Producing Country. Michael Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ said, “Because you idiots wouldn’t do a damn thing about him.” I think the album is still selling.

FERLIN HUSKY, “GONE” (1956), VINTAGE COLLECTIONS (CAPITOL)

       KEN NELSON

      I went into the studio with Ferlin Husky, and I think I was about the first one to add a female voice to the Jordanaires [backing vocals]. We recorded “Gone.” It was a smash hit, and as a result of that record, all the record companies—I just got a letter from Millie [Kirkham] the other day, who sang on the record. She said that since “Gone,” which was, of course, many years ago, she’d worked her butt off. Everybody wanted her on their records.

MERLE TRAVIS, THE MERLE TRAVIS GUITAR (1956, CAPITOL)

      THOM BRESH (guitarist/producer/Travis’s son)

      He was a real interesting character to produce. I’ve thought many times, what would it be like if he were here today with this kind of technology? It would be incredible what you could do. Today, you could take something like a Roland VS880 hard-disk recorder and a couple of mikes and go anywhere, just sit there at his house. Let him be real comfortable, get his ice-tea and his cornbread, and sit there and play. Say, “If you make a mistake, just play that part again, and we’ll put it together.”

      Travis loved to edit, even clear back in the ’50s when he was doing albums. There was a song he did on the famous, what they call “Yellow Album” for Capitol, which is Travis Guitar. He plays “Bugle Call Rag.” In the middle of it, he’s got this lick—really a hot lick.

      People have tried to play it, but Travis says, “No, I did that with a capo on the second fret with an open position. We just cut [edited] that in. It was a technique so people would try to figure out how to do it.” He said he played like hell and then, when it got to that place, he stopped [the tape]. He put a capo on the second fret and did this one little fill thing [and stopped the tape again]. And then, it went right back into the other tuning without the capo.

      Everybody says, “How do you get that sound?” He just loved things like that. He had a couple of big Berlant-Concertones [tape recorders] that Capitol put Ampex heads on for him. He had those at the house where he would sit and record—woodshed some things out. He liked to overdub at the house. I don’t know if any of those recordings got out. I heard a couple of things, but it’s hard to tell whether they were them or not. He was always doing something with different tunings, or he’d do a lick and cut it in. He liked to cut things in. He said, “If people are going along playing [with the record], they’ll say, ‘How’d he do that?’”

      He and Les Paul were both working with what he liked to call that Mickey Mouse guitar, where they’d slow the tape to half-speed [thus doubling playback speed]. Back then, Les was even doing it with [acetate] cutters, but Travis was messing with it at the same time. Of course, Les had it refined to a “T.” Travis just knew he liked that, where you slow the recording down to half-speed and do these licks around it. He was an innovator as much as he could be for the time. It shows with the solid-body Bigsby [guitar] and different things that he did in his life.

      Years ago, he was looking for a tape. He was having some drinks with Judy Garland one night. They both got rocking pretty good, and they cut at his home studio, I think he said, eight or nine songs. We hunted all over the place looking for that. He wanted me to hear it. One night, he was looking through all of these boxes of tapes, but they were all out of order. He said, “I just wanted you to hear this one thing Judy and I did. It was so good. We just had a ball that night.” That would be something to find. It was done during both of their heydays. I don’t think he was more than forty years old at the time.

ELVIS PRESLEY, “BLUE MOON” (1956, RCA), SUNRISE AND ELVIS PRESLEY (1956, RCA)

       ROLAND JANES

      Here’s one of the mistakes that people make. They think the magic was in the room [at Sun Records]. Let me tell you something. Although it was a well-designed room, the magic was in the people at that particular time in history. Now, the room was suited for recording. It was a rented building, but Sam designed the ceiling and everything. It worked out well, although you were limited as to the number of instruments you could record. But we didn’t record with the lot of instruments. The magic was generally in the combinations of people, and that included the engineer, the musicians, and what have you.

      One of the secrets of good sound over there [at Sun] was Sam had the ability to add a little bit of slapback echo on whatever he wanted—usually on the vocal. Also you got a little bleed, even in the vocal, from the different instruments. You got that little touch of slapback echo that added a little body to what you were doing. It was part of the magic of the overall situation.

      Sam had a way of recording. He had three tape recorders in the room. He had two Ampex recorders. He used one of them to record on, and he used the other one in case he wanted to run a copy of the tape. Now the third machine was a wall-mounted Ampex. He would record the desired signal onto machine number one. Machine number two just sat there unless you wanted to run a copy later. Machine number three, which was the mounted machine, he could take whatever signal he wanted from whichever instrument or vocal, and he sent that to the third machine, and it recorded along with the desired signal that went to the first machine. Then, at the same time that would be playing back through the console. So you had your desired signal. Then you had a slapback signal that came out of the third machine. You got that by delay. He recorded the third machine at the slow speed so you could get a wider delay in between the notes or what have you. That’s how he created and got the slapback effect.

      The way most people got it, they recorded on your one machine and ran it back through the board and then back to the same machine. When you did that, everything that went onto the machine had slapback on it. Sam, using the other machine in his method, he could have slapback on one thing and not on the rest of the band. Or whatever combination he wanted. That’s the reason he had the good slapback, and he could have a good clean slapback. Everything wasn’t slapping back all over the place.

      We hung around the studio. Someone would say, “What are you doing tomorrow? You want to come in and record with Jerry Lee?” Everything was really laid back—not really laid out and planned out like the sessions are nowadays. It wasn’t always the same musicians on sessions. It was a matter of whoever was available. If someone was out of town, we didn’t let that stop us. We’d take somebody else and go ahead and do the session.

      They were great musicians. Carl Perkins, I thought, was a fine musician. Of course there was Scotty [Moore]. Scotty had his own sound. We each had our distinct sound. But in the final analysis you can almost always tell it was a Sun Record sound, even though played by different people in a different manner. In a different style even. It still had the Sun signature to it.

      The slapback might’ve had something to do with it, but everything didn’t have slapback on it. Maybe the engineers had a lot to do with it. Engineers have a hell of a lot more to do with a good record than people realize—usually more so even than the producers. A lot of the records I’ve worked on over the years, the producer is out in the lobby on the telephone through about 90 percent of the session. So, basically, if you get good communication between the musicians and the engineer, then you’re going to get yourself a pretty good session. It may not be a hit every time, but it will be a pretty good session. If the engineer has worked both СКАЧАТЬ