SH Spotlight The Young Rascals, 1967, candid photos from the GROOVIN' recording sessions. Lost for 50 years!

But do we know for certain that the unreleased Rascals tapes were lost in the 1978 fire?

 

Also:

"Mr. Cavaliere: Adding the sound of birds was my idea. I had heard the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" and flipped. These guys had created a sound environment for their single. Ringo sang about a sub—and there were sub sounds. Eddie and his brother David were experts at effects and they whistled the bird sounds. When we were just about finished, Arif suggested adding a harmonica—to drive home the carefree, Sunday feel. But I can't remember who played it.

Mr. Cornish: The harmonica on the single wasn't me. I played it several weeks later when we recorded the stereo album version.

Mr. Huston: When Arif wanted a harmonica, there was no time to make calls. That's when I remembered we had a guy at the studio who swept our floors, Michael Weinstein, who was in a band called the Gurus and could play. So we used him."

The Day They Grooved to 'Groovin''

 

Thanks so much for this,I'm a big Rascals,have all their vinyl L.P.'s and have the Box Set Rhino put out years ago

 

Thats great for Mike Weinstein. He can honestly say that "Hey, I played on The Rascals "Groovin". Thats a nice thing to be able to say.

 

I have to say, I really dig the picture of Talentmasters control room, and how they were set up. Its cool that they used 4 of the Ampex mixers as their main console, and just patched as needed into the Ampex 4 track decks. I've seen other studios that did the exact same thing. Those Ampex mixers were 100% professional and sounded great.

Joe Meek did, essentially, the same thing. He wired his little studio to be able to patch any piece of his equipment into anything else, which he needed to do because he didnt have all that much. He had to change the patching configuration from song to song to get what he wanted. From what I can see in the picture, Talentmasters did pretty much the same.

 

According to Chris Huston, they didn't have a stereo machine until 1967, when they went 8-track. Exactly when that occurred is unclear, although presumably prior to Groovin'.

Oddly, an ad from 1964 indicates the following formats:

MONO
2 or 3 Track Stereo
4 Track Stereo
6 Track Stereo

Chris had no idea what that was referring to.

 

We were talking about songwriting help. I'm not familiar with the situation you're talking about, but it sounds unfortunate.

 

Very cool. thanks for sharing

 

So Mr. Weinstein's harmonica solo on the mono had a vibrato that seemed to be missing from Mr. Cornish's on the stereo. That explains everything.

 

Stereo version for me. After reading great things about the mono version on this forum, when I finally heard it I was disappointed. Sueno in mono? Not for me.

 

I never listened to the album in full till now. Very good. I didn't know You Better Run was originally by The Young Rascals.
I used couple Ampex 350's as preamps at times years ago.

 

I've always found the story of the famous Atlantic Records fire to be very interesting. Mainly because I'm a big music fan but this hits closer to home.
I grew up and still live minutes from where this fire happened. If this is really where it happened.

After digging through numerous photos and newspaper reports I found that the "BIG" fire that day was at the then vacant Vogels department store
on Broadway in Long Branch NJ. The store had been opened since Nov 1945 in the old Stienbacks Bld. which was also a department store.
Vogels had all 4 floors of the building until 1974 when they downsized to just the bottom floor, eventually closing for good in mid 1975.

According to newspaper reports the day after the fire it had remained vacant from the time the store closed up till the fire.
A furniture clearing house was scheduled to move into the building a few weeks after the fire.
The fire department was quoted in the paper as saying they were surprised the building was still standing and that it was empty other than
the elevator shaft. Even reports the next day repeated the same thing about the building being vacant.

I'm scheduled to talk to a local newspaper reporter in a few days about this fire...he's pretty much been a local reporter since the 60's
in this area so I'm going to pick his brain about this topic..... But is it possible that Atlantics tapes were in another fire and it has always been connected with this fire in Long Branch?

If the gorts think I should start a new thread I will....don't want to derail this thread...it's really good.

 

That looks like a Bogen Challenger in the rack below the 4 channels of tape electronics. If so, I wonder why they had a PA amp there.

They're good tube amps, perhaps used for something else. They're actually pretty good for guitar depending on what type of speaker you use.

 

Hint: find out who Atlantic named as financial VP in 1969.

 

Nice research!

 

I got to know Chris Huston on the old Voxtalks board. He had some wonderful stories to share.

Incidentally he is the person who installed the Bigsby tailpiece on Lennon’s Rickenbacker.

 

I would assume so.

From a soulfuldetroit.com thread from a decade ago...paraphrase:

Some of the Coasters multitracks survived because they were being used for a project, but Poison Ivy did not.

If something else survived, then it was removed clandestinely prior to the fire or was a tape copy held in private hands.

If anything unreleased were to exist from the Rascals, it would have to be a tape copy or acetate from that days work and held by Arif Mardin or a member of the band.

 

I find it interesting how all reports as far as the music end of things go is it was an old furniture warehouse with no air conditioning.....funny but what did the a/c have to do with
a fire in February? That being said the old department store was not a furniture warehouse.
After reading the history of that building I've always wondered about a connection between Atlantic and the original owners of the building the Stienback family.

I don't know what I will find out but I'm still leaning towards it being another building. We shall see.

 

Steve,
I found it incredulous also, BUT According to the article, they did not have a 1/4 inch stereo mixdown deck, nor stereo monitors.
Sure, they could have used one of the 4 tracks to make a stereo mix....but it would have been on 1/2 inch tape, which would have presented a problem. But its the lack of stereo monitors that rings some alarms....how do you make a stereo mix without stereo monitors?


"There were two 4-track machines: an Ampex 350 half-inch 4-track recorder and an Ampex half-inch 351 recorder, which they used to do 4-to-4 mixdowns to open up a couple of extra tracks. Then there was a single Ampex quarter-inch 350 mono machine.

The monitor system consisted of a single Altec 604E powered by a 60-watt Dynaco Dynakit amplifier."

 

The billboard magazine article July 12 1997 (Google books) gives the fire a 1976 date.

The article pretty much says the losses were kept on the "down low".

 

As I stated above, Chris Huston indicated they didn't get a stereo machine until they upgraded to 8-track.

That's a typo. It was February 8, 1978 as stated above.

 

Well, that certainly would prove they werent doing stereo mixes until they got the 8 track.

I believe FAME studios could only do mono mixes until *they* upgraded to 8 track as well.[/QUOTE]

 

On a Groovin' related note, here's Eddie and David Brigati on a public access show from 1985.

Between 5:00 and 6:00 David indicates that Groovin' was the first Rascals recording that he sang background vocals. Likewise the Brothers Brigati do the Bird Sounds!