Producing Country - Michael Jarrett Music/Interview

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Right,” in the middle he forgot the words. He goes into that “ah da-da de-de-de-de-de.” That wasn’t planned. That’s just the way it was. But then, that particular take had the right feel, and Sam was not afraid to leave that in there like that. Most producers wouldn’t have done that. They would’ve been scared to death. But Sam said, “No, that’s the cut I want—the one with the right feel.” That was what was most important to him. If the cut made you want to tap your foot or sing along, and the other cut—maybe it was a good cut—did not have that feel, then he would take the first one, even though it had one or two minor mistakes in it. I admired him for that.

       MARSHALL CRENSHAW

      Some of those Louvin Brothers records are gorgeous in terms of sound, but some of the tracks that I didn’t put on the compilation, like a few of the early gospel tracks, had this funny echo effect on certain chorus lines, used to create interest. There’s one called “Pitfall” that’s pretty gimmicky. And so, Capitol was a little bit into occasional gimmicky production effects. But not too much. I’ve said Ken Nelson was a purist type of producer, but he sometimes wasn’t.

      A couple of other tracks on the CD are from a Delmore Brothers tribute album that the Louvin’s did. They’re really simple recordings, but they’re perfectly rendered and beautiful. Part of it has to do with the instruments. On those tunes, Ira Louvin is playing a Martin tenor guitar that belonged to one of the Delmore Brothers. It’s a guitar with just the top four strings. Those Martin guitars from back then are delicate sounding. They have this nice top end.

       KEN NELSON

      Ira was more of a temperamental man, and Charlie was easygoing. Ira would get mad sometimes at Charlie—bawl him out once in a while—but never anything serious. Charlie, I guess, was just used to it. They were very easy to record. Whatever I said went. I was grateful for that.

      Wesley Rose came to me and asked me to sign them. They were with Acuff-Rose [Publishing].

      I said, “Great, I’ll take them.” Of course, I wouldn’t have taken them if I didn’t think they had some talent, but they were a fine team. Ira was a heck of a good writer.

      Also, Wesley asked me to sign Roy Acuff. I did. But at that time, Capitol wasn’t too hot on country stuff. It was called “hillbilly.” I couldn’t get any publicity from the sales or promotion department on Roy. He had a pure country sound. Anyway, I put out I don’t know how many records but couldn’t get off the ground. I made an album with him.

      Finally, Wes came to me and said, “Ken, Roy just isn’t happy. He isn’t making it on Capitol. Would you release him?”

      “Okay,” I said. So I released him [from his contract]. And then, I had put this album out, and the darn album started to sell like crazy. One day, I was in with the promotion department. They asked me, “Why the heck did you let Roy Acuff go?”

      I said, “Because you idiots wouldn’t do a damn thing about him.” I think the album is still selling.

       KEN NELSON

      I went into the studio with Ferlin Husky, and I think I was about the first one to add a female voice to the Jordanaires [backing vocals]. We recorded “Gone.” It was a smash hit, and as a result of that record, all the record companies—I just got a letter from Millie [Kirkham] the other day, who sang on the record. She said that since “Gone,” which was, of course, many years ago, she’d worked her butt off. Everybody wanted her on their records.

      THOM BRESH (guitarist/producer/Travis’s son)

      He was a real interesting character to produce. I’ve thought many times, what would it be like if he were here today with this kind of technology? It would be incredible what you could do. Today, you could take something like a Roland VS880 hard-disk recorder and a couple of mikes and go anywhere, just sit there at his house. Let him be real comfortable, get his ice-tea and his cornbread, and sit there and play. Say, “If you make a mistake, just play that part again, and we’ll put it together.”

      Travis loved to edit, even clear back in the ’50s when he was doing albums. There was a song he did on the famous, what they call “Yellow Album” for Capitol, which is Travis Guitar. He plays “Bugle Call Rag.” In the middle of it, he’s got this lick—really a hot lick.

      People have tried to play it, but Travis says, “No, I did that with a capo on the second fret with an open position. We just cut [edited] that in. It was a technique so people would try to figure out how to do it.” He said he played like hell and then, when it got to that place, he stopped [the tape]. He put a capo on the second fret and did this one little fill thing [and stopped the tape again]. And then, it went right back into the other tuning without the capo.

      Everybody says, “How do you get that sound?” He just loved things like that. He had a couple of big Berlant-Concertones [tape recorders] that Capitol put Ampex heads on for him. He had those at the house where he would sit and record—woodshed some things out. He liked to overdub at the house. I don’t know if any of those recordings got out. I heard a couple of things, but it’s hard to tell whether they were them or not. He was always doing something with different tunings, or he’d do a lick and cut it in. He liked to cut things in. He said, “If people are going along playing [with the record], they’ll say, ‘How’d he do that?’”

      He and Les Paul were both working with what he liked to call that Mickey Mouse guitar, where they’d slow the tape to half-speed [thus doubling playback speed]. Back then, Les was even doing it with [acetate] cutters, but Travis was messing with it at the same time. Of course, Les had it refined to a “T.” Travis just knew he liked that, where you slow the recording down to half-speed and do these licks around it. He was an innovator as much as he could be for the time. It shows with the solid-body Bigsby [guitar] and different things that he did in his life.

      Years ago, he was looking for a tape. He was having some drinks with Judy Garland one night. They both got rocking pretty good, and they cut at his home studio, I think he said, eight or nine songs. We hunted all over the place looking for that. He wanted me to hear it. One night, he was looking through all of these boxes of tapes, but they were all out of order. He said, “I just wanted you to hear this one thing Judy and I did. It was so good. We just had a ball that night.” That would be something to find. It was done during both of their heydays. I don’t think he was more than forty years old at the time.

       ROLAND JANES

      Here’s one of the mistakes that people make. They think the magic was in the room [at Sun Records]. Let me tell you something. Although it was a well-designed room, the magic was in the people at that particular time in history. Now, the room was suited for recording. It was a rented building, but Sam designed the ceiling and everything. It worked out well, although you were limited as to the number of instruments you could record. But we didn’t record with the lot of instruments. The magic was generally in the combinations of people, and that included the engineer, the musicians, and what have you.

      One

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