Producing Country - Michael Jarrett Music/Interview

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and never do anything that might embarrass a musician in front of his or her peers.

       2

       TAPING TRACKS

       CREATING THE PERFORMANCE, 1950–1966

      At first, in the early ’50s, magnetic tape was used as simply a new medium to do an old job: to capture musical performances. But a quick look at the recordings discussed in this chapter suggests an ensuing paradigm shift. Tape—mono, three-, and four-track—enabled the emergence of the record producer as a fully formed, recognizable figure. He distinguishes himself, less by what he captures (artists and repertoire: Don Law recording Lefty Frizzell singing “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time”), than by the performances he artfully creates—stages in order to capture (production: Don Law enabling Johnny Cash’s 1963 version of “Ring of Fire”). When Owen Bradley produces Patsy Cline’s massive hits, he records a sonic concept just as much as he records an artist. In the vocabulary of film studies, the producer’s purview is the mise-en-scène, in all of that term’s mystery.

      As a means of controlling the market for country music, four major record companies—Decca, RCA, Columbia, and Capitol—developed a studio system in Nashville analogous to Hollywood’s. The catalyst that sped this integration of an industry was the Quonset Hut, an independent studio built in 1954–1955, and owned by Owen and Harold Bradley. The hits cut at this facility—especially those recorded by Owen Bradley (Decca), Chet Atkins (RCA), Don Law (Columbia), and Ken Nelson (Capitol)—were in a radio-friendly style that became known as the Nashville sound. It transformed the market for country from a strictly regional to a national audience. In fairly short order, RCA built its own “Studio B” in 1956. Columbia bought the Quonset Hut in 1962, and Owen Bradley converted a barn just outside of Nashville into another studio.

       BOB IRWIN

      A&R meetings are held at Sony Legacy, the same way they’re held at Sundazed and every other record company on the planet. Ideas are put on the table, discussed, and fine-tuned. Everyone knew and was in agreement that there had to be a good Lefty Frizzell compilation out there. The only things available were packages done years and years ago with pretty lousy transfers.

      Back in the ’60s, when people started packaging country artists’ past works—works taken from lacquer sources—the whole MO was to get rid of any semblance of noise. Therefore, they cut off the whole top-end and low-end of the performances. You were left with what the American public, to this day, thinks a 78-rpm recording sounds like: [cups hands] like that. Which is not what a 78-rpm record sounds like, if you have a good record. The same thing is true of transcription lacquers [discs for radio broadcast], but I’m getting ahead of the story.

      I knew that I wanted to focus primarily on the early period. And once I started reviewing it, going over things, I really wanted to push for a double-disc set. That’s not always, but very often, a tough sell to a record company that’s marketing driven. But it was agreed that we should do a two-CD set and, eventually, at some point distill it down to a single CD set to sell at a lesser price.

      My next step was to start putting together the A&R for the package, which has to be centered on the obvious songs, the hits. I’ve always been intrigued that certain greatest-hits albums live their own life. It’s not only the Buffalo Springfield Retrospective. But that album to me and hundreds of other fans had a very deliberate sequence and deliberate feel of its own. It became an album unto itself, rather than just a collection of an artist’s songs.

      That’s the way I’ve always tried to work when I’m doing a collection. After I have a centerpiece of the hits—the very obvious songs that have to be there—I try and disengage myself from popular opinion, from what other people expect you to put on there, and go with my heart. I go with songs that I think truly complement each other, and with what the artist might want people to hear. Indeed, if the artist is still with us, he’s the first person you talk to. Which was impossible to do with Lefty.

      That meant I needed probably two weeks of studio time where I did nothing but listen—listen in the truest sense—not by listening to the bogus, horrible-sounding records and discs that were out there, but by going back to original lacquers, playing through them to get over-whelmed with that feeling. There’s not a better feeling in the world than sitting there with the transcription lacquer of a tune that someone’s never heard before and getting a lump in your throat because it’s so astounding. It’s the best high in the world in my book.

      Everything on that set was taken from the absolute original sources. Every single transcription lacquer was gone through by me. Every analog recording was gone through by me, up to that point—the early ’60s—which was the set’s predetermined stopping point. The earliest part of the disc, probably all of disc one, was very much discovery time. Nowadays, who cares if there’s a little bit of noise on the top end? You want to hear the cymbals. You want to hear the low end. The sounds that they were able to capture to lacquer were astounding. The dynamic range is jaw-dropping.

       What did you learn from the tapes?

      For example, from October 19, 1951, the original logsheet: Lefty in the studio put down songs like “I Love You (Though I Know You’re No Good)” “You’re Here, So Everything’s Alright”—one or two other songs. Next to each song in [producer] Don Law’s handwriting is “NG” for “No Good.”

      You realize, that was a call. Don heard what was going on that day, and who knows, it could have been a million-and-one things. They were just plain old having a bad day. Lefty was having throat problems. Who knows? But Don brought Lefty back three months later, basically to re-cut all the songs. And those were the versions that were issued. That happens all the time.

       KEN NELSON

      We used to record at the Tulane Hotel.* The thing about Nashville, you use mostly all the same musicians all the time, like Grady Martin and Harold Bradley and Pig [Robbins], the piano player. You had a group of musicians that you used on various sessions. I used Chet [Atkins] a lot when I first came to Nashville. He was playing guitar for me. In fact he did all the Martha Carson sessions. The artist usually knew who he wanted to use, and if he didn’t, I would pick the musicians. It was just that easy, or that was just the way it was.†

       CHET ATKINS

      Hank had a lot of help out of Fred Rose. Fred was a great, great fixer. I had a long conversation with Gene Autry once. He used to write for Gene, you know, all those hits back in the ’30s. Gene said, “You know, Fred’s the greatest song fixer I’ve ever known. He’s just wonderful at that.” And he was. He wrote a lot of songs and gave them away. Half the time, he was upset at ASCAP [the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers], and he didn’t want to put a song with them. He’d say, “Ah, you take it,” and give it to the artist. He was a wonderful, wonderful guy.

       BUDDY KILLEN

      I worked with Hank. I did a lot of transcriptions with him and a lot of radio with him and some television and worked on the road with him. We recorded those transcriptions in WSM’s studio. They shipped them out all over the country. We’d do mostly fifteen-minute programs. I don’t remember if I cut a session

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