Producing Country: The Inside Story of the Great Recordings

2. Taping Tracks: Creating the Performance, 1950–1966

37 2 ​ TAPING TRACKS ​ CREATING THE PERFORMANCE, ​1950–1966 At first, in theearly ’50s, magnetic tapewas used as simplya 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. 38 P r o d u c i n g C o u n t r y Lefty Frizzell, Look What Thoughts Will Do (original recordings, 1950–1965; compilation, 1997, Columbia/Legacy) 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 veryoften, 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 39 T a p i n g T r a c k s : 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 6...