Re: Radio Disney in Boston

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Steve Ordinetz wrote:
>
>I don't think any music has been produced with AM specifically in mind
>since the mid-late 60s.  Legend has it that Berry Gordy required the final
>mixdown of Motown songs (at least the single mix) done thru a 5" speaker
>since that's the way most people would hear the song.
<snip>

        I can't resist giving a plug for the Motown museum in Detroit as a
great place to visit, especially for those of us here who are of a certain
age :) It's not too much of an exaggeration to say, a 5-inch speaker is
about all they had in the control room there, to start with.
        They have the place set up as it was around 1965 or so, with a beat
up old two-channel board with maybe eight pots. There's a patch bay that
looked to me a lot like one I saw in a photo of KDKA in 1920 <g>. But the
museum is great, and there is information about the role radio played in
Motown's development. Overall, nice displays in the museum part and very
well-informed tour guides who take you through the business and recording
area. At least that's how it was when I was there about five years ago. And
they have the 2nd-floor apartment set up as it was when Berry Gordy lived
over the store with his young family when he first started the business and
had about 2 cents in his pocket.
        He used to insist that in conversation and written documents,
everybody refer to the studio as "studio A," as if he were RCA and he had
14 studios in his complex. It was a joke. There was (barely) one studio, in
a concrete block garage stuck on the back of the old two-family house. The
garage backs up against a railroad track. There are stories told about
having to do retakes when a train came rumbling by and ruined the
recording.
        Anyhow, anytime you hear just about anything that's Motown,
pre-1968 or so, it's a recording coming straight to you from studio A.