Here are some session photos I took along the way...

CBS foyer in the lobby at 49 East 52nd Street.

This was typical rack of equipment found at Columbia records.
The top two side by side rotary knobs were the mix room's stereo monitor volume controls joined by an actual gear that pulled outwards to disengage the left from the right channel in order to alter the balance.
A Pultec MEQ5 midrange equalizer and the Universal Audio limiters beneath it...

...and these Pultec EQP1 EQ's
and Allison noise gates on each channel (not shown) were a staple.

The AMPEX 300 was typically what we recorded to,
and the most widely used professional tape machine in the US from the 40's through sixties.
Studer, Scully and Presto were alternatives.

You couldn't get very far with out one of these. The Patch Bay. All connections from the mic to the console, reverb and other special effects gear, the tape deck, earphones, right on through to the speakers
as well as access to other rooms on other floors were made through this hard wired routing system.

The updated CBS mix board in 1970.

The mixing console, 4th floor, as all the consoles, was custom made by the R&D engineers on the 7th floor. We (the recording engineers), got to get together with Eric Porterfield, the chief R&D engineer (genius) and his great team of technicians and collaborated on the new console designs for the 1970 CBS N.Y studios' revamping. They wanted to insure that the functionality of their construction efforts would have no shortcomings. That is part of what made them a world class facility. The out of focus foreground show the Penny & Giles 1db (decibel) faders in series with 0.5db per step faders on each channel and also had a 0.5db per step detented rotary faders recessed in the arm rest for each input for trimming the volume. All channels were preceded by a 20 channel VCA controlled grouped Input Master to control the volume of the overall gain structure. This avoided overloading the summing amps when getting over enthusiastic with the mix. If the mix got too hot, just lower the VCA master to a nice +4db optimum level.... unless you were Tommy James. The mix never worked for him unless the meters were off the scale or what we called "in the red".

CBS STUDIO C, a.k.a.: "The Church"...

...outside...

...inside

Dave Sarser of Studio 3 (see "Studio 3" below...) took me here at the Church in 1962 to observe my first 3 track recording session. Paul Robeson, the classic movie actor and recording artist, sang while a thirty piece orchestra and thirty piece choir accompanied him, all live! It was a patriotic cantata to the Constitution of the United States. The Preamble, The Constitution, and the Bill Of Rights, and so on, were put to music and performed here that day. I was inspired by the fact that, aside from the artistry, how clean the audio system was. All that sound, and yet, when no one was performing, and I put my ear directly up to one of the Altec 604E speakers to check for system noise, there was only the tiniest hint of hiss from the tubes. I was amazed! How could all those mics and amplifiers go through all those wires, hundreds of feet, back and forth through all those patch bays and volume controls and equalizers and still total next to zero noise! The CBS technical staff were truly the masters of audio wiring.
Thank you Eric Portafield...chief of CBS Studio's R&D.

I was hired as an engineer on staff here.
I had the incredible satisfaction of recording Georgie Fame
of Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames "Yeh, Yeh",
and Otis Blackwell (author of Don't Be Cruel) with full orchestration in this same Studio C. Strings, horns and lots of background singers! (I still have the session tapes!) And I recorded Bobby Vinton's "Just A Little Lovin' Early In The Mornin'" here, And The Chambers Brothers and many more great sessions here.

Sinatra frequented the Church quite often during his Columbia years with...

...Frank Laico at the board at 30th Street.

Laico made recording look easy.
"The Church", Studio C was kinda' Frank Laico's base of operations.

The church's sacristy was also converted into Studio D, a tiny, intimate room where I recorded Tom Rush's vocal and guitar tracks along with Duke Bardwell's bass guitar (Old Man's Song and Children's Song) for his first Columbia album and many more hours experimenting on the Moog synthesizer with John Cale of Velvet Underground for the Vintage Violence album. Paul McCartney performed 90 takes on his vocal for "Monkberry Moon Delight" from his Ram album in Studio D in '71.
(He wanted to get that raspy sound, uh, and he did!).

Here are some photos I took during the making of the Tom Rush album:

Arranger/producer, photographer, Ed Freeman.
This was Ed's first exposure to producing. Eventually he would go on to produce Don McClean's American Pie,

Duke Bardwell, bass & Tom Rush in Studio B...

...and Trevor Veitch, guitars....
...and Richie Green at CBS Studio B.


Jim Reeves engineering in front of the first Dolby units during the Tom Rush mixing sessions.

The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble was the last session I did there in 1971. The 30th Street Church fell prey to a newly arrived neighbor's noise complaints. They had purchased the adjacent town house. Imagine being in the middle of a great moment in a recording session at Columbia Records in one of the finest sounding studios in the world, and spinning around on your chair to a dozen police officers who explain that the session has to stop because the new neighbors complained about the noise
Not wanting to be a nuisance, CBS decided to shut it down not long after.
I miss it.

Photo by Dave Smith
This was the church's upgraded console in it's Studio C Control Room in 1972. Photo by Dave Smith

And this is what your records were created on. The finest Scully disc cutting lathe. A modern version of the one Herb Abramson (founder of Atlantic Records) taught me on at A-1 Sound years earlier. There were about nine "cutting" rooms on the 5th floor of CBS's New York's facility on 52nd street.

Photo by Dave Smith

This was Studio B on the second floor of CBS 52nd street. Home of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" for one. After the modernization of 1970, the booths were added as isolation rooms as less big orchestral session space was in demand. I recorded Bobby Vinton's Ev'ry Day Of My Life album here (pre-booths). I happened also to have participated in the audio historical timeline by having engineered the first released multi-track Dolby'd album to hit the market - "Tom Rush" in 1969. I started and mixed it here prior to Studio B's renovation. It included Driving Wheel and These Days (written by Jackson Brown). Studio B was the one room that had a live echo chamber.
It is now a Walgreen's-type drug store and offices.



...Catfish and Jam Factory producer Kenny Cooper in CBS' Studio.


Bob "Catfish" Hodge at A & R's R-2 Studio in Manhattan.

Photo by Dave Smith ...
CBS' renovated Studio B
Studio B control room with one of the updated custom designed 40 channel consoles added in 1970. They were built "in house" on the 7th floor by the CBS technicians, led by Eric Porterfield. By now the tape machines had grown to 16 tracks and the recording techniques were becoming more complicated. Dolby noise reduction was accepted as a standard and had to be integrated. What differs from how things are manufactured today is that in the designing stage of these consoles, we, the recording engineers, actually sat with the design staff and communicated what those demands in the modern recording "process" were and the consoles were designed to "make sense" for us as end users.
Note the Machine Room at the lower left in the rear. The tape operator sat back there and controlled the tape machines and monitored them to insure the performance was actually getting on tape.

Great moments in CBS recording history, for me anyway:
Paul & Linda and the kids during the making of the really great
RAM album in '71.

A&R Studios R-2

A&R Studio R-2 console (engineer's position) 322 West 48th street Manhattan...

...flaunting illuminated Penny & Giles faders.

Right Track:

Kolotkin and Donovan in Studio E October 1969
My buddy Glen Kolotkin (top photo), recording Tim Hardin at the Studio E console in the lead-lined Columbia Records building, 6th floor, 49 East 52nd Street, New York City , 1970, when faders were still rotary.
Look at that console - it was amazing!
It's too bad that I don't have a better photo of it. (No offense Glen). When I left A-1 Sound to work full time at Studio3, around '67, Glen replaced me there when he got out of the army. We met up again in '69 here at CBS. We formed a production and management company and produced the band Sunday for Apple Records with Allan Klein in '70.

"Sunday" featuring Cheryl Hardwick III

Glen Kolotkin and Jim Reeves formed a management company along with a CBS cohort, Ed Haskell.
Among those managed by us was Bobby Lester for CBS Records.


Haskell, Kolotkin and Reeves (taking photo) cutting a deal at RCA.
  Bobby Lester
  Harvey Brooks at Blackrock -
Lester's Producer and former bassist of Electric Flag at his CBS Blackrock digs.

Glen just won his 2001 Grammy for engineering Carlos Santana's hit album. He's a great guy and engineer. Congratulations! You earned it. Some of his other productions have been: Joan Jett, NRBQ, several Barbara Streisand albums, Jimi Hendix, Janis Joplin "Pearl", Donovan, The Chambers Brother's "Time (Has Come Today)" and lots more great stuff!

RCA's Neve Necam Mix Room on 46th Street and Avenue of the Americas in 1980 where I mixed Rob Hegel's RCA album. We started the tracks at the Record Plant 's Studio A on 44th Street in Manhattan, overdubbed at Chip Taylor and "Crazy" Joe Renda's Northlake Studios in North White Plains and ended up here for the mixes.

This was the other studio we worked out of - West Indies Recording Studio, Kingston, Jamaica, 1969.
Johnny Nash
singing in Kingston, Jamaica for the Nuggets For The Needy benefit, 1969.
Byron Lee
and the Dragonaires at Nuggets benefit
Johnny Nash singing in Kingston
Arthur Jenkins, Johnny's arranger
Johnny backstage greeting fans.

Jim Reeves at Johnny Nash's home in Kingston, 1969.
Johnny Nash's house and view from his patio.

Richard Nixon's
Inaugural Ball recording on the Wally Heider Record Plant East Remote Truck.
Jan. 18, 19, 20, 1973 - Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.

What's it like being flanked by these gentlemen
in the wings of the Kennedy Center stage whilst Joey Heatherton performs?
Simply astounding!

Frank Sinatra Bob Hope
Joey Heatherton Ray Stevens Jim Reeves
with recording crew at Kennedy Convention Center load-in dock.

Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Hugh O'Brien spoke at the podium. I got to hang with Frank and Bob. Awesome! The performers were Joey Heatherton, (running on and off the stage doing a lot of quick outfit changes in a small tent on the wings of the stage), The Mike Curb Congregation, The New Christie Minstrels; Ray Stevens performed Mr. Businessman and Ahab The Arab, among others, Wayne Newton (played every instrument in the band and then got a broom and swept himself off the stage), and mostly all the acts were backed by Don Costa & Orchestra who were set up behind the curtain with a video monitor because the front stage wasn't quite large enough to accommodate them all. Lots of wires for mics and video feeds and lamps for music stands. It was a huge setup. Mickey Dolenz (The Monkees) arrived late. I was with him backstage while he attemted to get on stage, but they couldn't schedule him in. I would have liked to have seen what he was going to do.

Terry Fryer Music - Evanston, Illinois

Here's me at Terry Fryer Music's original ergonomic set-up when I arrived in Illinois in '93... But...
...we changed all that to this in '97...
You probably know Terry if you've ever seen "Ground Hog Day". When Bill Murry plays the piano with the jazz ensemble in the film, it's actually Terry's hands you see playing.
The white cabinet beneath the synths and computer displays (back wall) was fully air conditioned and sound proofed and housed the Mac 9600's and drives, the Roland DM 800 and the Fairlight's. The air conditioned machine/amp room which housed the Otari MTR 90II and power amps and guitar amp heads was to the right. The recording rooms were out the door to the right and left. A vocal booth was to the left at the end of the Trident Series 90 108 channel automated board (left). As Terry's chief engineer, I was part of the installation team when we brought up the console through the third story window on a crane. The entire floor was gutted, re-enforced right down to the rafters. Wiring troughs were installed in the floors and ceiling and new floors were installed. HVAC spoilers and sound proof doors were installed. No stone was left unturned. When the studio was up and runnig by the deadline, Terry was unsatisfied with the wiring mess and asked me to rewire the entire facility in the Columbia Records tradition. Section by section, I re-installed the entire room's audio, midi, video, smpte and AES digital wiring on my own. (We're both fans of the Krell.)

MOST photos - Jim Reeves (except Right Track was taken by Eric Reeves, and the ones I'm in, duh.)

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