NewYorkDave
Well-known member
Update to the original post:
Except for the control room photo, the links are dead. I managed to retrieve the texts and will post them here now.
Here's an excerpt from a now-defunct Columbia University webpage called "The History of Record Production":
Here's the brief article that appeared in the August, 2004 issue of Guitar Player magazine:
Except for the control room photo, the links are dead. I managed to retrieve the texts and will post them here now.
Here's an excerpt from a now-defunct Columbia University webpage called "The History of Record Production":
Joe Mauldin joined the band in 1957 and, later to become a second engineer himself in the early Sixties at California’s Gold Star Studios, was fortunate to take notice of the techniques used by Petty during the making of such hits as Peggy Sue, Oh Boy, and Maybe Baby, until the team broke up in October 1958.
Decca had dropped Buddy and that was the reason for forming the Crickets. Buddy recorded That'll Be The Day for Decca and there was a clause in his contract that stated that he couldn't re-record that song for another record company for five years (and Decca had decided not to release it). So he said, "Okay, Buddy Holly won't record it, The Crickets will." The record (released by Brunswick) was never credited as Buddy Holly and Decca didn’t even realize it was him singing on it until a year or had passed.
At the time many recording sessions took place at radio stations and Buddy had also recorded in Nashville, but he became frustrated by the tense, conveyor belt attitude of the engineers toward the young talent. It was the kind of situation where someone would say, "hurry up, we've got another band coming in." Buddy wanted to check out Clovis to see how relaxed he could be over there, so that's kind of what started the ball rolling for the Crickets.
According to Maudlin, Norman Petty's greatest strength as a producer and engineer were his intense analysis of sound and attention to detail. He was quite particular about everything coming back from tape exactly the way it sounded in the studio, as if you were right there listening to it. With the guitars, Buddy would play his Stratocaster through a Fender tweed covered amplifier, and Norman would have a couple of mics on the amp to record the electric sound. But then he would also take another mic and put it near the strings of Buddy’s guitar, even though they weren’t making much noise, so that he could get the sound of the pick on the strings. He would put Buddy out there on his own without even running his guitar through an amplifier. I thought this was unusual and the end result that came out of the speakers in the control room really sounded like you were right in front of Buddy, listening to him play.
Petty was among the new breed of technicians who took the rock 'n' roll sound to new heights, using Les Paul's overdubbing principles, even though he was yet to invest in a multitrack recorder. Norman’s mainstay tape machine was a mean momma Ampex 600 portable which allowed him to remove it from the studio and take anywhere he wanted. But he also had an Ampex 327 mono machine on which he would make duplicate copies. He recorded us in mono and would use the two machines, playing back on to one the music he had just recorded while recording a new part along with it. Most of the time, Buddy, Jerry Allison and I would go out into the studio and record the guitar, bass and drums all at once, with an occasional piano part played by Norman's wife Vi. Then, if he wanted the pick sound, like on Everyday where it is quite evident, he would overdub that and mix it into the overall sound. It was very effective.
Everyday featured another original and much copied sound, care of Jerry Allison's knees. He had some tight Levi's on that day and we had been rehearsing with Norman listening behind the console. Buddy was playing his guitar and I was playing the bass as normal, and Jerry was sitting there just patting his knees. Norman happened to hear that and said, Wow, let's put a mic down between Jerry's legs and we’ll use that sound as the drums. So it was a spur of the moment thing which worked out real well, and that's all the percussion there is on Everyday. That wasn't an overdub either, it was all done live.
To avoid instrument leakage on the other mics, Holly and Maudlin were often sandwiched between acoustic screens, while on some numbers, including Peggy Sue and Not Fade Away, Allison set up his Pearl drum kit in a completely different room. There were some pretty elaborate mics at the studio, says Maudlin. At the time, the Telefunken version of the Neumann U47 was Norman’s favorite for vocals, sometimes on guitar and as an overhead mic for the drum kit. We used a Stevens tie microphone on my stand up bass, a tiny thing that was just as big as the end of your thumb. That was a good mic for the bass because Norman could get it into the f-hole of the instrument. He also had an RCA 77 and a 44, the big old thing that the announcers used to use in the Forties, and he would use that a lot on the kick drum, with an Electrovoice RE15 on the snare drum.
The main studio at Clovis was designed by Petty himself, influenced by some of the acoustic properties of some of the large New York City studios. Also on site was a small apartment where the band and Petty would sleep after the sessions. "It was real convenient for us," recalls Maudlin. "We couldn't work during the day because the building next door was a garage where Norman's father worked on automobiles and trucks, hammering away and using electric wrenches, so there was always a lot of noise going on. We would spend the day working in the yard, or playing around or swimming, then record at night when his parents had gone to bed or quit working or whatever."
In the garage attic was the studio's echo chamber which, again Petty built himself. At one end was an Altec 604 speaker with two Sennheiser microphones at the other, picking up whatever sound was being fed in. Maudlin believes that the crispness of the echo sound on Holly's recordings stems from the use of the Sennheisers which produced a sharp, brilliant sound, and have since become favored overhead mics. "I think that Norman may have over-compensated on the top-end frequencies, anticipating that he was going to do some overdubbing," he says, "because the more generations of recording you use, the less top end you'll be left with. He also used filters to eliminate tape hiss. We didn't have noise gates or Dolby noise reduction then! We knew that whenever we were overdubbing, we had to get as much down in one take as we possibly could, to avoid too many overdub generations, otherwise it might damage the end product."
It was a common belief for many years that the Beatles introduced the trend of late night/early morning sessions, although Maudlin is quick to dispel the myth. "We had unlimited time and there was nobody with their thumb on a stopwatch saying, 'hey you boys have to quit at twelve o'clock!" he recalls. "We went in there and never kept any kind of record of how much time we were spending on a song. I guess that was how we came up with some of those great sounds. We were never under any kind of pressure from anybody so we could pretty much do as we pleased. You know, if we decided that we wanted to stop and eat something after recording for a couple of hours, we would. It was real relaxed and it was great to be able to work at our own pace."
Maudlin's fondest memory of working with Holly and Petty is of the session for Well All Right, which turned out to be a much simpler acoustic guitar/bass/drums arrangement than Petty had in mind. "Buddy was just going to use his Gibson acoustic but Norman had some plans to overdub a few things later on and make some changes to it," he says. "But when we finished the take that was used, we said, 'Wow, that sounds just great as it is, it doesn't need anything else on it.' We all agreed so we left it alone and I thought Buddy did a phenomenal job of playing that acoustic."
Here's the brief article that appeared in the August, 2004 issue of Guitar Player magazine:
Bill Bush's June '82 cover story on Buddy Holly was one of the most extensive pieces of pure reporting ever published in Guitar Player. One of the article's many subtopics detailed the way in which Holly and the Crickets utilized the very latest in studio technology--1957 style--to record "Peggy Sue."--Tom Wheeler
Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico, was located next to a noisy machine shop and a major highway. As such, most recording was done late at night, with the group sleeping in an adjoining guest room during the day. By 1957 standards, Petty's studio represented the state of the art. The walls were acoustically tuned with a series of built-in, round baffles. Petty also employed a live ceramic-tile echo chamber, and had perfected an unusual mono "overdubbing" technique. Laying down the basic track on an early Ampex recorder, he would record Holly on another Ampex mono machine during playback, repeating the process for as many parts as needed. The result of this ersatz "ping-ponging" was that the finished tape would contain various generations of recorded sound. It was laborious and tricky, but it allowed Holly to harmonize with himself.
"Still, we basically had one mono track," said Crickets bassist Joe B. Mauldin. "If you didn't hear it on the first playback, you didn't have it, so you went back and did it all over again till you got exactly what you wanted. Working in mono added a lot of spontaneity to our records. Once you got rolling, you had to let it go all the way through."
For the recording of "Peggy Sue," J.I. Allison played only one drum, and was seated in the studio's reception room to prevent the sound from bleeding into the vocal mic. Unbeknownst to the group, as the song was being recorded, Petty kept switching the signal in and out of the echo chamber in time with the music. He also varied the volume on Allison's drum mic, giving the song an unusual pulsating quality. If you listen closely to the record, you'll also note that Petty used very close miking techniques on Holly's amplifier and the strings of his Stratocaster. The clicking of Holly's pick added even more of a live sounding rhythm.
"Buddy was having trouble switching from the rhythm position to the lead position on his Strat for the lead break," remembered guitarist Niki Sullivan. "and it broke his timing. So finally he said to me, 'Niki, you get down here on the floor and when I nod my head, you reach up and move that switch for me.' My big part in 'Peggy Sue" wasn't even playing!"
