Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Changes; Columbia's 30th Street Studio

Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Changes.  Since I am not an expert here...according to wikipedia, "Time Changes is a 1963 album by The Dave Brubeck Quartet, it is based upon the use of time signatures that were, partially because of Brubeck's previous work, now a mainstay in popular jazz music.  The whole second side of the album, the composition "Elementals", resulted from a relationship with Rayburn Wright, The Eastman School of Music and its "Arranger's Workshop" and an impending concert in Rochester, New York. It was Mr. Brubeck's first orchestral composition.  It is continuation of Dave's hit albums –"Brubeck Time", "Time Out", "Time Further Out" and "Countdown – Time In Outer Space," exploring the elements of time in jazz and music, while extending itself into a "do-it-yourself" concerto, which comprises the whole of side two, with orchestral accompaniment.  The cover painting is by the internationally acclaimed American abstract painter Sam Francis.   It was released in 1963, recorded November of that year, at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio in New York, is on the Columbia label, and was produced by Teo Macero.  But let's find out more about WHERE is was recorded...

        "CBS's 30th Street Studio, also known as Columbia 30th Street Studio, and nicknamed "The Church," was a recording studio operated by Columbia Records from 1949 to 1981, located at 207 East 30th Street, between Second and Third Avenues in Manhattan.  It was considered by some in the music industry to be the best sounding room of its time and still others consider it to have been the greatest recording studio in history.  (Blogger’s note:  Really?  OK, what do I know...?)   It was at the time one of the most renowned studios and a large number of recordings were made there in all genres, including Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, and Percy Faith's Theme from A Summer Place in 1960.  The 30th Street facility contained both Columbia's "Studio C" and "Studio D."  Many celebrated musical artists from all genres of music used the 30th Street Studio for some of their most famous recordings.  Bach: The Goldberg Variations, the 1955 debut album of the Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould, was recorded in the 30th Street Studio.  It was an interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations (BWV 988), the work launched Gould's career as a renowned international pianist, and became one of the most well-known piano recordings.  On May 29, 1981 a second version of the Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gold was recorded in this studio.  This was the last production by this famous studio.  Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis recorded almost exclusively at the 30th Street Studio, including his classic 1959 recording, Kind of Blue.  In 1964, Bob Dylan and record producer Tom Wilson were experimenting with their own fusion of rock and folk music. The first unsuccessful test involved overdubbing a "Fats Domino early rock & roll thing" over Dylan's earlier, acoustic recording of "House of the Rising Sun," according to Wilson.  This took place in the Columbia 30th Street Studio in December 1964.  It was quickly discarded, though Wilson would more famously use the same technique of overdubbing an electric backing track to an existing acoustic recording with Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence."  The very last recording made in the studio was Glenn Gould's slower and reconsidered Goldberg Variations (Reappraised) in 1981, a year before Gould's death."  Wikipedia...

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Shady Grove, and Wally Heider Studios

Quicksilver Messenger Service...Shady Grove is a 1969 album by Quicksilver Messenger Service.  It was one of the first records recorded at Wally Heider Studios.  WHS was the go-to recording studio in San Fransiicco from 1969 to about 1980.  Look it up and see all the great albums made there.  Nicky Hopkins, (who I read all about last summer, and played piano on tons of great albums by the Stones, The Who, The Beatles, Steve Miller, etc.) joined the QMS for just this one album.  Hopkins later went and re-recorded the album closer Edward on his solo album, The Tin Man Was a Dreamer, which features members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.  Joseph's Coat, co-written by John Cipollina and Nick Gravenites, who also appears on Big Brother and the Holding Company's album Be a Brother, which featured Gravenites on vocals.  Original guitarist Gary Duncan does not appear on this album.  QMS was first popular, not surprisingly, in and around theuir home turf of the Bay Area, and less so nationally.  They were one of the first psychedelic rock bands, yet not as commercially successful as contemporaries Jefferson Airplane and the Dead.  QMS was in important and vital member of that genre, blending jazz, classical, folk music from their influencers.  Apparently, the band has recently attempted to reform despite the deaths of several members.   Original members Gary Duncan and David Freiberg have toured together, as the "Quicksilver Messenger Service," using different musicians to back them up.

Gilbert O'Sullivan - Big Jim Sullivan, and Jim Marshall, and Marshall Amps at 50!

Gilbert O'Sullivan...Himself, Alone Again (Naturally).  Gilbert O'Sullivan is best known for Alone Again (Naturally).  He was quoted recently as saying rather unabashedly, "I write pop songs.  End of story.  That's all I wanted to do. That's all I want to do.  And that's all I continue to want to do.  I have no interest in just touring, and living in the past."  OK.  Born Raymond Edward O'Sullivan, in Waterford, Ireland, in 1960, his family moved to Swindon, Wiltshire, England.  He attended St Joseph's and the Swindon College of Art, where he briefly played drums in a band called Rick's Blues, founded by Rick Davies (who later founded Supertramp).  According to a 1972 interview with O'Sullivan, Davies taught him how to play both drums and piano.  Imagine Supertramp with a Gilbert O’Sullivan!  ANN is a very bleak song really, with sad and tragic lyrics, but the music it’s set to has a up-tempo feel, in some major key.  A guy called Big Jim Sullivan plays the guitar break in the original recorded version of the song.  Ah, but who is Big Jim Sullivan we ask?  He was lots.   Allegedly, he’s the first person in the UK to own a Gibson Les Paul guitar, Marty Wilde bought it for him.  He gave Ritchie Blackmore and Steve Howe guitar lessons.  Jimmy Page borrowed Sullivan's Gibson J-200 acoustic for the recording of Led Zeppelin I.  Sullivan was one of the contributors to the 1971 Green Bullfrog album, which also featured guitarists Ritchie Blackmore and Albert Lee.  Big Jim Sullivan is an English musician, whose career started in 1959.  He is best known as a session guitarist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Sullivan was one of the most "in-demand" studio musicians in the UK, and performed in more than one thousand charting singles over his career.  He was called "Big Jim" to distinguish him from Jimmy Page, who was a popular session guitarist at the time and known as "Little Jim".  Sullivan, with Ritchie Blackmore and Pete Townshend, persuaded Jim Marshall to make those iconic amplifiers.  James Charles "Jim" Marshall, OBE (1923 - ), is known as The Father Of Loud.

Hovie Lister & the Statesmen

What a find! This record has never been played, or opened!  Hovie Lister & the Statesmen.  With the Skylite Strings, on the Skylite label, SLP 6080.  They sound like would have played a few concerts that Andy and Helen and Barney and Thelmalou would have surely attended in Mayberry on hot Saturday night.  Very obscure - so I had to look this up:  Hovie Franklin Lister (September 17, 1926 - December 28, 2001) was an American gospel pianist.  Lister was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and he learned piano at age six.  Lister accompanied a singing group composed of his father and three of his uncles (The Lister Brothers Quartet) at 14, and toured with Mordecai Ham at the same age.  He attended the Stamps-Baxter School of Music in Dallas.  Following his education, Lister served as an accompanist for The Lefevres, The Homeland Harmony, and The Rangers Quartet in the 1940s.  In 1948, he formed The Statesmen Quartet, and remained the group's anchor for decades.  Lister's style, which differed from his predecessors in his adoption of jazz, soul and ragtime idioms over the staid, solemn accompaniment of prior generations, influenced the sound of gospel and CCM in the later 20th century. Lister remained a member of The Statesmen Quartet into the 2000s.  Aside from performing, Lister also had interests in music publishing and promotion.  Lister was inducted into the Southern Gospel Hall of Fame in 2001.

Chaka Khan...and Prince, Rufus

Chaka Khan...I really like Prince's original version of I Feel for You.  She surely makes her cover version of it her own - especially with that killer dub intro, but the swing-y tempo of Prince's (who wrote it) version is just really smooth and silky.  Prince's version is on his 2nd LP (which some people think is/was his debut), the eponymous Prince album, called Prince, which was released in October 1979.   Apparently, it was slapped together rapidly to keep the momentum gained from his actual debut LP, For You.  I wore that album out in college because it has one of my all-time favorite songs on it - "I Wanna Be Your Lover."  Which was his first hit, spending two weeks at number one on the R&B singles chart.  But back to Chaka and the group she has fronted for many years - Rufus.  I read that when Quincy Jones was helping to make Off the Wall, members of Rufus (David J. "Hawk" Wolinski  and John "JR" Robinson) were used as the rhythm section on that classic album.  The album shown on the right is hers called Naughty, out in 1980, and produced by Arif Mardin, Turkey's second most famous record-maker.  There is a veritable who's who of musical geniuses listed as having played on that record too long to list here.

The Byrds...untitled, with 16 minute version of Eight Miles High

The Byrds, untitled...the band that started it all...this is also the photo I used to have up on my newly formatted Facebook page - called Timeline.  Most people don't like that, but this is not about Facebook.  The Byrds are/were one of the most important bands ever.  I don't think new bands can really attain important-ness.  This album is referred to as Untitled, their 9th, it was released in 1970 on Columbia.  It is a double album, but s not a DLA, because the first disc is live recordings from some early 1970's performances in New York City, but the second disk is studio recordings.  That is an odd format.  Genesis had 3 sides live.  This album was the first official release of any live recordings by the band as well as the first appearance on a Byrds' record of new member Skip Battin, who replaced the band's earlier bass player John York.  The studio disc is has songs by lead Roger McGuinn and a Broadway theater director Jacques Levy, they had some idea to try to do a country rock musical, but that never go off the ground, so those songs ended up here.   The single "Chestnut Mare" and b/w "Just a Season", was released in the U.S. in October 1970 and reached #121 (wow!) on the Billboard chart.   Side two has one song on it - Eight Miles High, at all of 16 minutes.