axel
Tennalaga Class
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2011
As a result, the Capitol Tower never really got a reputation as a great rock and roll studio. Lots of great material was recorded there, from Gene Vincent to Skeets McDonald to Tommy Sands, but the classical and big band approach to making records there never produced truly great rock and roll recordings. Most historians agree that the warm sound of the Capitol Melrose studio lent itself much better to country and rockabilly. For example, compare the sound of "Shotgun Boogie" by Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded at Capitol Melrose with Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant with the later version of the same song recorded at the Capitol Tower with big band accompaniment, and you'll have a rough idea. Wanda Jackson's classic Capitol recordings were done at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood, not the Tower. In fact, the Capitol Tower had such a stodgy reputation that by the 1960s, Capitol's top acts such as the Beach Boys were using other studios because they didn't like recording there.
That said, no classical or jazzbo engineer could hold back the youthful enthusiasm of Gene Vincent and his new group of young and rowdy Blue Caps. Thankfully, some of the wildest rock and roll of the era escaped intact. Tracks like "Lotta Lovin'" and "Dance to the Bop" positively sizzle, with Johnny Meeks's great guitar work taking no back seat to Cliff Gallup, but instead leading the group in a new, original direction.
Johnny Meeks was a country musician who had played in Country Earl's band with Paul Peek back in South Carolina. Like many other country musicians of the era, he made the crossover to rock and roll easily and brought along with him a memorable and unmistakable tone. What is interesting about Johnny Meeks's recordings with Gene Vincent is that he apparently used both a Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins model guitar and a white Fender Stratocaster with little or no difference in the tone on the records! His trademark was a trebly, biting tone with lots of vibrato (whammy bar) crashes. Gene and the Blue Caps were sponsored by Fender Musical Instruments, and during this period they used Fender guitars and amps exclusively. There is one famous picture from the Capitol Tower that shows the entire band, two electric guitars and the electric bass, all plugged into one Fender Twin amplifier, but it's hard to imagine that they actually recorded in this manner!
The Capitol Tower sessions also used electric bass exclusively, and Gene would never use upright bass on record again.
Gene's sessions at the Capitol Tower were done the same way as the Bradley sessions, all recorded live at one time. Capitol used much of the same equipment as Bradley, including Ampex recorders and Neumann and RCA microphones, but the approach was completely different.
The Capitol Tower engineers barely used tape echo, which is the most notable difference between the Nashville and Los Angeles recordings. There were ample amounts of reverb, courtesy of Capitol's huge live echo chamber. However, the long reverberation time of the Capitol chambers did not lend itself well to rock and roll music, as they had been designed for classical and big band music. The Capitol Tower used a lot more compression than Owen Bradley, resulting in a "thick" sound, which sometimes bordered on the unnatural (most notably the saxophones, which ended up sounding like kazoos!). Nevertheless, Gene still recorded great music at the Capitol Tower.
The introduction of stereo recording and multitrack recorders around 1958 or 1959 didn't affect Gene's recording process too much. At most, we can only find evidence of background vocals being overdubbed later, as Gene still preferred to record with a live band and live vocals. Stereo mixes for "Crazy Times" were probably done live on the fly at the same time they were recording the mono mix, with little thought put into it. The sessions were not done on separated multitrack tapes, so it would have been impossible for them to make stereo masters after the fact.
The last phase of Gene's tenure with Capitol in the years 1960 and 1961 saw him recording both at the Capitol Tower and at Abbey Road Studios in England (known at the time as St. Johns Wood EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London), to capitalize on Gene's emerging stardom in Britain.
That said, no classical or jazzbo engineer could hold back the youthful enthusiasm of Gene Vincent and his new group of young and rowdy Blue Caps. Thankfully, some of the wildest rock and roll of the era escaped intact. Tracks like "Lotta Lovin'" and "Dance to the Bop" positively sizzle, with Johnny Meeks's great guitar work taking no back seat to Cliff Gallup, but instead leading the group in a new, original direction.
Johnny Meeks was a country musician who had played in Country Earl's band with Paul Peek back in South Carolina. Like many other country musicians of the era, he made the crossover to rock and roll easily and brought along with him a memorable and unmistakable tone. What is interesting about Johnny Meeks's recordings with Gene Vincent is that he apparently used both a Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins model guitar and a white Fender Stratocaster with little or no difference in the tone on the records! His trademark was a trebly, biting tone with lots of vibrato (whammy bar) crashes. Gene and the Blue Caps were sponsored by Fender Musical Instruments, and during this period they used Fender guitars and amps exclusively. There is one famous picture from the Capitol Tower that shows the entire band, two electric guitars and the electric bass, all plugged into one Fender Twin amplifier, but it's hard to imagine that they actually recorded in this manner!
The Capitol Tower sessions also used electric bass exclusively, and Gene would never use upright bass on record again.
Gene's sessions at the Capitol Tower were done the same way as the Bradley sessions, all recorded live at one time. Capitol used much of the same equipment as Bradley, including Ampex recorders and Neumann and RCA microphones, but the approach was completely different.
The Capitol Tower engineers barely used tape echo, which is the most notable difference between the Nashville and Los Angeles recordings. There were ample amounts of reverb, courtesy of Capitol's huge live echo chamber. However, the long reverberation time of the Capitol chambers did not lend itself well to rock and roll music, as they had been designed for classical and big band music. The Capitol Tower used a lot more compression than Owen Bradley, resulting in a "thick" sound, which sometimes bordered on the unnatural (most notably the saxophones, which ended up sounding like kazoos!). Nevertheless, Gene still recorded great music at the Capitol Tower.
The introduction of stereo recording and multitrack recorders around 1958 or 1959 didn't affect Gene's recording process too much. At most, we can only find evidence of background vocals being overdubbed later, as Gene still preferred to record with a live band and live vocals. Stereo mixes for "Crazy Times" were probably done live on the fly at the same time they were recording the mono mix, with little thought put into it. The sessions were not done on separated multitrack tapes, so it would have been impossible for them to make stereo masters after the fact.
The last phase of Gene's tenure with Capitol in the years 1960 and 1961 saw him recording both at the Capitol Tower and at Abbey Road Studios in England (known at the time as St. Johns Wood EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London), to capitalize on Gene's emerging stardom in Britain.
