There never was any doubt that Dinah Washington was going to be a star. The big surprise was how fast celebrity came and how far she went in the 78-rpm era. In three short years after leaving Lionel Hampton's band in late '45, Washington was crowned Queen of the Jukebox by music critics based on revenue from the machines, earning her a fortune in the process. The Fabulous Miss D: The Keynote, Decca & Mercury Singles 1943-1953—a new four-CD set released today by Hip-O Select—charts the singer's trajectory and offers irrefutable proof of her ability to send songs into orbit.
First full disclosure: I wrote the liner notes to this set. To bring Washington's story to life, I interviewed Washington's lover and drummer Jimmy Cobb, trumpeter Joe Wilder, guitarist Mundell Lowe and the late trombonist Benny Powell. While Washington's 78-rpm-era recordings were issued on CD back in the early 1990s on a series of boxes, this new set presents a superb remastering of her 107 singles issued on flip sides of shellac platters.
What's more, the singles here are ordered according to when they were released (not when they were recorded), giving you a sense of how she was marketed by Mercury (her Keynote and Decca dates were few), and how the label built her "slick chick" brand through the jukebox.
In the days before the Internet and television on a mass scale, a jazz singer had three ways to attract notice. The first was touring to perform, which was fundamental but limiting, since one had to physically be present to touch audiences and collect revenue. If you were black, large sections of the country and lucrative box offices were off limits. The other two were cash cows: radio and jukeboxes. These allowed you to be everywhere—even if you were at home in a bath.
But radio wasn't ideal until roughly 1947, since musicians between 1942 and 1944 were prohibited from recording largely over the union's battle with the radio airplay of records and their displacement of live musicians. Once the strike was settled in 1944 and the union received royalties on radio-spinning discs, disc jockeys emerge in greater number to play records but the royalty trickle-down took time.
The big bang was jukeboxes, which were spread out all over the country and highly democratic. For one, the revenue was direct since coins were fed into the machines. For another, 78-rpms wore out, forcing jukebox operators to order new copies, resulting in new sales and more royalties. The more a side was played, the faster it ground down and needed to be replaced. Washington's platters had to be reordered regularly, and they stimulated record sales for play at home.
Washington starts out as a blues shouter. But before long it's clear that she has no intention of resting too long in this space, since "race records" typically attracted narrow interest. So Washington started to mix in striking Billie Holiday touches. This impersonation was so formidable, Jimmy Cobb told me, that Holiday herself used to go hear Washington sing in her style. Washington's Lady Day phase is evident on I Can't Get Started and Embraceable You.
The first big turning point in Washington's singles development came in April 1947 with the recording of I Want to Be Loved, featuring members of Woody Herman's band. Here, Washington is in complete command in front of a dramatic arrangement and already employing the coy phrasing tricks that would become her hallmark on recordings.
A long string of songs with big buildup arrangements followed. Charts opened with blazing orchestral drama, often leading to a walking blues. By 1947, Washington had taught herself when to let loose and when to leave space—a technique she developed to push her voice through the small jukebox speakers and out over a bar's clinking glasses and chatter.
The next turning point came in late 1947, when Washington recorded a flurry of singles with the Rudy Martin Trio. The small combo was used to maximize output while minimizing error by instrumentalists. With the threat of a second recording strike by union musicians on January 1, 1948, Mercury's goal was to wax as much Washington as possible to tide over the label until the threatened labor dispute was settled. Interestingly, the trio recordings compelled Washington to dial down the zeal and grow more intimate. [Pictured: Dinah Washington in 1947]
When the recording ban ended in the fall of 1948, there was a distinct shift in the kinds of songs Washington recorded. Already soaring on the charts, Washington had been known for delivering blues about cheating men who needed to be put in their place. But after the ban, the lyrics in Washington's material repositioned her as a jilted lover whose heart had been broken. Songs like I'll Wait, It's Funny and Am I Really Sorry more often cast her as a sympathetic victim of love's misfortunes rather than a blues-belting roadhouse henpecker.
The next turning point came in 1950 with the recording of Harbor Lights, a deliberate move into pop featuring a big band and strings arranged by Jimmy Carroll (who had just recently arranged Charlie Parker with Strings). Harbor Lights was followed with the release of I Cross My Fingers and the magnificent Time Out for Tears, perhaps her greatest singles-era recording.
Out in the Cold Again and Hey Good Lookin' with the Ravens vocal group and Wheel of Fortune, complete with Kay Starr-like overdubbing, was also part of this toe-dip into pop.
By 1953, Dinah was swinging with the times, releasing singles with a strong R&B bent. Songs like Lean Baby, TV Is the Thing This Year, Fat Daddy and My Man's an Undertaker all wisely attempt to position Washington as the belle of the big beat. Washington even took a crack at calypso on Since My Man Has Gone and Went, which Mercury released to capitalize on Harry Belafonte's 1953 hit Matilda.
Washington's 11-year, 78-rpm period ended in 1954 as the vinyl 45-rpm made the shellac single obsolete and the 33 1/3 microgroove long-playing (LP) record was pressed in greater numbers. From 1954 until her death in 1963, Washington would be found more often playing on home phonographs than jukeboxes. Albums had become the thing.
JazzWax tracks: The Fabulous Miss D: The Keynote, Decca & Mercury Singles 1943-1953 (Hip-O Select) will run you about $77 ($46 as a download). The 107 tracks (four discs) have been lovingly restored and there is a comprehensive discography complete with chart positions for each track. In addition, the discs comes a 7.5-inch square book with discs slipping into reproductions of album covers. Go here for the CD or here for the download.
Hungry? Here's the downloadable version of a Thanksgiving TV dinner, complete with all the trimmings. Dig in, drive safe and have a great holiday! For my readers outside of the U.S., don't be shy. Pull up a chair:
If you're familiar with the music of the Doors, then you know that Jim Morrison was a fairly competent lyricist, in a drug-haze sort of way. His Warren Beatty looks made him highly charismatic, and his deep, masculine voice and bedroom eyes had a particularly hypnotic effect on women.
On March 1, 1969, a stoned Morrison, angry at his Miami audience for reacting negatively to his sloppy performance, made the mistake of either threatening to expose himself or actually doing so. A reviewer wrote the next day that the Doors' lead singer seemed to have simulated masturbation on stage. An investigation was conducted and an arrest warrant was issued for Morrison for lewd and lascivious behavior.
In 1970, Morrison was convicted in Miami, fined and sentenced to six months in jail. But he never served time. He died of a drug overdose in Paris in 1971. This week, Charlie Crist, the outgoing governor of Florida, said he would seek a pardon for Morrison.
The Doors were never my bag. A bit long-winded and droney for my taste. But I'm not opposed to the pardon. Heck, even by 1970s stage standards, Morrison's expression, whatever he actually was doing, is almost quaint by comparison to today's acts.
But let's be fair. Why limit these pardons to rock stars? Let's also pardon the many jazz artists who were arrested, convicted and handed overly stiff prison sentences in the '40s and '50s for possessing drugs. Their spirits and careers were badly damaged, and jazz missed out on large chunks of their potential output.
Here's my vote for 10 jazz musicians who should be pardoned by federal and state authorities along with Jim Morrison...
Gene Krupa
Lester Young
Billie Holiday
Bud Powell
Gerry Mulligan
Miles Davis
Thelonious Monk
Jimmy Heath
Dexter Gordon
Art Pepper
Feel free to add the names of other pardon-worthy jazz artists in the Comments section of this post.
David Amram turned 80 yesterday. If you know David, you know that hitting that age is almost a ridiculous concept. The musician and composer has the metabolism and mind of a 25-year old, and he's constantly traveling the country like jazz's Johnny Appleseed, performing and motivating all who cross his path. One grows winded just listening to his schedule. [Photo of David Amram at the Five Spot in 1957 by Burt Glinn]
In celebration of David's birthday, I was listening to one of my favorite David Amram quartet albums—Jazz Studio 6, a 1957 recording for Decca featuring David on French horn, George Barrow on tenor sax, Arthur Phipps on bass and Al Harewood on drums. After the album was finished, I gave David a call to wish him happy birthday.
When David answered the phone at 4:30 p.m., he was pumping gas on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, N.Y.:
JazzWax: How did you spend your birthday today? David Amram: Last night I was playing with my daughter's band, Alana Amram and the Rough Gems, at the Union Pool, a club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her first CD just came out [it's at iTunes].
JW: What did the kids at the Union Pool think of you joining them? DA: They loved it. They said, “It's really cool that you're doing this at this point in your career.” I said, “Hey, I don't know what a career is. I just do what I do. We shouldn't have careers. We should have a life. And if we're lucky, someday our music will have a career.”
JW: How late were you out last night? DA: Until midnight. I stayed at Alana's place rather than drive home to my farm in northern Westchester. Then this morning I drove to Queens College where the university's orchestra performed my Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie. As a surprise, they played part of my In Memory of Chano Pozo at the end.
JW: What are you doing right now? DA: Driving back home to my farm to change and then returning to the city to play at the Cornelia Street Café for most of tonight. Then tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., I'm flying to El Paso, Texas, to play my Ode to Lord Buckley, a saxophone concerto, with the El Paso Symphony Orchestra. I'll also be doing some workshops with a music school there. They're going to have me speak to composers and people who are studying classical and jazz.
JW: Don't you get tired? DA: [Laughs] Everyone asks me that. Here's what I tell them: "Yeah, most of the time. I took a nap in 1957 and it gave me a headache" [laughs].
JW: I was just listening to Jazz Studio 6. How did the idea for the album come about? DA: Back in 1956 I was hired to play piano as a sub for someone at a club in New Hope, Penn. I had never played as much as a solo up until that point but I managed. On a break, this guy came up to me and said, “You're a genius. You sound like Thelonious Monk." I said, "Are you kidding? Have you ever heard Monk?" He said, "I have a friend at Decca records. You have to record.” The guy wanted to be my agent.
JW: What did you say? DA: I told him that I was flattered but that I was really a French horn player. He said, “No one wants to hear a French horn. Go make a piano record.” If I had made a piano album, I would have been arrested for impersonating a piano player. But the guy was determined, so I let him make his connection at Decca.
JW: Who was the guy? DA: A gentleman named Mel Rose. The person he knew at Decca was Hal Webman, a well-known a&r guy.
JW: How did you and George Barrow come together? DA: George and I met when I first came to New York in 1955. Charles Mingus had come down to listen to the Bud Powell Trio at Birdland. Leonard Feather had taken me there, too. Feather introduced me to Mingus as a French horn player. Mingus looked at me and asked if I would go out on the road with him for $125 a week. I told him I couldn't because I was studying at the Manhattan School of Music on the GI Bill.
JW: What did Mingus say? DA: He said, “You'll learn more with me than at that school” [laughs].
JW: What happened? DA: I think because I said no, Mingus pushed for a "yes." If I had said yes, he probably would have said no. Mingus asked me to play French horn with his group at the Café Bohemia. He told me to pick up this guy named George Barrow. When I picked up George, we hit it off right away. George was a fabulous tenor saxophonist.
JW: How did you convince Webman at Decca to record you on French horn and not piano? DA: After I formed a quartet with George, I told Webman that instead of recording me on piano, he should record our group. After some back and forth, he finally agreed. I couldn't believe I was getting a chance to make a record on French horn at Decca. The label was a big deal then.
JW: How long did it take you to arrange the 10 tracks? DA: Actually it was nine. Arthur Phipps, who had played with Three Bips and a Bop, wrote Phipps Quipps. Webman gave me certain standards to arrange, like Darn That Dream. I also brought in some originals. Arranging Shenandoah, the folk standard, was my idea.
JW: Why Shenandoah? DA: I had always loved the song. I thought it would be great for a jazz group to take a folk classic like that and do something else with it. I was always a big fan of folk and bluegrass, ever since I was stationed at Camp Breckinridge in Kentucky in the Army. I wanted to take something simple and find ways to harmonize it so it would make sense emotionally but also would be a challenge.
JW: Where did your quartet rehearse? DA: We had been playing at the Five Spot in Greenwich Village and many different clubs in Brooklyn. We also rehearsed at actor Garry Goodrow's loft and at Al Harewood's house.
JW: When did you see George Barrow last? DA: Last week, at my birthday concert at New York's Symphony Space. We hadn't seen each other in some time.
JW: What did he say? DA: He said, “Man you're still doing it.” I said, “George, we should be doing it together.” Sadly, he stopped playing some time ago. What a great saxophonist.
JW: When you think back on the Jazz Studio 6 recording for Decca, what goes through your mind? DA: I'm really proud of it. The album was all I had hoped it would be. It's a document rather than what record people used to call a "product." I always thought a recording should be a document. My hope is it will remain a musical document of a certain date and place and have some lasting value. At the time, I was after shelf life more than flavor of the day and in the landfill tomorrow [laughs].
JazzWax tracks: David Amram's Jazz Studio 6 can be found on Jazz Portrait: The Music of David Amramhere.
JazzWax clip:Here's the trailer from an upcoming documentary on David...
One of the finest jazz vocal albums of the 1950s is Helen Merrill's Dream of You. Recorded over the course of three days in July 1956 for EmArcy, the session paired Helen with arranger Gil Evans nearly a year before his first majestic session with trumpeter Miles Davis. Helen's Dream of You isn't a typical jazz-vocal recording of the period, where a singer belts out a set of American Songbook tunes backed by a bouncy band. Instead, what you have here is a true artistic duet—with Helen delivering deeply passionate readings of offbeat songs as Evans' jagged orchestrations lap at the lyrics and at times wash right over them.
What I love most about this recording is Helen's phrasing. To me, Helen sounds as though she's singing while lying in a grassy field, pulling out blades aimlessly as she tries to make sense of her life and feelings. In many cases in the '50s, big bands functioned as male counterparts to female vocals. But here, Evans' approach is decidedly feminine in its sophistication and sensitivity. His charts play the role of best friend, empathizing with Helen's wonderment, adding a flute affirmation here and violin shoulder to cry on there.
Evans truly is at the top of his arranging game here before he was brought to Columbia by producer George Avakian. Combined, Helen and Evans make you think and feel, and they don't take no for an answer. Dig Andy Razaf and Eubie Blake's You're Lucky to Me. Helen is at first girlishly shy before letting loose with adulation over her good fortune in love. Or the exotic quality of Elthea Peale, Harold Courlander and John Benson Brooks' Where Flamingos Fly. Or Duke Ellington and Mack David's haughty I'm Just a Lucky So and So.
What's special about this album are its impositions. This isn't pop material. Each song is an artistic commitment, and both Helen and Evans work hard to engage you with every note and lyric line. As with Billie Holiday, Helen's voice is an instrument offering a hidden message—where the breaths are taken and how forceful or tender the expression. [Photo by Herman Leonard/CTSImages.com]
The more you listen to Dream of You, the more you marvel at the way Helen holds back, opens up and interacts with Evans' clouds-across-the-moon orchestrations. There's a lot of emotion here and you can't help but be sympathetic and swayed.
When I interviewed Helen in early 2009, here's what she told me about this session:
JazzWax: How did you come to the attention of Gil Evans? Helen Merrill: It goes back to being in music circles in New York then. I had known Gil for some time. He was the talk of the underground music world for years, you know. He was always The Man. People would meet at his apartment to talk about music and socialize. It was a very warm scene.
JW: But whose brilliant idea was it pairing your voice with his breakthrough orchestrations in 1956? HM: Actually, it was mine. Gil was so gifted. I had remembered his beautiful music for Claude Thornhill, and I thought his music would be beautiful to sing against. When I mentioned Gil's name to [EmArcy producer] Bob Shad, I thought Bob was going to have a heart attack. At first Bob said, “No,” firmly.
JW: Why? HM: Because Gil was so particular. He was famous for keeping orchestras overtime. Studio time and musicians were very expensive. Bob said “No” again, but I said, “You have to.” Eventually Bob gave in.
JW: How did you ever sing with those Gil Evans arrangements? HM: Don’t ask [laughs]. They were tough but so beautiful. A year later I tried to take the arrangements on the road but the performances were a disaster. The band sounded like a freight train instead of music. That's when I realized you can’t do those arrangements live. Only Gil could make them work.
JW: You don’t read music. How did you remember those complex melodies? HM: Gil helped me on the session. I didn’t work with him beforehand. The session was like any other—like falling off a cliff and learning to fly. I came in and we did it.
JW: One run through and you had it down? HM: Yeah, I’m afraid so. Down, I don’t know. But I had it. I had this ability to hear things once and remember everything in detail.
JW: Did Gil complete the arrangements on time? HM: [Laughs] As I recall, he was a little late. He was a wonderful man.
JW: Your phrasing on that session sounds like the basis for Miles Davis' approach with Gil a year later in 1957 on Miles Ahead. HM: I have no idea. Miles used to love my sound and always came to hear me sing. We were dear friends. He told me he loved my whisper sounds. That's a technique I used by getting up real close to the microphone. I'd sing almost in a whisper, which created a very intimate sound. I developed this by listening to my voice and trying different things with the mikes.
JW: Do you think Miles learned from your whisper technique? HM: Miles learned from everyone. He was incredible. He took the best from everyone and threw away the rest. He was brilliant. One of the things he told me he loved about my voice was how I used space—both in music and between my voice and the mike.
JazzWax tracks: Helen Merrill's Dream of You (EmArcy) is available at iTunes or here. There's also a deluxe edition from Fresh Sound that features additional tracks here.
Helen and Evans came together again in August 1987 to reprise their earlier meeting, adding a few other songs as well, including Summertime. The album, Collaboration, can be found at iTunes or here.
If after you read this post you've fallen head over heels in love with Helen's voice, you will surely enjoy another one of my favorite albums by Helen: Parole e Musica (1960) which was recorded in Rome with the Piero Umiliani quartet and sextet. The concept was to have a voice speaking in Italian about lost love sandwiched in between Helen's vocals. The narration is charming, but the real thrill is Helen's vocals, which will knock you out. This recording is super rare but it is available on CD as an import here.
JazzWax interview: For my five-part interview with Helen Merrill in 2009, go here.
JazzWax clip:Here's the title track of Dream of You, which perfectly demonstrates Helen's whisper technique...
How good is Helen's Parole e Musica?Here's a clip of These Foolish Things. If you want to skip the Italian narration, slide the bar up to 1:43...
Phil Ramone is known among musicians for his artistic sensibility, his confidence and his cool. When tension runs high at recording sessions—either because musicians can't seem to pull the music together or time is running out—Phil is always the deep voice of reason. His take-charge style and patient tone usually puts everyone at ease and back on track. As a musician, he can empathize with the artist. As a technician, he has the sensitivity needed to capture all of the sonics and color on a recording session. As a result, he winds up getting the best out of the artists whose albums he produces. [Pictured, from left: Billy Joel and Phil Ramone]
In Part 5 of my five-part interview with Phil, the legendary producer talks about the wide range of '60s artists he has recorded either as an engineer or a producer:
JazzWax: You were the engineer on Lesley Gore’s hits in the early '60s. Phil Ramone: That’s right. She was 16 years old at the time but had all the signs of being a big pop star. Once we finished It’s My Party, we started on You Don't Own Me and all those other songs. Lesley always put herself in a place artistically that would have shocked most other people at that age.
JW: How did It's My Party wind up in your hands? PR: I got a call from Quincy Jones. He had recorded the song for Mercury at Bell Sound, which was a big pop studio in New York in those days. Arrangers tended to write for that room at Bell, and the engineers there were really good. Quincy told me he needed to do some work on the track but couldn’t book time at Bell. It was a three-track recording, and he said he had to have the record out immediately. He asked if I could cut it that night. Producers wanted records cut fast to get them on the radio as quickly as possible to build buzz and an audience.
JW: What did you tell him? PR: I said yeah, I had a lathe, which was used to cut blank vinyl records from the master tape. I told him we’d work all night to cut whatever he needed for radio.
JW: What was the rush? PR: Quincy said that producer Phil Spector was cutting the same song with one of the Ronettes [pictured].
JW: How was that possible? PR: Music publishers were notorious for doing things like that then. They promised you an exclusive, and then you found out everyone had it.
JW: What did you do? PR: Before we started cutting the records, Lesley needed to repair some of the vocals. Quincy said to me that he wanted to double track it.
JW: What’s that? PR: Normally you’d copy the recording to another tape and put them together, like the Beatles did, to create four tracks and double the same vocal. I told Quincy that if he was willing to take a risk, I could pull the erase head of the recorder, allowing her to sing right onto her original master. We wouldn't lose a generation, and we'd retain the music's vivid punch. But there was a risk. By running the tape that way, we could wind up erasing the only vocal Quincy had instead.
JW: How did the session work? PR: Lesley sang to her original voice wearing headphones. We pulled the erase head to stay first generation. It was crazy to do, but we wound up with much stronger sound and a bigger beat. Quincy trusted me, and Lesley had rehearsed what she was supposed to do. If you listen carefully to the record, there’s a sweet amount of imperfection. But it sounds great. I also remixed it so that it had the right kind of pound.
JW: Why the fuss—why did you want that pound? PR: The big deal for any of us making records in the early ‘60s, as we switched from jazz to pop music, was to get records to sound louder than anyone else’s without using too much compression to do it. You wouldn’t want to do that on a jazz record because you don’t want to lose a generation. Jazz listeners have sharper ears. When you compressed tape, you wound up with noise on there that sounded like an old AM radio. It really was ugly. Long story short, everything worked out great and Lesley's single was a big hit.
JW: Before you engineered Dionne Warwick’s The Look of Love in 1967, you were in England engineering Dusty Springfield’s version in 1966, yes? PR: Yes. We did that in a small studio in London that was owned by Philips Records. Dusty normally never recorded outside of the vocal booth. In this case, however, she just had a little isolation screen there, which added to the song's taut style and drama.
JW: What was with that odd percussion instrument at the start? PR: [Laughs] That whole scraper sound—it’s wonderful and obnoxious, isn’t it? Other engineers would have walked out saying, “There’s too much modulation on the dials, you can’t do that.” Only Burt would have tried that. He knew I'd capture it just right. When Burt trusted you, you could do almost anything. It’s the relationship between the artist and engineer that makes the difference.
JW: It's quite a song. PR: Burt and Hal [David] had written The Look of Love for Casino Royale in 1966, a silly take-off on the James Bond film series. We actually had two hit records with that song before Dionne’s—one by Dusty and the other by Herb Alpert.
JW: How did you capture the intimacy of Dusty's voice? PR: The microphone can only pick up what it hears. It has no brains. You simply have to pick the right mike. Dusty was known for having that whispery quality, and Burt knows how to get something special out of an artist.
JW: What type of mike did you use? PR: A Sony C37. The sax solo was done live by an English studio musician. And what you hear is Burt’s interpretation of the song. He half-sang what he wanted to Dusty in a breathy voice to convey his vision.
JW: Is the ‘60s one big blur or do you recall the trends that were happening in music then? PR: I remember it clearly. My life as an engineer was important to me. Back then, you had to step up to the plate and come up with a sound that made artists stand out. People think singles back then were throw-aways, that they were slapped together, recorded in 10 minutes and pushed out the door to keep kids happy.
JW: They weren’t? PR: [Laughs] A ton of work went into making those records. In addition to the craftsmanship, we knew we were in a game and that we were competing with the big drum sound of the British groups.
JW: When you were in London engineering The Look of Love, what do you recall of the scene there? PR: I remember going into studios and seeing groups like the Rolling Stones and the Animals. I remember seeing Keith Moon, The Who’s drummer [pictured]. When I heard him, I said, “There’s a drum sound we had better look out for.”
JW: What did you tell groups when you returned to the States? PR: I’d tell people, “Are you aware of the sound coming out of England? It’s way beyond just the Beatles." But even here in the States, the scene was expansive and inventive. On the West Coast you had Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys creating new stuff. The same was true of groups in Memphis, Nashville and Muscle Shoals in Alabama. All of these places were coming up with new, distinct sounds.
JW: How did you make the switch from engineer to producer? PR: In 1969 I engineered John Barry’s score for Midnight Cowboy, including Everybody’s Talkin’, at our A&R studio at 799 Seventh Ave. John gave me the credit for producing the music. That project was followed by a string of hits as a producer, including Paul Simon’s Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard. Then I met Billy Joel.
JW: You produced The Stranger in 1977, which included Just the Way You Are. You brought in also saxophonist Phil Woods to solo, yes? PR: I had to. The song needed a lift. My favorite thing to do on a session is to bring in an instrumentalist, the best guy known to man on his horn, for a solo. I knew so many of those great jazz musicians because I had recorded them. Quincy Jones and Frank Sinatra always used the best guys around to solo.
JW: What did you think of The Stranger? PR: Loved it. Billy’s far more serious as a musician than many people realize. On Just the Way You Are, I said I think we need a jazz guy here. The tune as originally played didn’t have enough muscle and conviction. It lacked a certain intensity. I had changed the drum part because Billy didn’t want to record it the way he had conceived it. When he heard the first few takes, he said it sounded like a bad wedding band.
JW: Why not just use the saxophonist in Joel’s band? PR: The guy didn’t play alto sax at the time, and tenor was too heavy for the tune. By the way, Billy's saxophonist didn’t talk to me for a while when I said I wanted to use a jazz guy instead. Eventually he asked me who I got to do the part. I told him, “Phil Woods.” He was impressed. Then he listened to Phil's solo and said, “I have to learn that?” I said, “Yeah, you have to learn that solo so you can reproduce it at concerts. It’s going to be a classic.”
JW: How many solos of Phil’s did you record for Just the Way You Are? PR: Probably three or four. Not a lot.
JW: Then what did you do, take out the knife and start cutting up the tape and reassembling the pieces? PR: Yeah, pretty much.
JW: Why? PR: Because with tape, as with digital today, you had the luxury of assembling the best of a soloist's various efforts.
JW: So how did that work exactly? PR: Phil put the headphones on and recorded with the track. He did that three or four times. Then when Phil was done, I listened carefully to all of the solos and pulled the most exciting parts together.
JW: How so? PR: I might take the first bar and a half from take four, three bars from another take and then the tail end might be the first take. Some were snipped together.
JW: How did you do that? PR: It’s my job to see that solos are cohesive as a single unit. Saxophonist Michael Brecker used to be really shy. After each of his first two or three takes he’d say, “That’s crap, I don’t know what I was thinking.” But half the time he’d play his best stuff in the first few takes. First takes are sometimes the best takes.
JW: So, to put it bluntly, there are three musical minds on Just the Way You Are—Billy Joel, Phil Woods and Phil Ramone? PR: I don't know. Recordings are events. It’s always the event in total that gives you the reputation to be able to talk to these guys. The reason you become a producer is so you can save a step in the musician’s creation and help make music that's already great a big hit. If everything works out, you become comfortable with the artists. They become comfortable with you. And you bring what you do to the table to make everything stand out.
JW: Woods' soaring and searing solos turn out to be essential to the song's success. The listener actually waits for them. PR: I know. Michael Brecker’s solo became so well known on Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years that Pat Williams did a big band album and orchestrated the solo, note for note. Michael was in that band and said he huddled over with embarrassment.
JW: You added jazz sensibility to rock and teen pop. PR: Well I think you see it especially in Paul and Billy. On Zanzibar from Billy’s 52nd Street in 1978, I used trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. The trumpeter who plays with Billy now is a young guy, and he’s playing Freddie’s solo from the album note for note. That’s how classic it is.
JW: Rock guys have enormous respect for each other, don’t they? PR: Huge. I produced a TV show back in the 1990s at Radio City Music Hall with Elton John, Paul Simon and other amazing people. Brian Wilson was about to start a tour for his album at the time. So we brought him over to England for a show there, because everyone who was appearing on stage there, from Eric Clapton to Phil Collins, were huge fans. The love went both ways. I remember taking a car trip south from London with Paul McCartney in the early 1980s. The entire way down we listened to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Paul was insane for the album.
JW: Speaking of McCartney, you produced Ram. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey remains amazing. PR: I know. I love it, too. Paul and I talked about our names one night. He said that before he was in the Beatles, he used to go out to play at clubs calling himself Paul Ramone. When I was a kid, I used to get called Ram One instead of Ramone. Paul wrote Ram On for the album.
JW: Is that why the album is called Ram? PR: [Laughs] I don’t know.
JW: What isn't well known about the making of Uncle Albert? PR: After Paul wrote the arrangement, I booked a huge orchestra. I said, “Paul, why don’t you conduct this? Conduct it in a passionate way based on what you hear.” Paul said, “I’m not trained to do that.” I said, “You wrote the thing. You’re better trained than anyone. Wave your arms, and you’ll be amazed.” So he did and it came out great. The funny thing is about 20% of the orchestra didn’t know who he was. They were classical players.
JW: What was Louis Armstrong like on We Have All the Time in the World in 1969? PR: It was so exciting for me. I loved everything Louis did, since I was a little kid. I thought he was one of the greatest vocalists of all time. Then again, I thought of vocalists differently than most people. I like Jimmy Durante and Fred Astaire. They interpret songs with such musicality. It’s all about interpretation and phrasing.
JW: Did Louis watch rushes from the James Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service? PR: No. We just did the song. The film was still in the editing process. Louis was getting tired. His health was already failing. But he was funny, charming and sweet. It’s those moments of your life that you never forget.
JW: Did jazz do something wrong in the ‘60s? PR: Not at all. Rock was just more exciting and had a stronger hold on the teen market. My generation had big bands, but they were done by the ‘60s. Count Basie and Duke Ellington were already declining in popularity. There was no longer the kind of mass attraction they once enjoyed. TV no longer focused on jazz and kids didn’t identify with it. Popular music goes in cycles, about every 10 years.
JW: Yet you remain a big jazz fan. PR: I’m a devotee of great playing, no matter the genre. With AM radio in the ‘60s, long solos were out, which left jazz in a bind. Only when FM arrived in the early '70s were albums in vogue again. At that point, jazz, rock and all forms of music benefitted. Albums created moods, and we all became pretty devoted to good sounding records. [Photo: Alison Steele, an early FM rock disc jockey in New York]
JazzWax clips: Here's Lesley Gore singing It's My Party. This single has always been known for its enormous punch. Now we know why...
In 1967, Phil Ramone began engineering a string of Dionne Warwick's hits by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. If Bacharach and David were America's equivalent of Lennon and McCartney (perhaps even bigger by some accounts), then Phil was akin to George Martin. But unlike the Beatles, there was no overdubbing. Instead, everything was recorded at once, and Phil had to deal with immediacy and nuance. Bacharach's music was complex, requiring careful miking to capture not only the dramatic string and horn parts but also the powerful vocal and intimate rhythm section. [Illustration by Rob Kelly]
In Part 4 of my five-part interview with Phil, the prolific jazz, rock and pop producer talks about engineering Dionne Warwick sessions:
JazzWax: You engineered eight of Dionne Warwick's hits in the ‘60s. Was Burt Bacharach in the studio for them? Phil Ramone: Absolutely. For every bit of it. Despite what you read, Burt wasn’t tough on Dionne. There was mutual respect between Burt, Dionne and Hal. They had a special thing, and all wanted the same result—a hit.
JW: How did you record her? PR: We knew that unless Dionne had a terrible bad throat, we weren’t going to overdub her. Overdubbing was done with a lot of singers—having them sing on top of their own voices to fill it out. Dionne’s voice was so strong and so full of character that overdubbing wasn’t necessary.
JW: How did you and Burt work together? PR: Eventually, I became Burt’s hearing frame in the control room. When he trusted me, he’d stop coming in from the studio area to discuss things. Instead, he’d just turn around after a take, and I would either give a thumbs up or indicate we needed another one.
JW: So Bacharach would leave you pretty much alone? PR: [Laughs] No. There would be times when I’d give him a thumbs up and he’d want another take anyway. He’d also sit through everything during the editing process. I think I learned more about musicianship with Burt than with anyone else.
JW: Were there jazz musicians on the Warwick sessions? PR: Oh sure. You would always see one of the Royal brothers—Ernie or Marshall pretty regularly. Michael and Randy Brecker, too.
JW: How did you capture the big sound on those recordings? PR: First, I made sure Burt was always in the room playing piano and conducting. I always felt he belonged there—it was his music and vision. The dates went better when he was in the studio. Second, everyone recorded at once in one room. There was no laying down the instrumental tracks first and then having Dionne come in later for the vocals. Recording live like that created energy that came through the record.
JW: Where did you place Warwick in the studio? PR: In a vocal booth. The backup vocal group was in the next booth. So I had a lot of control over their sound in the studio.
JW:Do You Know the Way to San Jose had a lot going on. PR: What do you mean?
JW: The song opens with a bass, bass drum, snare and what sounds like a gourd. Then Warwick comes in, backed by an organ. Strings emerge faintly about 30 seconds into the track. Horns follow. Then on the break, the arrangement explodes with the entire orchestra. On the other end, the rhythm section returns. That’s a lot to account for in the control room. PR: [Laughs] Burt always liked to add theatrical and dramatic components to songs. Within that context there was plenty of freedom to experiment with the studio sound.
JW: How so? PR: When his arrangement exploded. it was often huge, and we found novel ways to capture it. But we also had to prepare for when the tight rhythm section returned. We had to be able to catch that sensitively, too.
JW: How did you deal with the sudden acoustic bursts? PR: When I saw that Burt's score called for those dramatic explosions, I’d go out into the studio before we recorded to hear how they played in the room. I wanted to hear how much sound we could get away with on tape.
JW: You didn’t have much wiggle room. PR: That’s right, because we recorded everything live in the same room at once. You had to plan ahead and mike the room accordingly.
JW: On San Jose, how did the snare drum get that crisp, sparky sound? PR: There wasn’t time that day for the drummer to replace his snare with a new head. After a head is worn down, it loses its brightness. Changing it would have been a time-consuming process and would have slowed down the session. So we just had the guy turn the head over to get that crisp, shuffling train beat with brushes in the beginning.
JW: Were your Warwick-Bacharach dates recorded at A&R Recording? PR: Yeah. We started in the original space. But then in 1969 A&R moved to larger space at 799 Seventh Ave. on 52d St. The new studio had been part of Columbia Records. The label was giving it up. The smaller original room on 48th St. was 40 by 35 feet with 12-foot ceilings. It wasn’t what you’d call an ideal studio, but the sound was great. The big one gave us more room.
JW: What did you do to make those Warwick sessions sound so great? PR: I never really felt that I created a “sound” that was distinctly mine. I didn’t want to. My goal always was to determine how arrangements should be interpreted and captured as vividly as possible. That’s where drama comes in. If you have a great conductor leading the room, you get great dynamics out of the musicians. When Dionne’s voice needed to soar, we could handle that. But to me, the intimate moments on those songs with just the rhythm section made them truly special.
JW: But there is a distinct sound on them. PR: How do you mean?
JW: For instance, the drums always sounded clear but hushed. The beat is there, but the drums never came across as oppressive or overwhelming. PR: I’ll tell you what I did differently there. I put the drums on a two-foot riser and stuffed fiberglass under the riser. The drums were alive above the two-foot area, but you didn’t get bottom-heavy reverberation. When the musicians on the sessions played in the room, you could see and feel the drums everywhere but they never drowned you out.
JW: Was Bacharach’s music tricky? PR: Very. Songs often were in unusual time signatures to begin with and could change multiple times during a song. The lyrics could be tricky, too. Hal [David] wrote to match Burt’s quirky musical style and his lyrics resolved in odd places where another phrase would end or begin.
JW: What was Hal David’s role in the booth? PR: To make sure we didn't ignore something or didn’t step on a lyric or, in other cases, to make sure we did. There were times when they wanted Dionne to step on a phrase or scream over it. A lot went on musically during these dates, and much was indistinguishable to the listener's ear, other than the music and Dionne sounding very exciting.
JW: So David was the lyric cop. PR: [Laughs] Yeah, he had to be. He’s the guy who invented the way to put words in their place on those songs. It’s an amazing skill up close. Whether it’s Paul Simon, Billy Joel or any great lyric writer—where they decide to place the phrasing of their words so the singer is a participant in the creation and also unveils the song’s story is a real art.
JW: Was it easy to read Bacharach’s wishes through the control room glass? PR: Yes, very much so. I knew exactly what he wanted just by how he’d look at me. A look of dissatisfaction is pretty easy. Or perhaps he’d look quizzical, like, “Is that tempo working?” He’s a highly expressive person.
JW: Did the Warwick sessions get increasingly complex over time? PR: From a musical perspective, perhaps. As the years went on, more and more was being put into the pot to top earlier hits. Of course, Dionne didn’t have to prove anything other than to make a hit record. In the beginning, Burt and Hal wrote for many people, from Tom Jones to Dusty Springfield. Sometimes Dionne didn’t get the first shot at one of those songs. She wasn’t happy about that. But how could she be? Eventually they straightened all of that out.
JW: Was Warwick competitive? PR: Well sure, everyone was—and still is in this business. The Look of Love was recorded first by Dusty Springfield—this sensuous blonde woman in England. Then Dionne recorded it and gave the song a whole new, take-charge feel. It’s actually a tough song to sing. It’s very sparse with incredibly interesting space. That’s what you’re referring to in all of Burt’s work. Interesting space.
JW: What don’t most people know about Warwick? PR: When Burt found her, she was already the quickest and most accomplished demo singer I’d ever seen. She would sing a demo once and they’d be ready to record the song that afternoon.
JW: With Bacharach and David starting in 1967, you played the role that George Martin played with the Beatles. PR: We were making great records. Back in 1964, when the Beatles first showed their wares, from their simplistic initial album released here, Meet the Beatles, you knew they were brilliant. We admired the Beatles. Nobody had ever seen this kind of attention and chart success other than Elvis. Musically, we jumped another mile forward once that kind of challenge was there.
JW: Did Bacharach think he had to up his game with the Beatles on the charts? PR: I would say there was more competitiveness from song to song. There was a greater consciousness about where the music and lyrics went next. Burt and Hal were fortunate to have a spokesperson for their music in Dionne.
Tomorrow, Phil Ramone talks about Leslie Gore's It's My Party, Dusty Springfield's The Look of Love, Midnight Cowboy, Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are, Paul McCartney's Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey and Louis Armstrong's We Have All the Time in the World.
JazzWax note: Starting in 1967, Phil Ramone engineered a series of Dionne Warwick hits, including What the World Needs Now Is Love, I Say a Little Prayer, This Girl's In Love With You, I'll Never Fall in Love Again, Promises Promises, Alfie and Do You Know the Way to San Jose.
JazzWax clip: Here's Dionne Warwick singing Do You Know the Way to San Jose in 1968. Listen to the different dynamics, including the cushioned drums, crisp brushes on the snare, delicate rhythm section and explosive horns and strings...
Recording engineer and producer Phil Ramone had three things going for him when he set up A&R Recording in 1959. First, he was a trained classical musician who could hear what most of his peers could not. Second, he was passionate about making records that sounded more vivid and dynamic than everything else on the market. And third, he was fortunate to have come in contact with the right people at just the right time—notably Atlantic's recording engineer Tom Dowd and producers Quincy Jones and Creed Taylor. [Photo by Dave Allocca]
Phil has always understood that every album project has a distinct personality. Each recording artist and instrument configuration is different and requires care to capture the nuances and hushed warmth or explosive energy. The sonic texture of principal players and playing styles also demand consideration. How good an album sounded back in the 1960s depended largely on a studio's physical construction and interior design as well as where microphones were placed and how tapes were mastered.
In Part 3 of my five-part interview with Phil Ramone, the famed producer talks about recording The Genius of Ray Charles, Kai Winding's More and Getz/Gilberto:
JazzWax: What was your role on Ray Charles’ The Genius of Ray Charles in 1959? Phil Ramone: Tom Dowd and Bill Schwartau were the engineers. I was the third guy, an assistant. Atlantic had tried to book its favorite studio for the date but it was overbooked. Dowd loved how A&R Recording sounded so we were top of mind when they were in a jam.
JW: How did so many musicians on that date fit in your studio? PR: [Laughs] Originally it was supposed to be Ray Charles with just a horn section—four guys. But Quincy [Jones] decided to write bigger. Much bigger. There was something like six trumpets, four trombones and six saxes. Ray was so close to the control-room window that if he could see he probably would have walked out of the session.
JW: One of the first big pop hits you recorded was Kai Winding’s More, the theme from Mondo Cane, in 1962. PR: Carroll Music, an instrument rental company, was in our building. As a studio, we were in constant need of instruments at the last minute, so we rented from them. Carroll eventually preferred to just leave the instruments we needed most frequently on our floor. They did this to avoid slowing down the tiny elevator every time we needed a set of vibes or other large instrument sent up. We kept a menu and running tally of whatever we used and for how long. Then we’d pay Carroll each month. One day Carroll [Bratman, the owner] introduced this little Frenchman to us. He had developed an electronic keyboard with two octaves. It was a small version of how a Moog synthesizer would sound years later. That’s the instrument you hear on More. It wasn’t a theremin, though many people believed it was.
JW: You recorded Getz/Gilberto in March 1963 at A&R but the album wasn’t released until 12 months later. PR: I believe the delay had to do with The Girl From Ipanema.
JW: What happened? PR: Producer Creed Taylor liked Ipanema and wanted to record it as a pop single. But the original words by Vinícius de Moraes were in Portuguese. Before the date, Creed had asked Norman Gimbel to write words to the song in English. Creed felt Ipanema had more pop power as a single than the other songs for the date. He wanted to lay down a demo of Ipanema as a single because Quincy wanted Sarah Vaughan to record it.
JW: How did Astrud Gilberto come to sing it? PR: On the days we recorded, Astrud came to the date with her then husband, guitarist Joao Gilberto [both pictured]. Astrud was in the control room when Norm came in with the English lyrics to Ipanema. Creed said he wanted to get the song done right away and looked around the room. Astrud volunteered, saying she could sing in English. Creed said, “Great.” Astrud wasn’t a professional singer, but she was the only victim sitting there that night [laughs].
JW: What happened next? PR: Creed [pictured] handed Astrud the word sheet and she went into the studio and did it. That’s Creed at his best. The idea of that melody getting English lyrics was his, and taking a chance on Astrud was his idea, too.
JW: What happened with the record? PR: When Sarah heard the demo, she decided at first not to record it. Eventually she did, as The Boy From Ipanema, in August 1964 [after Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald had recorded it]. But for about six months in 1963, The Girl From Ipanema sat on a shelf on Sarah’s end waiting for her decision. I think the strategy was to let Sarah record it first and then release Getz/Gilberto after her version. Many months later, Creed finally released the single, with Stan Getz’s Blowin’ in the Wind on the B side. It was a charming little recording. When the single became a hit, it drove the album and took the bossa nova to a new level in the U.S.
JW: So the single of The Girl From Ipanema with Astrud Gilberto originally was intended as a demo? PR: Yes.
JW: How did you place the musicians for Getz/Gilberto, to create that intimate, pin-drop sound? PR: I have to give credit to the room. I sat the musicians very close to each other. Antonio Carlos Jobim was on piano in the upper left hand corner of the studio. Stan Getz was facing both Jobim and Gilberto. I had them clustered together instead of separated behind baffles [acoustic screens].
JW: Why? PR: People I knew from Washington, D.C., where Creed had recorded Jazz Samba in 1962 told me as soon as the album had come out that I had to hear the new Brazilian music. So I did. I already knew it was music that had this relaxed intensity and that everyone in the studio had to adjust to each other for the sound to come together just right. I didn’t have the musicians wear headphones. That’s a false hearing. I wanted them to hear each other and their individual sounds, so they'd gel.
JW: How did you mike them? PR: I miked the session like a nightclub set, grouping the musicians tightly as though they were on stage. I also turned down the lights in the studio to create that atmosphere. Stan’s mikes were first. He was going to be explosive with huge dynamics, and I wanted to capture all of that.
JW: Dynamics like Stan's could present big recording challenges, yes? PR: Oh sure. But I knew that he would play to the room. So I put a mike above the bell of his horn—just below the mouthpiece and slightly in front of him on a boom. I also set up a back-up mike down low near the bottom of the horn on a stand. I did this because I was worried about the evenness. By the way, the mike above was a Telefunken U47, a superb classical microphone.
JW: So you have two mikes on Getz. What else? PR: I had a mike on Gilberto’s guitar, between the strings and the instrument’s “f” hole. There wasn’t a formula for placement. I did things by the seat of my pants back then and still do. I simply got down on my knees, and when I heard the right sound I place the mike. I did this while the musicians were running through some of the material. I also placed a mike on Jobim at the piano. And two on the drums—an overhead and one near the snare. There were probably eight mikes total.
JW: How did you get the hushed feel? PR: The studio wasn’t bright and noisy, so we could get that woody, intimate feel. When I was developing that room, the test I did to get the right reflections was to put a bass player on one end and a drummer on the other to see if they could play in time, with no delay. When I did this, the two could indeed hear each other perfectly and keep time without a problem. By cutting out the delays at that distance, you know you have warmth. [Pictured from left: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto in 1963]
JW: What don’t most people know about the Getz/Gilberto session? PR: Stan and Gilberto were uncomfortable at first.
JW: Why? Because of where you had placed them? PR: No, no. That was fine. They initially thought the room felt dead [laughs]. I laugh because that was the comment everyone who recorded there had made at first. When they played, they said they thought their sound was lifeless. Until they heard the music played back. Then they realized how mistaken they were.
JW: Why did they feel the room was dead? PR: All of the studios at the major labels were massive spaces. To musicians who had recorded there, A&R Recording was tiny by comparison. But our more compact size is what made it easier for musicians to adjust to each other while recording. There was no hearing problem at A&R. The playback said it all. I’ve always had to fight for what’s good. In all fairness to Stan and Gilberto, why should they have believed a young guy with cropped hair [laughs]?
JW: What did they realize when they heard the result? PR: That the room wasn’t dead. I added just a bit of echo chamber on that recording so the sound was even more authentic. Stan when he heard the playback gave it his blessing by saying: “Wow, that’s the way I sound. That’s the way I want to sound.”
JW: And Gilberto? PR: He was very quiet, but he couldn’t deny that his guitar sounded great. It was essential that Jobim played light on the piano along with the drummer Milton Banana. If Milt had played too loud, we would have had problems.
JW: That explains the intimacy of the recording. What about the sterling clarity? PR: Creed would always let me do things other engineers wouldn't or couldn't do, mainly because Creed knew how focused I was on the audio side. The music had to come first, of course, but the sound also had to work. Creed was big on sound quality.
JW: What did you do? PR: I wanted to master the Getz/Gilberto tape right off the three-track recording. For your readers who aren't familiar with what this is, it's one tape with three tracks recorded onto it—left, center and right. All three tracks were recorded onto the one tape simultaneously. I wanted to take the three-track tape directly to MGM’s cutting room and have the guy master it directly right from that.
JW: Why was that important? PR: This would allow us to ride the gain whenever Stan was on the middle channel. Meaning to reproduce the full sweep of his sound. Tracks #1 and #3 were like stereo, capturing different elements, and #2 was for the solos. I also rolled the tape machine at double speed, using much more tape than a normal session. The faster tape rolls through recording heads the more acoustic information you pick up. We got blasted for doing that. Creed took heavy artillery from the bosses [laughs].
JW: So why was mixing directly from the three-track recording a problem? PR: It was risky. Most producers would have told me to first make a two-track mix from the three-track recording and work from the two-track. Creed knew that the sound was going to be better by doing so.
JW: What's the big risk? PR: If something screws while you're working off an original three-track recording, you'd be in big trouble. It’s your only original copy. But I wanted to avoid the loss of sound that comes by creating a copy of the three-track recording. Every copy you made from a recording was never as good as the original.
JW: Was there a time-money issue as well? PR: Yes. Verve didn’t want to waste either of them. They wanted the tape transferred to disc and put it out. Fortunately, I knew the guy who ran the cutting room. I said to him, “Listen, if it doesn’t sound great, we’ll have wasted one disc.” In those days, I also used to make a two-track recording at the same time in case something happened. I didn’t want to have to use the two-track as my source, but I had it just in case the three-track recording didn’t work out. My drive for fidelity on this recording session cemented my relationship with Creed.
Tomorrow, Phil Ramone talks about recording Dionne Warwick's hits with Burt Bacharach and Hal David's songs.
JazzWax clip: Here's Sarah Vaughan's version in 1964 of Boy From Ipanema...
Here's Astrud Gilberto singing The Girl From Ipanema on a TV show with Stan Getz on tenor sax and Gary Burton on vibes.
Back in the late 1950s, New York was peppered with recording studios. Most were on the West Side of Manhattan, between 39th and 58th streets—within striking distance of the Brill Building on Broadway, the television networks on Sixth Ave. and record distributors on 8th and 9th avenues. When Phil Ramone began his career as a recording engineer, he learned the ropes at JAC Recording, which was in the heart of what was still the city's nightclub and entertainer-hangout district.
In 1958, Phil left JAC to start his own recording studio with Jack Arnold. They set up shop on 48th St. just off 6th Ave. Highly sensitive to sound, Phil soon began remodeling to maximize the room's acoustics and personality for recordings.
In Part 2 of my five-part interview with Phil, the in-demand producer talks about how he learned to mike a studio and where he went for advice to sweeten A&R's sound:
JazzWax: Who taught you how to record jazz? Phil Ramone: Don Elliott mostly. He was a client at JAC Recording and a good friend of Quincy Jones’. In addition to playing trumpet and vibes, Don could write and arrange. He also always had a vision for what he wanted to record. He’d say, “I’ll bring a bass player to the date and then I’ll play vibes and overdub French horns or a mellophone. Then he’d write for that collection of instruments.
JW: Elliott was also something of a recording buff, yes? PR: Yes. Don had started a jingle business and rented a studio near Coastal Studios on 40th St. between 5th and 6th avenues. Don also had a recording studio in his home in Weston, CT. Back in the ‘50s, to have a home studio was the heights of luxury for a musician. He taught me how to record and how to avoid distortion.
JW: What did that entail? PR: You have to mike the instruments carefully. And you don’t want to overload the preamp, into which mikes are plugged. For example, if you place a microphone at the bell of a horn, you’re going wind up in trouble as an engineer when the horn opens up. There's going to be enormous distortion. Don taught me that you have to use the room when miking instruments so the room accompanies the sound and helps produce the best results.
JW: How so? PR: Back then equipment couldn't support many mike inputs. This forced you to feel and work with the room’s sound. This is the sound a room's design elements and materials produce when instruments play. For example, wood and stone surfaces will result in different sounds. Raw wood and polished wood results in differences as well. Sound doesn't happen the way you think it does. When you went to a club then—and this may still be true in many clubs today—the sound you heard was actually coming off the back wall. You thought it was coming from in front of you because your eyes told you so. But in truth, the music came off the back wall. It left a horn, bounced off the back wall and then hit your ear. Today, you can mike every instrument in a band. But in those days, musicians often shared a mike so room surfaces mattered.
JW: What did you learn about mikes? PR: How to hang one just right in the middle of musicians. Bill Schwartau taught me tons. Bill was an engineer who worked at Coastal. He came over to my studio when I formed A&R. Bill was great at looking at a room and understanding design and how to maximize it for recording.
JW: By the way, what did A&R stand for? PR: A&R was named for Arnold and Ramone. Jack Arnold was a partner at JAC who left with me to form our new recording studio. I liked the name because it sounded like the name of a garage.
JW: Where was A&R originally? PR: Jack told me about a room for rent. It was an insert stage on top of Manny’s Music on West 48th St. in New York, where the Fox News Building is now. The location of A&R was 112 West 48th St. and it was perfect. Next door was the bar Jim & Andy's. Legends like Gerry Mulligan and George Barnes would gather there. When a contractor was short on musicians, he’d just call down to Jim & Andy’s.
JW: What did you think when you first saw the space for your studio? PR: The floor was a disaster. It was part concrete, part something else. But it sounded good. After a year, I changed it because musicians would complain that when they walked across it, they’d get dust all over their clothes. Musicians had to dress up in those days [laughs].
JW: What did you do to the space? PR: I developed a room that many producers loved. Creed Taylor recorded many of his Verve albums at my studio in the early 1960s. I also recorded a fair amount with Nesuhi Ertegun of Atlantic. He was a mentor. When I befriended Quincy in 1959, he recorded the Genius of Ray Charles for Atlantic at A&R. The reason Atlantic came to us is because the label’s engineer Tom Dowd had heard my room and loved it.
JW: What made your studio’s space so special? PR: It had a 12-foot ceiling, which gave recordings a sense of space and depth. In the beginning we gave away time to guys like Don Frey and Skitch Henderson [pictured]. Don had worked for NBC for about 10 years as an engineer on live TV. Skitch was leader of the Tonight Show's band. They'd get free recording time, and we'd experiment with them. The results were great, and word of mouth traveled fast.
JW: What would they say? PR: They’d tell others, “There’s no air conditioning, it gets really warm in there and the place is a dust barn. But when you walk out of there, you have a tape that sounds unbelievable.” To this day, the stuff that was recorded there stands up, audio-wise.
JW: What else about the studio? PR: When I wanted to refurbish it, Don Frey and I went to this guy in Astoria and asked him, “What can we do to enhance the sound texture but not cause the room to seal?”
JW: What did the guy say? PR: He came up with a finish for the floor that wasn’t too shiny. I fought so many people on adding a reflective surface —except Bill Putnam [pictured] on the West Coast who used shiny asphalt tile at his Universal Recording studio. You don’t want a bad acoustic slap off the floor, so you have to be careful. After we put that surface down, guys in Count Basie’s band said they didn’t feel like their ears were plugged. You could hear yourself play in there.
JW: What else did you do to the room? PR: I put up masonite walls, believe it or not. Hey, we had to make money. I hung some two by fours, put lighting on it and created a waffle ceiling. Now if you ask me where that education came from, it’s purely experimentation. I know what I had hated and tried things to overcome them. I knew I hated a flat ceiling so I tried something to create a wave form. I did it with tiles. The other thing I did was add echo chambers.
JW: How did you know so much about floor surfaces? PR: At JAC Recording, where I had started, we had taken a bedroom in an apartment and shellacked it for four weeks. Every Friday or Saturday we’d shellac the walls and floors until the room sounded like you were in the smallest little gymnasium—but sweet. So I knew that adding shellac to the floor would give the room a warmer character.
JW: Were you spending wildly? PR: Actually, many of the things I did were done to conserve money. Money was a big problem when you ran a studio. If you wasted discs, you were losing money. If you weren’t aware of how loud a bass drum was and didn’t prepare for it and the drummer hits the bass, the needle wiggles and skips, ruining the disc you're cutting from the tape. So you have to baby sit that disc. You previewed everything. There wasn’t automatic previewing back then. It was all gut and artistic judgment.
Tomorrow, Phil Ramone talks about recording Kai Winding's hit Mondo Cane #2, Ray Charles' Genius + Soul = Jazz, carefully miking Getz/Gilberto, and why The Girl From Ipanema originally was recorded as a demo for Sarah Vaughan, who rejected it.
JazzWax clip: Phil recorded Quincy Jones' Big Band Bossa Nova at A&R in 1962. Here's Soul Bossa Nova, the album's most notable track. Listen how large the 13-piece band sounds in the room...
Phil Ramone has won 14 Grammy Awards as a producer. Known for his warm sound and intimate recording clarity, Phil engineered or produced dozens of jazz, pop and Broadway classics, including Ray Charles' Genius + Soul = Jazz, Leslie Gore's It's My Party, Stan Getz's Getz/Gilberto, Paul McCartney's Ram and Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years. He recently completed producing Paul Simon's So Beautiful Or So What, the guitarist's new bluegrass-influenced album due for release in early 2011.
Unlike many producers, Phil began as a recording engineer in the late 1950s. And unlike many recording engineers, Phil is an accomplished musician, having attended the Juilliard School as a violin prodigy. He also has been associated with virtually every major music trend since the late 1960s, engineering many of Dionne Warwick's hits with Burt Bacharach, Frank Sinatra's The World We Knew, Peter Paul and Mary's Leaving on a Jet Plane and Louis Armstrong's We Have All the Time in the World.
In Part 1 of my five-part interview with Phil, 69, the legendary recording engineer and producer talks about growing up in Manhattan and how the teenage violinist wound up in the control room of recording studios:
JazzWax: How did you come to the violin? Phil Ramone: When I was a kid, my sister and I loved music. I constantly nagged my parents to let me play the violin. I know, this sounds strange, since kids and violins don't often mix. Even my piano teacher told my mother, “He’ll get over it after six months.” But I didn’t. I was fascinated by the instrument—but not for the reasons you’d think. My original interest in the violin came from jazz stars like Joe Venuti and Stuff Smith [pictured]. I couldn’t imagine how they were able to play classical and then ad-lib jazz. I couldn’t figure out how that worked. I just assumed they memorized everything.
JW: What impact did that have on you? PR: I started memorizing everything. I think it took until I was around age 10 when my fiddle teacher finally realized I wasn’t reading the music in front of me. I protested, saying I was reading. In truth, my teacher was right.
JW: How did you memorize so much music? PR: I’d play a record and learn the music instantly. I was one of those types of kids with a great ear. When you can do that, you look at the notes on a page and say, “Oh, that’s a B-flat? OK” [laughs]. I was a faker until my teacher threw some ensemble music at me in a kids’ orchestra to see what would happen. Then the truth was exposed. In addition to listening to classical music, I was listening to recordings by Charlie Parker, Count Basie and many other jazz musicians. I was a nutcase for Basie. By the time I was in my early teens, I regularly begged my parents to take me to Birdland to hear him and his band.
JW: Was your true love jazz or classical? PR: I loved jazz but was a very serious classical student. But I always believed that my creative growth shouldn’t be stuffy. My role models were Andre Previn and Lenny Bernstein. I befriended Andre years later and told him what it meant to me to see guys like him play jazz. My parents were open to me moving in that direction.
JW: Where did you grow up in New York? PR: In a tough neighborhood on Amsterdam Avenue and 82d St. You walked home with a fiddle case back in the ‘50s and got beat up or you played well and everyone knew it and admired you.
JW: How good were you? PR: Pretty good. I was something of a prodigy. By the time I was 12 years old, I was doing a fair amount of television recording work at places like RCA. Little by little, I became fascinated by how they miked the musicians in the studio. I was still a kid, and children ask way too many questions.
JW: How were you treated? PR: People were nice to me and let me come into the control room. I’d ask why two mikes, why over there, why facing that way or this way. I was always top of mind with contractors who would call asking me to play in the orchestra on the Kate Smith Hour or some other star’s TV program. With TV, they worked you for a bunch of minutes. Then you had hours to sit around. During those long breaks, I’d ask more questions. They’d let me go where I wanted as long as I was quiet. I also talked extensively to the audio and production guys. I loved the art of sound and recording.
JW: Where was your first big engineering job? PR: In the late 1950s, I worked for a demo studio in New York called JAC Recording on West 58th Street. That was the best training I could have gotten. Back then, the engineer was expected to be a musician. I’d play string parts and overdub them like crazy so they sounded on record like a small string section. JAC offered the cheap version of what a Les Paul recording system would be like.
JW: Was this fast work? PR: Yes. We’d try to do a demo in 15 minutes so the guy who came to us with his song could walk out of our studio relatively quickly with a demo sung by a pro. Paul Simon was one of those demo singers at the time. He sang Burt Bacharach demos, which wasn't bad work. You got paid $5 to $10 for singing them.
JW: Who did you work for at JAC? PR: Charlie Leighton, the owner. He was a professional harmonica player and recording engineer. He kind of took me under his wing. He said, “If you want to work here, you don’t get paid, but I’ll teach you everything you need to know. I’ll teach you how to make a disc.” Learning how to make a good recording was a real craft and important to me. In those years, that little 45-rpm had to sound great if it wanted to make an impression on publishers.
JW: What was the demo business like in the late ‘50s? PR: Everyone who wrote songs needed a demo to sell publishers on buying it. In the old days, a pianist would sit in the publisher’s office and bang out the songs brought in by songwriters. But as the 45-rpm became increasingly popular, publishers wanted a more realistic sample of the writer's vision. What was the market for the song? What sound did the writer imagine? What kind of arrangement? And so on. If you wrote a song, you’d bring the sheet music into a demo studio like ours, and we’d have a guy or gal sing your song backed by a piano or guitar or strings.
JW: What happened next? PR: If a publisher liked what it heard, it would license the song and direct it to the ideal singers or groups, who hopefully would turn it into a hit. That was always the promise, a hit. At JAC, you paid $25 and the rest was left to us. If you paid $50, you’d get two or three guitars all overdubbed.
JW: So in the late '50s, guitarists were increasingly in demand by studios. PR: Yes. There were guitar players running all over New York recording demos. They’d come in, hook up their guitar, set their amp and roll. You’d record three or four demos with that same guitar player.
JW: What happened next? PR: When the session was over, the guitar player would rush off to another job, and you'd take a break for lunch. When you came back, you'd do a quick mix. But it wasn’t much of a mix. At JAC, we only had a pair of two-track recording machines. That’s why during this period, studio musicians had to sound great immediately and engineers had to know what they were doing.
Tomorrow, Phil talks about learning the ropes as a recording engineer and leaving JAC to start his own studio, A&R Recording.
JazzWax pages: Phil's memoir with Charles L. Granata, Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music (2007), is a terrific read and can be found here.
JazzWax clip:Here's Phil Ramone earlier this year at the Grammy Awards...
Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of 55 More Songs," "Anatomy of a Song," "Rock Concert: An Oral History" and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax has won three Jazz Journalists Association awards.
