Exclusive: Conversations and Music with Michael Feinstein- In the Studio!

Hello, welcome to Conversations and Music with Michael Feinstein

It happens to be me, so what a felicitous combination. This is my studio

This is my transfer studio, my recording studio. In this little room, I have recorded a number of things

I did an album with Jimmy Webb. I've worked with a number of different songwriters in this room

creating demos and when I had a BBC radio series for a while I interviewed Marilyn and Alan Bergman

about their career and many other luminaries who've come through this little space but

over the last several years it has become overrun with all kinds of recorded media that I try to

save and transfer as I have time. And it is a lifelong race against the clock to save media

because as technology has changed through the many decades, things become obsolete and sometimes

finding the equipment to be able to play or transfer something is very difficult to accomplish

especially in the digital age because digital technology has changed so quickly that for

example my first album with an orchestra isn't it romantic was recorded 1988-87 and it was recorded

on a Sony digital 24-track machine that became obsolete perhaps two years later

And so if I wanted to go back and access those 24-track masters and transfer them again

with new technology, I'd have to find somebody who had a machine in order to be able to do that

And somebody who knows how to operate that machine. and understands the subtleties of using that particular piece of equipment in order to make it function

So there are all these issues that happen with recorded sound. And I've had an obsession with recorded sound since I was four or five years old when I first found old 78 RPM records

Now we live in a time where a lot of people don't even know what records are

And yet this whole history is something that is part of my daily life

I'm going to be doing a podcast soon in which I'll be playing a lot of recordings that I have discovered

Because like many collectors or archivists, I have a number of items that are unique to my collection

Many of these things are going to become part of the Great American Songbook Foundation collection

and a lot of those things are already there, along with orchestrations and manuscripts and other ephemera

And often when one obtains a collection, it can consist of many different types of things

It can be different types of recordings and audio tapes. It can be scripts. It can be sheet music, orchestral music

It's just, it's an endless pursuit. And yet it's always a feeling of being able to save or preserve something that keeps me going

I am not by nature a pack rat in the sense that I'm a Virgo and I want everything to be in order

But there's so much stuff that I know that I will never be able to hear or access everything that I've collected before I die

So the best thing that I can do is try and get it in some semblance of order so it will be useful to people in the future and that they'll be able to catalog it and then to hopefully one day digitize all of it so it can live on

And these things deserve to live on. Even the most obscure object that might have been taken for granted by somebody many years ago can have significance

I'll show you some of the things that are just sitting here in the studio. None of this is staged or prepared

This is just what it is. Records. Disc records came into existence in 1877, invented by a man named Emil Berliner

Thomas Edison created a technology to reproduce recorded sound, but it was on a cylinder machine

and it was Emil Berliner who invented the disc record that is or was the common means of reproducing recorded sound for literally 100 years

So discs started out as a non-commercial thing, and then they found a way to start creating mass pressings of music and songs

Now, in the early days, the preferred means of reproducing recorded sound were piano rolls

Paper rolls that had holes punched in them that were put on a pneumatic mechanism on a piano

that would cause the keys to depress and it would play. The piano would play

And people preferred that to recorded sound back in the early days

because it was a live instrument actually playing music. Early records sound so primitive, the fidelity was so poor, that many famous musicians of the day decried recorded sound because they said it was a prostitution of their work

Most famously, John Philip Sousa, who was the American march king and one of the most famous musicians in the United States in his time, harshly criticized recorded sounds, saying that it was so primitive

Later, Sousa capitulated and became a best-selling recording artist as technology improved

So there are all different kinds of recordings that have been created over this 100 plus year period

Some of them are individually grooved records, non-commercial things like this

This is a lacquer disc, which I listened to once and wrote down what the content was

But these are non-commercial things that preserve all sorts of amazing objects

There are recordings of Broadway composers and performers in moments in time that would otherwise be lost

that are preserved on records like these, these acetates, which are instantaneous discs that are one-offs

The counterpart to these are commercially pressed discs. These discs were made in multiple numbers

This is a Bing Crosby recording, and this disc played for about two and a half minutes or so

actually two minutes and 50 seconds. So these were the ways that popular songs were disseminated

back in the golden age of American popular music. And a system was invented

I don know if Emil Berliner invented it or who came up with the technology but they found a way to create a master stamper from which they could press multiple copies of a record So then if a record became popular they could stamp 500 1 or even millions of them until the stampers wore out

So this is a mass-produced record of which there are many, many copies. And so these records are, generally speaking, less valuable than an acetate or an individually grouped record that was only made for one person for personal use

However, even a record like this, sometimes the original master material from which this record was made can disappear

One assumes, if they look at a record like this, that it will live forever, that it's around and it's not going anywhere

But this is a record on the DECA label. The successor to the rights of DECA records is Universal Music, and there was a fire at the Universal Studios where there were warehouses that had all these master recordings and tapes of much of the DECA records library, and a lot of it was permanently lost

And therefore, these pressed records become more important because the originals are gone

And so it gets into so many different issues when it comes to preservation of recorded sound

But let me play you a few things instead of just talking with all these so you can get a sense of the different types of sounds and such

because records from different eras have very different sound to them. Let's see if I can find some Broadway-related things

Very hard to read this label here. This is Nick Lucas, who introduced

Tick Toe Through the Tulips. And on this side, it's Hello, Bluebird

which Judy Gardner later sang in a movie called I Could Go On Singing. Well, just to give you an idea of what a record

from this vintage sounds like, let's put it on. Okay. All right. So the first thing I have to do is determine the speed of this record. It's 78 RPM, but sometimes the speeds of these records vary. This is an electric record because it says electric record, which means it was recorded post-1925 with a microphone

and it's probably from the late 20s. So this is called Hello Bluebird

Now I have to set it to the right speed. And if I weren't taking shortcuts

I would use a strobe disc to make sure that the speed is absolutely accurate, but I'm not going to do that right now

Then I have to figure out what kind of needle is best for the record. And let's give it a spin, see what it sounds like

He's playing the guitar, Nick Lucas, who's also singing

Not the right sound, is it? Let's try another needle

Let's see if it'll make it sound any better. Let's try the 2.0

I like to go back to a smaller needle. It depends on the wear of the record

and how it was stored. It has to have all sounds. It sounds louder, a little clearer

Again, if I was going to take time, I would go through the different size styli until I find the one that makes it sound the best

Sounds better. So the first thing one does in preservation is you transfer the sound flat

In other words, you don't add any equalization or effects to it

because you can do all of that later. So I would transfer the recording flat to some digital hard drive or such

And then I can manipulate the sound and I can play with the different channels, the left and the right channel

I can add things that will clean it up and get rid of all of the frequency bandwidth that is playing that has no music recorded

Because in these times, the fidelity is like here, like maybe up to 5,000 cycles per second

and yet the system is reproducing sounds that we don't need to hear. So when you get rid of that extraneous stuff, it gets rid of a lot of the noise

And then there are computer programs that can take out clicks and pops and make it overall sound better

One of the fun things of collecting material like this is to find something unusual

that may relate to a song that is very well known or a songwriter that we know

to find that it's a bit of lost history. One of the things that is fun to collect

are recordings of industrial shows, and there was that wonderful documentary on HBO

about industrial musicals, but that dealt with original musicals written for commercial purposes

But this is something I found recently that is a presentation, 1963 presentation of Mattel's Guys and Dolls, or How to Succeed in the Toy Business by Really

Trying. And this has parodies of a lot of very popular Broadway songs with a lyric sheet included

Guys and Dolls Toy Show Song No. 1, in which someone wrote parody lyrics for which they had

to get permission from the songwriters. We got the toys right here to set a record year. I got a real

hot tip from the engineer. Can do, can do. This guy says the toys can do

If he says the toys can do, can do, can do. So, we've got that. And in celebration of

Stephen Sondheim's 90th birthday, I think I should play you the final cut on this

record. So, we have to switch it to 33 and a third RPM

We've got to get the LP stylus. Here we go

So let's see what this sounds like. We have a dream, a dream of a doll fellas

A dream of a doll fellas. She's already a star, but fellas

Barbie's well, Barbie's great. Barbie's every girl's first fashion plate. Starting here, starting now

Fellas, everything's coming up Barbie. Is that fun? She's a doll, she's the queen

She's the best looking out on the scene With her candles by her side As well as everything coming up for me We should put this in the show don you think How your inning

Stand your store on its ear. Sales were spinning. That was all just the beginning

Well, you get the idea. You get the system hit from the heights

I mean, to find something like this is sheer joy. All right, so let me play another one that is also fun

I came across a campaign record a few years ago that was created to help the campaign of Adlai Stevenson, who did not win the presidential election

and a lot of heavy hitters were supporting his campaign, but in spite of that, it didn't happen

So this is a promotional record that was produced by Mitch Miller, who was head of the A&R at Columbia Records Artisan Repertoire

And turn it over, and it has contributions from Dick Adler, co-writer of Pajama Game, Damn Yankees

Mary Rogers Beattie, the daughter, of course, of Richard Rogers, who wrote Once Upon a Mattress

Lerner and Lowe, Adelaide's Gonna Win This Time. Riders, Brigadoon, Paint Your Rag, and My Fair Lady

And Johnny Green, who wrote Body and Soul, and I Cover the Waterfront. So let's play a little bit of this

Let's listen to Adelaide's Gonna Win This Time. The tune may be familiar to you

Let's see if we can... Oh, there's no... Okay, wait a minute

What do we have to do? I have to get the 45 RPM adapter

Some of you have probably never seen a 45 RPM record. Well, these replaced the 78s that I showed you earlier

These came into being in the late 1940s, and it was developed by RCA Victor

as a means of fighting Columbia Records who had come up with a different format record. so

let's see if we can find Hadley's going to win this time

Pull out the stocker Let's have a walker For Anthony's gonna win this time

That's what you think He's getting started in the morning Screw some of the feeling in the pride

Stand up and shout it No doubt about it That Anthony's gonna win this time

He's gonna lead us to victory He's gonna move to Washington, D.C

For we're getting started in the morning Pug to pug, the hopes are gonna cry

No one can stop him There's no way to stop him For at least gonna win

At least gonna win And please be the son of a way to play

There we have it

Adelaide's going to win this time. We lost both times. This was from the 1956 presidential election

In the 1952 presidential election, Ira Gershwin wrote a parody of Love of Sweeping the Country, of Adelaide

Sweeping the Country, and also One to It Ain't Necessarily So. It ain't necessarily so

They say Ike's arranging for things to be changing, but it ain't necessarily

so, but that didn't help either. So, the other thing that's fun with records is to find

remnants of lost Broadway musicals. When I say lost Broadway musicals, shows that were not commercially recorded, that there were no cover records

of songs from the show, they just sort of vanished. And this is an example of that

I have never played any of these records, but these are demos of a show that played

on Broadway very briefly called The Genius Farm, music and lyrics by Norman Wretchen

music by Hal Bourne. Hal Bourne was Fred Astaire's rehearsal pianist and later became a distinguished songwriter

and musical director for many years. And these recordings were given to me by his widow, Rose

and they will become part of our Great American Songbook Foundation collection

And this is a demo of the score of the Genius Farm

And I've not been able to find any music, any scores, any orchestrations

not a scrap of it. So this may be the only document of this show

Let's just listen to a little bit of the first cut just to see what it sounds like

Go back to the speed of 33. Okay. And this record needs a good cleaning

So let's go to the second track. Just because it looks... Where I come from

When a boy loves a girl He doesn't leave her Not ever

Where I come from When a girl loves a boy

She's with him always Forever And when the boy goes

To foul his dream They don't say au revoir Not so long

It's a nice song. The girl that he loves is part of his dream, and together is where they belong

So, if anybody out there knows anything about the Genius Farm or has music, or any other pieces of ephemera relating to it, it'd be fun to know

We can combine our resources. we could join. Yeah. Okay. Oh, there's something

interesting to play for you. One of the most important groundbreaking

musical shows was Showboat Produced on Broadway in 1927 Music by Jerome Kern lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II One of the original cast members of the 1927 show was Helen Morgan

In 1935, Helen Morgan reprised her role of Julie in the Universal Motion Picture

and this is a rare recording of a recording session of Helen singing one of her signature

songs Can't Help Lovin' That Man. So this is a unique individually grooved disc. This is probably

the only existing document of this thing. So it's got various takes of Helen singing Can't Help Lovin

that man until they find the one that they like. For this cue, 1063, she did four takes. They

circled take three, so that was the one that they selected of the four that she sang. It was recorded

August 10th, 1935. On the other side, what have we got here? It's another rendition of it

and they've circled take three, take five, and take six. Take four looks like it's a breakdown

So let's just listen a little bit of take four, see what happened, why they stopped

All right. This is a record I believe that plays outside in as opposed to inside out

Okay, we're waiting. Come on

He says, come on. Kill it. Kill it. Okay. So that was take four

Not very exciting, wasn't it? Let's try this one. Sometimes the most fun is listening to the conversation before and after the take

You'll hear people say all sorts of interesting things. Like I have Judy Garland, one of these discs where she starts to do a take and they stop and she says

You confused me! So there's little bits of dialogue and moments of real life that come out

listening to these these records. Well, I'm going to play you a song to tie this all up

It's a funny thing, I look at you, I get a thrill, I never know, is it a pity, we never

I've never met before Here we are at last

It's like a dream The two of us A perfect team

Isn't it a pity We never met before Imagine all the lonely years

We wasted You were the neighbors I had silly labors

What joys untasted You're reading Heine, I somewhere in China, happiest of men, I'm sure to be, if only you will say to me, it's an awful day

We never, never met before Imagine all the lonely years we've wasted

Fishing for salmon, losing at backhand What joys untasted

My nights were salad Spent with shopping hours Let's forget the past

Let's both agree That I am for you And you're for me

And it's such a pity We never, never met Before

See you next time