CBS 30th Street Studio
Encyclopedia
CBS 30th Street Studio, also known as Columbia 30th Street Studio, and nicknamed "The Church", was an American recording studio operated by Columbia Records
from 1949 to 1981 located at 207 East 30th Street, between Second
and Third Avenues in Manhattan
, New York City
. It was considered by some in the music industry to be the best sounding room in its time and others consider it to have been the greatest recording studio in history. It was at the time one of the most renowned studios and a large number of recordings were made there in all genres, including Miles Davis
' Kind of Blue
(1959), Leonard Bernstein
's West Side Story
(1957), and Percy Faith
's Theme from A Summer Place
in 1960.
The 30th Street facility contained both Columbia's "Studio C" and "Studio D".
, designed by the architect J. Cleaveland Cady
, and was dedicated March 28, 1875. A number of groups shared the building over the years, including a German Lutheran congregation, an Armenian Evangelical Church
(1896–1921), and radio station WLIB
(1944–1952).
"There was one big room, and no other place in which to record", wrote John Marks in an article in Stereophile
magazine in 2002.
The recording studio had 100 foot high ceilings, a 100 foot floorspace for the recording area, and the control room was on the second floor being only 8 by 14 feet. Later, the control room was moved down to the ground floor.
"It was huge and the room sound was incredible," recalls Jim Reeves, a sound technician who had worked in it. "I was inspired," he continues "by the fact that, aside from the artistry, how clean the audio system was."
Bach: The Goldberg Variations
, the 1955 debut album of the Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould
, was recorded in the 30th Street Studio. It was an interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's
Goldberg Variations
(BWV
988), the work launched Gould's career as a renowned international pianist, and became one of the most well-known piano recordings.
Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis
recorded almost exclusively at the 30th Street Studio, including his classic 1959 recording, Kind of Blue
.
In 1964, Bob Dylan
and record producer Tom Wilson were experimenting with their own fusion of rock and folk music. The first unsuccessful test involved overdubbing a "Fats Domino
early rock & roll thing" over Dylan's earlier, acoustic recording of "House of the Rising Sun," according to Wilson. This took place in the Columbia 30th Street Studio in December 1964. It was quickly discarded, though Wilson would more famously use the same technique of overdubbing an electric backing track to an existing acoustic recording with Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence
".
The very last recording made in the studio was Glenn Gould's slower and reconsidered Goldberg Variations (Reappraised) in 1981, a year before Gould's death.
The building was later demolished and a mid-rise residential apartment building called "The Wilshire" was built in its place, completed in 1985.
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
from 1949 to 1981 located at 207 East 30th Street, between Second
Second Avenue (Manhattan)
Second Avenue is an avenue on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan extending from Houston Street at its south end to the Harlem River Drive at 128th Street at its north end. A one-way street, vehicular traffic runs only downtown. A bicycle lane in the left hand portion from 55th...
and Third Avenues in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. It was considered by some in the music industry to be the best sounding room in its time and others consider it to have been the greatest recording studio in history. It was at the time one of the most renowned studios and a large number of recordings were made there in all genres, including Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
' Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released August 17, 1959, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959...
(1959), Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
's West Side Story
West Side Story (Original Broadway Cast)
West Side Story is the 1957 recording of a Broadway production of the musical West Side Story. Recorded 3 days after the show opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, the recording was released in October 1957 in both mono and stereo formats. In 1962, the album reached #5 on Billboard's "Pop Album"...
(1957), and Percy Faith
Percy Faith
Percy Faith was a Canadian-born American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of pop and Christmas standards. He is often credited with creating the "easy listening" or "mood music" format which became staples of American popular music in the 1950s and...
's Theme from A Summer Place
Theme from A Summer Place
The "Theme from A Summer Place" is a song with lyrics by Mack Discant and music by Max Steiner, written for the 1959 film, A Summer Place, which starred Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. It was recorded for the film by Hugo Winterhalter...
in 1960.
The 30th Street facility contained both Columbia's "Studio C" and "Studio D".
Early building and church history
The site was originally the Adams-Parkhurst Memorial Presbyterian Church, a mission of the Madison Square Presbyterian ChurchMadison Square Presbyterian Church, New York City (1906)
Madison Square Presbyterian Church was a Presbyterian church in Manhattan, New York City, located on Madison Square Park at the northeast corner of East 24th Street and Madison Avenue. It was designed by Stanford White in a High Renaissance architectural style, with a prominent central dome over a...
, designed by the architect J. Cleaveland Cady
J. Cleaveland Cady
J Cleaveland Cady was a New York-based architect whose most familiar surviving building is the south range of the American Museum of Natural History on New York's Upper West Side...
, and was dedicated March 28, 1875. A number of groups shared the building over the years, including a German Lutheran congregation, an Armenian Evangelical Church
Armenian Evangelical Church
The Armenian Evangelical Church was established on July 1, 1846 by thirty-seven men and three women in Constantinople.-History:In the 19th century there was intellectual and spiritual awakening in Constantinople. This awakening and enlightenment pushed the reformists to study the Bible...
(1896–1921), and radio station WLIB
WLIB
WLIB is an urban contemporary gospel AM radio station located in New York City. WLIB is owned by Inner City Broadcasting Corporation along with sister station WBLS...
(1944–1952).
Recording studio
Having been a church for many years, it had been abandoned and empty for sometime, and in 1949 it was transformed into a recording studio by Columbia Records."There was one big room, and no other place in which to record", wrote John Marks in an article in Stereophile
Stereophile
Stereophile is a monthly magazine that focuses on high end audio equipment, such as loudspeakers and amplifiers, and audio-related news, such as online audio streaming. It was founded in 1962 by J. Gordon Holt....
magazine in 2002.
The recording studio had 100 foot high ceilings, a 100 foot floorspace for the recording area, and the control room was on the second floor being only 8 by 14 feet. Later, the control room was moved down to the ground floor.
"It was huge and the room sound was incredible," recalls Jim Reeves, a sound technician who had worked in it. "I was inspired," he continues "by the fact that, aside from the artistry, how clean the audio system was."
Musical artists
Many celebrated musical artists from all genres of music used the 30th Street Studio for some of their most famous recordings.Bach: The Goldberg Variations
The Goldberg Variations (Gould album)
Bach: The Goldberg Variations is the 1955 debut album of the Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould. An interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations , the work launched Gould's career as a renowned international pianist, and became one of the most well-known piano recordings...
, the 1955 debut album of the Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould
Glenn Gould
Glenn Herbert Gould was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach...
, was recorded in the 30th Street Studio. It was an interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
Goldberg Variations
Goldberg Variations
The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, is a work for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is considered to be one of the most important examples of variation form...
(BWV
BWV
The Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis is the numbering system identifying compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. The prefix BWV, followed by the work's number, is the shorthand identification for Bach's compositions...
988), the work launched Gould's career as a renowned international pianist, and became one of the most well-known piano recordings.
Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
recorded almost exclusively at the 30th Street Studio, including his classic 1959 recording, Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released August 17, 1959, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959...
.
In 1964, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
and record producer Tom Wilson were experimenting with their own fusion of rock and folk music. The first unsuccessful test involved overdubbing a "Fats Domino
Fats Domino
Antoine Dominique "Fats" Domino, Jr. is an American R&B and rock and roll pianist and singer-songwriter. He was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Creole was his first language....
early rock & roll thing" over Dylan's earlier, acoustic recording of "House of the Rising Sun," according to Wilson. This took place in the Columbia 30th Street Studio in December 1964. It was quickly discarded, though Wilson would more famously use the same technique of overdubbing an electric backing track to an existing acoustic recording with Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence
The Sound of Silence
"The Sound of Silence" is the song that propelled the 1960s folk music duo Simon & Garfunkel to popularity. It was written in February 1964 by Paul Simon in the aftermath of the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. An initial version preferred by the band was remixed and sweetened, and has become...
".
The very last recording made in the studio was Glenn Gould's slower and reconsidered Goldberg Variations (Reappraised) in 1981, a year before Gould's death.
Demise
Columbia failed to buy the building (for an estimated $250,000; equivalent to $ after inflation) when they abandoned their contracts with the studio in 1982. CBS felt constrained by restrictions imposed by the owner, including a closing time of 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. The owner then sold it for $1.2 million, and it was quickly reacquired for $4.5 million ($ after inflation).The building was later demolished and a mid-rise residential apartment building called "The Wilshire" was built in its place, completed in 1985.
Further reading
- Cogan, Jim; Clark, William, Temples of sound : inside the great recording studios, San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 2003. ISBN 0811833941. Cf. chapter on Columbia Studios, pp. 181–192.
- Dietrich, Sean, "Vic Damon, 30th Street Studio, Village Vanguard", All About JazzAll About JazzAll About Jazz is a leading jazz music website for enthusiasts and industry professionals based in Philadelphia in the United States.Founded by Michael Ricci in 1995, the Web-Site is maintained by a volunteer staff of writers, editors, and musicians, and provides coverage of all genres of jazz from...
, August 2, 2010 - Felten, Eric, "Abbey Road and the Day Studio Music Died: 'A great room acts like an instrument. . . . It has a voice.'", The Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2010
- Heylin, ClintonClinton HeylinClinton Heylin is an English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan.- Education :...
, Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960-1994, Macmillan, 1997. Cf. p. 33-34 for record producer Tom Wilson's use of the 30th Street Studios for some of Dylan's work, and other references in the book. - Kelley, Robin, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Free Press, October 2009. ISBN 9780684831909. Cf. especially. Chapter 24, "Everything Begins Here and Everything Ends Here", p.327 and onward on the 30th Street Studio and Thelonious MonkThelonious MonkThelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
. - Levine, Robert, "Sony Taps Into Photo Archive as a Resource During Hard Times", The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, May 29, 2008 - "In Session At The Columbia Records 30th Street Studio", press release, Morrison Hotel Gallery, New York, June 25, 2008. Announcement of an exhibition of photographs, many taken at the 30th Street Studio.
- "In Session At The Columbia Records 30th Street Studio Opens in SoHo", Morrison Hotel Gallery, New York. An exhibition of photographs, many taken at the 30th Street Studio.