The origin of the sound recording industry can be traced back to the nineteenth century, to the inventions of Thomas Edison and others. Companies were able to set up recording studios in many major cities across the globe, where it was possible to transfer sound to discs. As the technology improved, recording tape was used to produce copies of each recording, from which a master disc could be cut and used to press hundreds of copies. In Chicago a number of well-known companies such as OKeh and RCA set up their operations.
Significantly, not all the studios were owned by record companies, however. After the second world war, several American cities saw the establishment of independent studios, including Chicago, where Universal Recording Studios was founded in 1946 by Bill Putnam and Bernie Clapper. Putnam was a true pioneer of the industry, playing a major role in the development of more complex tape machines that allowed for multi-tracking and overdubbing in the recording studio, as well as the use of reverberation.
Bill Putnam
The original location of Universal was in Evanston, a northern suburb of Chicago. The studio later moved to the penthouse of Chicago’s Civic Opera House on Wacker Drive, before settling at Walter and Rush. Vee-Jay and Mercury were just two of the local record companies that sent their artists to Universal to record. The list of artists who recorded there is long and impressive, ranging across most musical genres. The studio played a major role in the development of popular music, including the abundance of Soul and R&B that emerged from Chicago in the nineteen fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties.
In the early 1990s the studio relocated again to a site on W.Randolph, but the demand for its services was much reduced and it soon closed down.
One of the main contributions made by Bill Putnam, in addition to the sound engineering improvements mentioned above, was in passing on his knowledge to the next generation of engineers. Foremost amongst them was Bruce Swedien, the mastermind behind Michael Jackson’s signature recordings.
Bruce was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1934 to Scandinavian parents. His mother was a member of the Minneapolis Symphony Women’s chorus, which had a strong influence on his choice of career in the music industry. His passion for music developed, as he listened to the powerful and soulful sounds coming out of a black church in the neighbourhood where he grew up. By the time he graduated from high school, Swedien had purchased a professional tape recorder and used the equipment during his spare time from the University of Minnesota to record jazz groups, radio commercials and vocal groups such as choirs. He was mentored and trained by Bill Putnam at Universal Recording Studios in Chicago, where Bruce developed his engineering skills to great effect and made himself a key figure in the evolution of sound recording from mono to digital recordings.
During this period Bruce started a long-term creative relationship with Quincy Jones, beginning in the late 1950s when Quincy was vice-president at Mercury Records, the first Black man to be a top executive for a major label.
Bruce became a key player in the development of the Blues sound which arrived in Chicago from the Mississippi Delta, brought by Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Jimmy Reed and others. He was also involved with classic Soul recordings that emerged from Chicago, when that particular genre began to explode on the local and international stage. He had a keen understanding of how Soul music should be expressed in terms of sound.
Swedien’s first major success was engineering Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons’ gold record “Big Girls Don’t Cry” on VeeJay Records, which stayed at number one R&B for three weeks and number one Pop for five weeks in 1962.
When Bruce was sound engineering recording projects for Vee-Jay Records at Universal Recording Studios, Calvin Carter was the label’s A&R man and principal producer. The majority of Vee-Jay’s recordings organised by Carter were conducted at Universal Studios on Chicago North Side. The studio band, led by Al Smith, did between three and six sessions in a day. Al Smith and his band were so excellent that several other local labels hired them to improve the quality of their recordings, including labels such as Chance, Parrot and United/States. These are now-defunct labels that operated in Chicago during the 1950s and also recorded at Universal.
Bruce Swedien was also the main recording engineer on most of the singles and albums released by Brunswick Records. With the talents of Bruce Swedien as engineer and Carl Davis as producer, with arrangers and producers Willie Henderson, Sonny Sanders and Tom Tom Washington, Brunswick Records sold millions of records between the late nineteen sixties and the early nineteen seventies.
One of Swedien’s early recording sessions behind the board was with a young up-and-coming soul genius by the name of Curtis Mayfield, one of the key architects of the Chicago Soul Sound. At these sessions were key individuals such as the legendary arranger and producer Johnny Pate, who was responsible for the majority of Curtis Mayfield’s classic hit records over a fifteen-year period and who played a significant part in the success of Major Lance, whose second OKeh Records recording, “The Monkey Time”, sold over one million copies. It was written and produced by Mayfield and engineered by Swedien.
Bruce Swedien
Photo: checkov (Wikimedia Commons)
In the late ’60s, Swedien became a freelance recording engineer, so that he could do more album projects and work on film soundtracks. It was in this way that he began working for producer Carl Davis, head of the Chicago branch of New York-based Brunswick Records. While there he engineered hits by The Lost Generation, The Chi-Lites, Jackie Wilson, Barbara Acklin and other Brunswick acts. He went on to have a fantastic career, spanning over forty years.
Many popular Chicago-based artists recorded at Universal, including the Flamingos, the Moonglows, Gene Chandler, Major Lance, Jerry Butler, Betty Everett, the Esquires, Dee Clark, Ramsey Lewis, the Dells, the Impressions, the Five Stairsteps, Jimmy Reed, the El Dorados, Bo Diddley, Walter Jackson, Billy Butler & the Chanters, the Vibrations and many others.
The RCA studio in Chicago was founded around 1927, one of the oldest in the city, also going by the name of RCA Victor Studios. The original location was on N. Michigan Avenue until 1935, when it moved to North Lake Shore Drive. It had three studios, where the RCA artists and many visitors (including artists from Motown) came to record. In 1969 the location changed again, with a state-of-the-art facility opening at 1, N. Wacker Drive, with several well-known engineers, including Roger Anfinsen, Randy Kling and Don Holden. Curtis Mayfield was the best-known of the R&B artists who made use of the studio’s services, so he was well-placed in 1972 to take over the studio when RCA closed its Chicago operation. It was at the new Curtom Studios that Mayfield recorded his solo work, including most of the soundtrack album “Super Fly”, plus many tracks by his stable of artists.
Columbia Records also set up their own recording operation at McClurg Court, where CBS artists came to record. It was the recording studio where the OKeh roster of artists came too, as OKeh was also part of the CBS corporation. Major Lance, Walter Jackson and Billy Butler recorded their hits here.
When Carl Davis moved from OKeh to Brunswick, he carried on using the Columbia facility until Bruce Swedien had completed the up-grade to Brunswick’s own studio. It was at Columbia that Jackie Wilson recorded “Whispers” and “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher”. He also used Universal on occasions.
PS Recording Studios opened in 1966 on 18th and Michigan in Chicago, later moving to East 23rd Street. Its owner, Paul Serrano, was a Jazz trumpeter in Count Basie’s band, who attracted many well-known R&B artists to his studios. Amongst those who came were Jerry Butler, Ramsey Lewis, Peabo Bryson, The Emotions, Donny Hathaway, Natalie Cole and Roberta Flack. The studio closed in 1992, but Serrano continued working as a session musician and engineer, later taking over as head engineer at Delmark Records.
Paragon Studios was located on State and Huron. It was opened by Marty Feldman in 1967 and finally closed down in 1994. The Ohio Players and Loleatta Holloway recorded there.
Owner Alan Kubicka opened the Chicago Recording Company studio on Michigan Avenue in the city in 1975. (It was originally set up in Medinah, Illinois). Phil Upchurch came to CRC to record his Jazz/Soul album “Lovin’ Feeling” in 1973 for Blue Thumb Records. The studio has grown considerably over the years and now boasts twelve studios, becoming the largest independent studio in the USA. It is the only one of the seventies studios still in operation.
Chess Records had its own recording studio, founded in the 1950s, which the Chess brothers named the Ter Mar Studio after their sons, Terry and Marshall. It produced hit recordings for almost all the Chess artists, including Blues, Soul, Gospel, Jazz and R&B performers. It closed in 1975.
Other Chicago record companies with their own studios were One-derful and Brunswick, who took over the old Vee-Jay building and brought in Bruce Swedien to up-grade the old studio there.
Unsurprisingly, a city as big as Chicago had many small recording studios, some of which were used to record demos by song-writers keen to show off their compositions. Occasionally a hit would emerge. Sound Market Studio (known as Eight Track) was where Jackie Wilson came to record “You Got Me Walking”.
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The city of Chicago was blessed with a large number of high-quality recording studios, as a result of which the Soul and R&B output from the city during the golden years of Soul was consistently excellent. The technicians who worked in them became some of the best in the industry.
(An article devoted to Bruce Swedien can be found elsewhere on this site)
