How long have you been working here?
I've been here just over a year.
I heard that this is the original archway of the Quonset Hut, and that the rest was built around this studio.
Well, there was initially a house on 17th Avenue here. This was a residential area, and two brothers, Owen and Harold Bradley, bought the house in the mid-'50s with the idea of starting to record people here in Nashville. They took the first floor out – so it went straight down into the basement – to give a bigger recording area. They started turning hits out of there almost immediately. They were running out of room, and looking to expand into making short motion pictures, like variety TV shows. They went out and bought an Army Quonset hut for $7800, and attached it to the back of the house. The house then got torn down when Columbia Records came in and built Columbia Studio A around it. That's why it's so convoluted getting around in the hallways.
And now Belmont University owns it?
The Mike Curb Family Foundation owns it, and he lets Belmont use it. Mike Curb actually owns a lot of the buildings around Music Row. He owns this one, RCA Studio B, and the Masterfonics building. He's letting Belmont use this one for, I think, the next 50 years.
What about the gear that's used here? Is any of it from way back when?
Not here, unfortunately. All the stuff is more modern. There's nothing from that era. There kinda is, but it came from Bradley's Barn [Studio] and the RCA complex. The Mike Curb Family Foundation bought a collection of microphones from the Bradley family, and they are all classic.
Like '50s and '60s microphones?
Yep. There's a pair of Telefunken 251s and four Neumann M 49s. Ten RCA 77s and three RCA 44s came from the RCA studios but are here now. That's the only thing that really comes close to the era. We really don't have anything from the Columbia Studios era. Supposedly, the fuzz tone was invented in the Quonset Hut. They were using a tube console, and Glenn Snoddy – who was an engineer here in the early days – noticed that a grid in the console had fused together, and somebody was playing a guitar through that channel. The guitar player wanted to fix it, but the producer told them to wait, and ran the solo through it. Glenn Snoddy reverse engineered it, and found out what happened. He ended up developing [what became] the [Maestro FZ-1] Fuzz- Tone pedal, and sold them the license. It was on the Marty Robbins tune, "Don't Worry."
That's interesting! What console are you running for the Quonset Hut?
That's a 24 channel Neve VR. It doesn't have automation; that's been stripped out of there. We use it for teaching inline consoles. That was actually a project from the Belmont maintenance class. They found that thing on the floor of a warehouse just stacked in pieces, and they reversed engineered the metering and some of the center section. There are student signatures on the back from those who helped put it back together. It's a good teaching tool.
What about this place do you think made the "Nashville Sound?" This is kind of where it started; here and the studio in the original house.
I think it was kind of a concurrent development between the Bradley brothers and the RCA studios across the street. They were trying to compete with rockabilly and rock 'n' roll music. They had a bunch of country artists signed to these labels, who were selling in the thousands. Roy Orbison and The Everly Brothers were selling close to a million copies. Owen and Harold Bradley – and Chet Atkins across the way – started thinking of ways to attract a broader audience. What they ended up doing was taking the fiddles and the steel guitars and downplaying them. They started using things like grand piano, which had never been used on country records, and background singers and lush string arrangements. I think it was a formula to survive, and it really worked like a charm. What made it come about was this need to survive, and also this handful of players working together in all of these studios called the "Nashville A-Team." They had this formula down in this sound and in this groove.
Was the system set about like it is now, where there three three-hour blocks?
Yes, but unlike today the expectation was that they would have three or four songs done in one of those session blocks. These guys were laying down these tunes that were essentially the first or second takes, then moving on to the next song. Part of what made that possible was another development, that was kind of invented at these studios, called the "Nashville Number System." It was a way of writing the charts without specifying a key. So you can say, "This chart is for whatever key you want it in."
SoifyourkeyisinD,Dwouldbeyour1 chord. Then if you switch the key to E,thenEisnowthe1?
Yes, exactly. That enabled guys to chart tunes very quickly, so they could sit and listen to song once and chart. I've seen guys drinking a cup of coffee, carrying on a conversation, and charting the song with their other hand; then they sit down and play it. It was part of the Nashville machine, allowing them to churn out so much music. It still is today, actually.
What about this place would have artists like Bob Dylan decide to come to Nashville?
The story I heard from Charlie McCoy – he's one of those "Nashville A-Team" playing harmonica, guitar, and singing – was Bob Dylan was recording in New York and some of the Nashville producers were trying to attract him down here. They sent Charlie McCoy up, who was in the groove of playing tunes down sight unseen. He was sent to New York and sat in on a Bob Dylan session, and Bob is looking at him like, "Oh yeah, what's this?" Then McCoy just rips out an improvised part without looking at the chart, and Dylan was like, "Wow, you guys work pretty fast down there in Nashville." Then McCoy was like, "Yeah, that's just what we do. We feel the tune out, play through it, and that's it. We move on to the next tune." Dylan ended up coming down, and worked on Blonde on Blonde in Studio A. It was the way they were able to get more creative, and get results quicker than up in New York at the time. After that, that opened the floodgates of folks coming down here. [See Bob Johnston in Tape Op #80]
What kind of console are they running over in Studio A right now?
That's an API 2098 – an awesome console. It was over at RCA Studio B and was moved over here. It was onboard a Wally Heider remote truck. It recorded portions of Frampton Comes Alive!, some of U2's Rattle and Hum, some classic television, and a bunch of Frank Zappa live. The Band's Last Waltz was recorded on it. Phil Ramone [Tape Op #50] was in RCA B, saw that console through the glass across the room, and said, "I know that console!" He ran up and looked at it and was like, "Yeah man! I recorded Neil Diamond in Central Park!" I went back and found a picture of him sitting at the console. I was like, "How do you remember that console?" I think the track assign buttons are different than other API consoles, with big, lit numbers. The reason was because they would change acts and need to reassign stuff quickly, and those little API buttons just weren't cutting it.
So this is a classroom now?
Yeah, what's taught in here, and simultaneously in Studio A, is the [Audio Engineering Technology] Audio 1 course. These are the first classes where they do their own sessions. The only way we do echo in here is tape echo. The only way we do reverb are the two echo chambers above this control room. And then there are two plates up in the [Studio A] machine room that is connected to a central patch. We run both studios side-by-side, and halfway through the semester they switch studios.
Do they understand where they're standing?
Some of them appreciate it. I try to tell them. To some it doesn't mean that much, but others will try to seek it out and record whenever they can.
You came from a jazz background. Is that correct?
Well, I had studied classical when I was a kid, but my first love was jazz. When I heard Dixieland music, I knew I wanted to play drums. I realized it when I was five. I had one drum until I was 15 and could buy my own set. I learned how to get every sound I could out of that one drum.
You do a lot of hand percussion. Was that your start?
I really started hand percussion when I started playing with Don Williams. We were after different sounds, and those sounds found us as a band. I really developed my own style. It's not the authentic Latin sounds, but I can play it with any kind of music.
Because of your love of jazz, how were you applying that to country sessions?
Jazz, to me, is spontaneous improvising, and it involves more than just me. Jazz can be in any song. Jazz gets a bad name; there's so much bad jazz out there. It isn't about how fast you can play; it's about making it music. With country sessions, this is where I really found that music plays us. You get your conscious mind out of the way, and go with it at the moment. That's when you can really live the emotions of the lyrics as you are going along.
How do you feel Nashville has changed through the years?
Technology changed. We did the first direct-to-disc albums here to eliminate tape hiss. Digital came in, and we also did the first digital recordings in Nashville. I remember saying that the cymbals sounded like glass. It changed the sound. They have better digital machines now, but back then you couldn't get the sounds you wanted out of digital machines. Now you go through noise gates, harmonizers, Auto-Tune, and click tracks. I don't use click tracks; I never will. The band has to feel the time, and you have to play your time according to the lyrics. When you're playing with a click track, and you hit it right on that "bick," you spend your time chasing where the next "bick" is gonna be. You're not listening or paying attention to any music. It's like painting by numbers.
What brought you to Nashville in the first place?
I wanted to play, and I didn't want to raise my kids in New York, L.A., Chicago, or Miami. Those were the places I thought were happening musically, and I figured Nashville was like a small town. I didn't know anything about it. They're tearing down all the old buildings and studios. It's just a bunch of high rises now. And the music and the recording, a little bit goes on but nothing like it was.
I heard there was a stack of CDs you had played on that you received and you had never heard them.
