people who were there and involved in some way with Vladimir Horowitz's Carnegie Hall first concert performance in 12 years, which took place in 1965.

    It's relevant to this thread in that Horowitz had been recording in 30th St. for some time before deciding to perform live again, and there are the voices of Schuyler Chapin, head of Masterworks at the time; Tom Frost, album producer for Horowitz; Gary Grafman, pianist and Horowitz student/friend; and the piano technician from Steinway who maintained the piano Horowitz selected from the inventory (which was reserved for his exclusive use for 25 years, according to the recording) and who describes the very mild pressure set for the downward strokes of the keys and the very high pressure on the upward travel of the keys. Oh, and Don Hunstein has things to say, too. It's fun to hear their voices.

    It's also notable because the person who I presume attached the video to the audio of the radio show, who goes by "Hedgehog 1963", used some great shots of the interior of Carnegie Hall at the performance, and there's one at around 15:00 where Fred Plaut is leaning on the piano as Horowitz is ready to play (clearly not part of the concert!), and another at around 20:00 showing a remote recording setup that one hopes is the one in Carnegie Hall that day, with the back of an engineer who I don't recognize and a decent shot of a 12 channel or so mixer with linear faders. Looking for a few minutes at some of the entries on Discogs does not reveal anything about engineering other than Tom Frost being Producer.

    So that was fun to learn about.
     
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  21. Mal

    Mal Phorum Physicist


    The Fred Plaut photo is at 30th Street - not sure when it was taken but maybe c. 1962?

    The control room photo is from a session for Vladimir Horowitz - A Television Concert At Carnegie Hall, c. January 1968.


    LP release: Horowitz On Television [Discogs]


    Engineering credits:

    Edward T. Graham, John Guerriere
    (Laurence Schneider - CBS Television)



    Carnegie Hall, c. January 1968

    [​IMG]




    Broadcast date - September 22nd 1968

     
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  22. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    I have a promo 45 of two of the selections from that show:
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    Was released in connection with a promo for the repeat of that special on Dec. 25, 1968, per picture sleeve:
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    The cover of the album showed a very early Norelco PC-70 camera (with round applied handles, as opposed to the square built-in handles on later models) pointed at him as he was tackling the ivories (and some ebonies):
    [​IMG]
     
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  23. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    Langevin, was most commonly used in terms of microphone preamps, and other assemblies of mixing consoles of the era used in the recording industry. Cinema Engineering was another giant in the era in this field. RCA and Collins were big in the broadcast industry. Altec Lansing consoles were most often found in PA and Cinema sound. Altec Lansings biggest presence in the recording industry was loudspeakers, and some microphones.
     
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  24. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Since that is clearly not Buddy Graham at the mixer, it must either be John Guerriere or a random person asked to sit for the photo.

    I do have a picture of John from the front, and that could definitely be him.
     
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  25. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Al Quaglieri just posted this spread on 30th Street from the July 1963 issue of The Columbia Record:

    [​IMG]

    Full size at the link:

    Columbia Records 30th street studio 1963

    A new floor was laid when the new control room was installed?
     
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