What gave you the music bug? Did you grow up playing an instrument?
I was born in 1931 and grew up in Chicago. I had an older sister. She would take me on Saturdays to the State-Lake Theatre and the Chicago Theatre. They would have a movie and then a stage show. The first one I ever saw was Gene Krupa's Orchestra. That blew me away at ten years old. That was it for me. I wanted to take drum lessons. Then I went to the Roy C. Knapp School of Percussion. I wanted to play, but I didn't want to practice, so my drumming career went nowhere. [laughter] My sister liked big bands and [Frank] Sinatra. I was forbidden to touch her 78s, but I used to listen to them when she wasn't around!
Did you work in a studio in Chicago before you moved to Los Angeles?
No. I got out of high school in [Los Angeles] in 1949. In 1950 I was in the Air Force for four years during the Korean War. I was an instrument flight instructor for a flight squadron of four engine bombers. I managed to not have to go to Korea and get into combat. After I got out of the military, I worked for my dad for about six months, doing market research in New York. Eventually I said, "Dad, I can't live in this city." I quit and came home.
Your first studio gig was in Los Angeles?
What happened was that I ran into a friend of mine from high school. He and his dad had a little recording studio down on Melrose [Avenue] in Hollywood. They did demos and they did a Spanish radio show with live sound effects. They'd have a guy slamming doors. They had four disc cutting machines, so I started cutting the discs for them and I also did some mixing. Another high school friend's father was an A&R man for Decca and Coral Records, which had a studio right across the street from this demo studio. Through her, I got to know her father. I said, "If there's ever an opening, I'd love to work for you guys." One day he called me, and I went to work for Decca, and from there I was in the record business. It was a very fortunate moment for me. We were doing things like the Les Brown Band, Lawrence Welk, Liberace with the big orchestra, and a couple of jazz artists. We even did one session with Louis Armstrong and his band. That knocked me out to be in the same room with those guys. I'm happy I was at the right place at the right time.
During your career you worked in the world's greatest studios. How did Decca's studio measure up?
You wouldn't have believed the studio if you'd seen it. There was one big monitor speaker hanging from the [control room] ceiling, but the recording console was right up against the window, so the speaker was hanging behind the mixer's head playing right into the glass of the window. If you think about today, that was the last thing in the world that you'd do: Have a speaker playing at the glass. But it all worked somehow, and we got things done.
Sounds like a challenging way to work.
It was. Our studio was right next to the old Capitol Records building. Between our studio and Capitol there was a restaurant called the Nickodell Melrose that was pretty famous with people around Hollywood. We had a red recording light hooked up in the Nickodell, because when the staff would go into the freezer to get meat or whatever, they would slam the door. If we were recording, we could hear the door slamming. When the red light was on, they didn't go into the freezer. Back then, it was all about the performers, it wasn't so much about engineering. It was all about performance and getting the best shot on it that you could. It's a different story today. You can record in your bedroom.
What were those early years at Decca like for you?
When I first started out, I didn't do any mixing. I was working as a second engineer. We were doing mono only. We had a board that had eight rotary faders on it; no equalizers, no limiters, no nothing. Everything we got in the studio was from the [first] engineer mixing it live. For example, I'd record an acoustic rhythm guitar and a bass on one microphone. I'd move the mic until I'd get a good balance between the two.
When did stereo recording start at Decca?
We were doing sessions in the late '50s in mono, and then one day a truck showed up in the alley behind the studio, and they unloaded two, 3-track, 1/2-inch machines. Decca New York, which was our main studio, had sent them out here for us. Now we could do stereo and mono. This was around 1958, and that's when I started mixing stereo. I had two [Neumann] U 47s that I'd mocked up with a plastic disc in between so I could record binaural sound, more or less. Then I rigged up a four-mic mixer so I could go in and mic up certain things separate from the overall orchestra. We'd put them on the center track; we'd mix all together [from the] four channels, and then the left and the right on the sides on tracks one and three. We would cut the mix. That was the first stereo [tracking technique].
What was the first big session you ever live mixed as a first engineer?
It was for a Sammy Davis, Jr. album called Mr. Entertainment. I had come in at 9 in the morning for my shift. It turned out that our main engineer, Andy Richardson, was out sick. The chief engineer said, "You're going to have to do this session tonight." I went out into the alley behind the studio and was sick to my stomach. That was my baptism by fire. We worked until 2 or 3 in the morning with a big orchestra, strings, brass, saxes, background singers, and everything, recording to 3-track. It was extra stressful because mostly everything was mono in those days, up until 3-track. Then when we got to 3-track we didn't quite know what the hell to do with it. [Our machine] had Sel-Sync on it, which allowed us to record tracks and play them back from the record head, so that when we overdubbed on one track it was in line with the other two tracks so that they weren't out of sync. I knew how everything should sound, and fortunately, I was able to manage it. Really, I was just so glad when that session was over.
What was it like to work with Sammy Davis, Jr. in the studio?
Absolutely great. He was friendly, and he was such a pro. He had the greatest voice. I remember one of the first tunes we did with him was "Soliloquy" from Carousel. We did it in one take, and it was five-and-a-half or six minutes long, or longer. It was ridiculous. But, the thing is, if you were an artist in those days, you didn't come into the studio unless you were able to perform. The first time I ever saw a big orchestra in the studio, some 30 or 40 guys came in, they sat down, and they each looked at their piece of music. They rehearsed it one time and it was like they'd played that song together 100 times. I was flabbergasted.
Who else did you record at Decca?
Well, after Buddy Holly got killed in a plane crash, I did a session with The Crickets. This was around late 1959, early 1960. It was the first time I'd ever worked with anyone with an electric guitar. They wanted headphones and all this stuff. It was my first taste of recording rock 'n' roll, and it was totally foreign from anything I had been doing before that. I was used to working with an orchestra. When the guys came in with their electric guitars and wanted to wear headphones, the chief engineer said, "You're the youngest guy here. You work with 'em! Maybe you can figure out what they're talking about!" [laughter] I was in my late twenties at the time, or maybe thirty. They were great guys, and we had lots of fun.
They were on Decca?
Yes. The thing is, Decca had a bunch of great artists at the time, but they were mainly based in Nashville and in New York. Decca had a place in New York in the Pythian Temple. It was one of the greatest sounding rooms I've ever heard in my life. You didn't have to add reverb to it; you didn't have to do anything – it just had an incredible sound. They had so many great rooms back in New York, like Phil Ramone's [Tape Op #50] place [A & R Recording]. Great sounding records came out of there. Another one was Columbia [Records'] 30th Street Studio, which was a converted church. I hated the room we had at Decca [in Hollywood]. We did one Bing Crosby session with an [RCA] 44 mic in the middle of the studio with him singing into it. What was leaking into the microphone was a pretty good mix by itself. It was a very live room, and it was tough to work with, but it was great fun to work those sessions.
Why did you leave Decca?
In 1962, when Decca was bought by MCA, MCA didn't want our studio anymore. Soon after, I moved to United Western Recording in Hollywood.
In the early 1960s, United Western was arguably the busiest and best studio in Hollywood. What do you remember about your first months working there?
Bill Putnam [Tape Op #24] owned United Western. All the Sinatra records that Bill engineered were fantastic. He did the great Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre albums, with the songs from all the Broadway hit shows. Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin were on all of them. I remember Bill would have three or four of them in movable sound booths that we had in the studio, all singing at the same time. It was amazing. One of my favorite songs of Sinatra's is "My Kind of Town," from an album I seconded on for Bill, Robin and the 7 Hoods. I especially loved that Sinatra song – that one and "My Way."
Is this when you started working a lot of Frank Sinatra's sessions?
Well, in 1963, Sonny Burke – who was an A&R man and producer who I had worked with at Decca for years – moved to Reprise Records and started working with Sinatra. Sonny and I got along great, so it was a natural marriage between the two of us. The first Sinatra album I worked on was The Concert Sinatra. But I didn't actually work on the live session, which was done at Samuel Goldwyn Studios and recorded on Westrex 35 mm mag [magnetic recording machines]. Those recordings were transferred to 3-track stereo, left/right orchestra, and Sinatra in the middle. Reprise sent the tapes over to United Western; then I started remixing from 3-tracks for some of the tracks for that album – while they were still recording him – down to 2-track for the actual record. It was a pretty complicated process.
When was the first time you worked as a second in the studio with him?
The first recordings I ever did for Sinatra were in late 1964 for Softly, as I Leave You. We did "Dear Heart" and "Pass Me By." I don't know what the [third] tune was ["Emily"]. There were quite a few Sinatra sessions that I worked on as second engineer before I ever got to work with him [as a first engineer]. In 1966, Lowell Frank, who was head engineer at Warner Bros. Records, hired me. He was one of the greatest engineers I ever knew or worked with. I worked a lot of sessions with him. By then, he was [engineering] recordings for Sinatra. I got to run the tape machines. It was wonderful, because all I had to do was make sure everything was right, rewind for playbacks, and stuff like that. I got to sit and watch the goings on. It was a lot of fun.
What are your earliest memories of Frank?
I remember the one time I went out in the studio. It was one of the first times I worked with him. To me, sitting in the control room, it didn't look like his mic was quite in the right place. So, I went out to change it. He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I just want to raise the mic a little bit to make it easier for you." He said, "You go back in there and do your job. I know how to work a microphone. It's great. You do your job. I'll do mine." I thought, "Good point." He was really a good guy. He was at his friendliest and nicest when he was in the studio, because that's what he loved to do.
Frank's next album was September of My Years.
On September of My Years, Lowell Frank was mixing that Sinatra album. I said, "Let me come in and be your second. I'll run the tape machines." In fact, there's a video on YouTube of Sinatra recording "It Was a Very Good Year" in Studio A at United. If you look at the very beginning of it, you can see me standing at the tape machine while Lowell is at the console.
What did you learn from assisting Lowell on Sinatra sessions?
With Sinatra, you didn't have time to start listening to mics and listening to sections of the band, because he would come in, and if he heard about five seconds of an arrangement and he liked it, he'd say, "Let's go. Let's record this." Lowell was amazing. He could sit down and dial up a mix on a huge orchestra in about 30 seconds flat. I learned that from him.
