Recording, ’50s Style

While browsing YouTube, I stumbled across another interesting little film worth sharing: In this case, a documentary on a music recording studio  “Sugar Ray’s Vintage Recording Studio” which is designed to perfectly re-create the essence of recording in the 1950’s, using vintage equipment and ethos from that bygone decade.

This film talks about the troubles of re-creating this experience; the lack of documentation on just how things were done, and the challenges of setting up the microphone (yes, the one microphone) to record the band, live, in a single take. Yep, it was like that even into the 50’s, record it straight to tape, mix it live, and publish it.

It wouldn’t be too long before multi-track recording and mastering would become the norm, but for now, let’s take a look at what it took to record an album in the 1950’s.

Interesting to note, Sun Studio, the very famous studio Elvis, and others, have recorded at, is located here in Memphis, so that was worth mentioning, I guess.

Ahem, as always, enjoy!

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