You haven't upgraded virtually anything since 1965. How come you have never changed with the times?
I like the sound and everybody else liked the tube electronics and the analog gear. I could never see any real reason to go with all the new stuff. I didn't buy every new toy. When I was at Fifth and Bell in downtown Seattle, there was a studio within a block of me that was buying every new tool that came out. He ended going belly up — losing his business, losing his house and everything else. For what? He had to have every new little thing and I don't see that. I found that the equipment I have been using does the job I want to do, and I get people coming from all over the world to record here because of that. They want to get that same sound I got in the '60s with The Sonics, The Wailers, The Frantics and others. The jazz musicians love the warmth of the tube equipment too. I find that the digital equipment is very sterile and artificial sounding, so why change?
Haven't you ever felt pressure from clients to upgrade?
I've been asked, "Do you have Pro Tools?" or whatever the new popular gear-of-the- day is, and I say, "No." They say, "Oh, okay" and that's as far as it goes. They can go to a studio that does have it. I am not going to upgrade over that. I do have a CD burner and CD duplicator because that is one of the necessary things now, but that's about it. When I'm doing a session I will record on reel-to-reel analog and at the end of the session I'll make a CD for the client to take home and decide what takes they want to use. We will work from the reel-to-reel tape before we master a record. I feel I get a fuller, warmer, punchier sound with the reel for the final mix than with the CD, but that is a client's choice.
What was your first fascination with music and recording?
Nothing really. It's strange — I went to the University of Washington as a drama major because I was interested in acting. I went two quarters and was trying to support my mother and myself. I had the thought, "How am I going to support myself through drama?" Lots of luck! I went to work full-time and took a job at a radio station, KTW 1250 AM, as a disc jockey. That took care of the ego thing on the acting. I did some recording with the station for performance groups — choirs and orchestras for broadcast. I wasn't interested in recording per se — I wasn't a guy who went out and recorded things just for the fun of it. It was just a job.
What kind of recording equipment and techniques did you use when you first started at the station in the '50s?
I used one or two microphones and a portable tape recorder — a little Ampex 601 suitcase that is like carrying a piece of luggage. The chief engineer had built a small mixing board in case we needed more than one input — otherwise we went directly into the Ampex. For mics, we used the RCA 44BX ribbon and a Shure 55. We had three of those. I also used an Altec [633A] "salt shaker" mic but we mostly used the Shure and RCA. When I was recording a choir and orchestra I used two mics and it came off great. That led me along the way of simplicity rather than to use 77 million microphones for a very simple thing. I like to always keep it as simple as possible and get the sound the way it is, and not run risk of phase problems and too much excess noise from other mics. I worked at the radio station for about two and a half years, and at the same time I was working full-time at a spice factory — grinding cayenne pepper. That was a full work week and on top of that I would work all day Sunday at the radio station and sometimes all night Sunday and also holidays. Soon enough I began to record bands like The Frantics, The Fleetwoods, The Ventures, jazz groups and whatever else at the radio station studio. I was teaching myself.
Was there a senior engineer above you?
No, I was the whole thing. I got the guy who had worked there before to teach me how to run the disc cutter. Other than that it was all by the seat of my pants. I just tried the equipment that was around to see what worked and didn't.
At this point, was a good portion of your work through connections with the Dolton Record label?
Yeah, they kept bringing in their artists. I still did a lot of commercials for ad agencies though. I would be cutting these 16-inch discs to ship. Bob Nichols did big time radio in Seattle for years — he had a little syndicated five-minute show that ran in various parts of the country. We would record those, dub tapes and send them out to the different stations. It was a combination of a little bit of everything — orchestras, choirs, local jazz groups and all the small bands that wanted to make it with the Dolton label or whoever. The bands would come in and do demos.
What kind of studio competition was there in Seattle at that time?
Bob Reisdorf and Bonnie Guitar (Dolton Records label founders) liked what they were getting with me. Previous to that they were recording at Joe Boles Custom Recorders — Joe Boles [had] a small room in his home. He didn't have any speakers to monitor so you had to use earphones, which was a little difficult when trying to get a good sound. He was over in West Seattle. Then there was Commercial Productions — in the Sixth Avenue building downtown — who stuck around for a while, but they were mostly doing radio spots and only some records. Dolton Records never tried that place out but some of the bands did. I think The Frantics had tried recording there before but weren't totally pleased.
At a certain point didn't Dolton merge with Liberty Records and move out of Seattle?
Dolton had Liberty as their national distributor and [later] Liberty bought them out and Reisdorf moved to L.A. He wanted me to go down with him as an engineer for Liberty and I wasn't really that eager to go to Hollywood. I'm glad now that I didn't.
What was the studio you were setting up?
It was Audio Recording, my own studio that I still run today — though now it's at a different location. In the fall of '61 KNBX radio had lost the broadcast that they had bought the studio for and they didn't want to be in the recording business. They gave me two-week notice they were closing it down, so suddenly I was in business for myself. Glenn White Sr. had some equipment that he leased to me and we set up the studio as Audio Recording at Second and Denny Way — I have been doing that ever since.
It seems the garage rock boom in the mid-'60s originated from Tacoma and much of it ended up with you. How did they find out about your studio and what were your thoughts on rock and roll music?
I didn't mind — it was another thing to record! The Wailers kind of knew me when I was recording all of the Dalton things — so they were aware of what I did. When they [The Wailers] formed Etiquette Records they brought in The Sonics and other bands on the Etiquette roster. There were some pretty good bands they had. I was doing country bands too.
What do you remember about recording The Sonics? You weren't afraid to push the equipment to its limits for a unique sound, were you?
My approach was to let them all play as loud as they wanted as long as it wasn't overdriving the equipment too bad. I'd back them off their amps enough where I had good control and separation but not to the point that it was quiet enough to carry on a conversation — that wouldn't be possible with them! The Sonics were kind of a funny band. They had "The Witch" out — it was a hit — and they also had "Keep A-Knockin" on the B-side of the record; which was someone else's song [Little Richard]. They only got publishing royalties for one side, so they wanted to do a session as just a throwaway to have on the B-side. They came in on Sunday and ended up doing their now classic "Psycho." I always figured that Gerry Roslie [The Sonics lead vocalist] was going to have to get a blood transfusion afterwards for his throat being turned to hamburger after the way he was doing his screaming! Everything was really hard and driving. We did the thing in about 35, 40 minutes tops — including setup and everything. As I said, it was going to be a throwaway and the whole point was to just do it and not worry about it. But there it was, man! It happened! A lot of times I find that the first takes are the best because they aren't thinking, "I made a mistake here" and then they make three other mistakes trying to make up for the first one. After a while you have no feeling left.
Let's talk about your studio for a bit. The Langevin mixing board was custom built in 1965?
That's right, and I've got proof of it over here on the master output section. The engraving around it has a little "jog" in it. Because while they were engraving we had an earthquake of 6.5 on the Richter scale, so I've got that little "ERRRNT!" right on the board. The Langevin equipment is just amazing — it is so beautiful. I haven't done anything to it since then. I added more outputs when it went up to 8-track and so forth, but it's essentially the same as it was in the facility on Fifth Avenue.
Was your mixing board and old studio's echo chambers something you worked on with Glenn D. White, Jr.? [Tape Op #39]
Yeah, Glenn helped do the layout on the board and Ken Heidt, who was working at the Seattle Center, did the actual wiring of the board. Glenn designed the chambers and I tuned them to my ear rather than his ear. He had them a little too bright and I had to smooth them out a little. I added little bits of things for absorption in there to make it so.
Before the echo chamber what did you use for reverb?
