Recording Wally Heider

Hollywood

When Wally Heider was an assistant engineer at United/Western Studios on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, he was the biggest big band enthusiast on the planet and would take his portable tape recorder to gigs and record the show so the guys in the band could hear their performance. He kept the recordings for his own enjoyment. He made friends in all the big bands of the day, and when bands came to United/Western to record, they would ask for Wally as their engineer. Thus, Wally’s career took off.

Wally opened his first studio, Studio One – an overdub/mixing room, at the corner of Cahuenga and Selma in Hollywood. Remote recording came first, however, and other stories will be told about the company’s remote recording adventures.

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Amazing Grace is a classic Grammy winning 1972 album by Aretha Franklin.

Aaron Cohen to wallyheider2
show details 18 Jan 2010
message…
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Hi Stephen,

I’m writing a book about Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” album, which Ray Thompson engineered for Wally Heider. If you could help me get in touch with anyone from Wally Heider\’s company who participated in this live recording, and would be able to speak about it for the book, I would be most appreciative and overwhelmingly grateful.

Thanks!

—Aaron Cohen
aaronc [at] downbeat.com

This is part two of this article. To see part one, go to http://wallyheider.com/wordpress/archives/rebel/39/

San Francisco

Between late 1968 and early 1969 I made several trips to San Francisco to help prepare the studios for opening day.

The original staff members included studio manager Mel Tanner, formerly an engineer at Coast Recorders in San Francisco. Ginger Mews ran the traffic office and Harry Sitam was the tech engineer. George Fernandez joined the group a short time prior to opening day. Although based in Hollywood, Frank DeMedio remained the chief tech engineer.

Wally put me up in the Lafayette Hotel (now the Midori) on Hyde Street, directly across from the studio. Well, the Lafayette was not exactly deluxe accommodations. I only slept in the Lafayette, however, and spent all my time working in the studios. Most weekends I went home to Southern California.

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CLICK THE PHOTO FOR FULL SIZE

This is a photo of the Wally Heider Recording truck on location during the recording of Boston, Long Beach 77\’.

I was on the sound crew for Boston and I happened to take the photo.  It is fairly low res. but it might be good for this site.  The recording can be heard on Wolfgangsvault.com  It was a memorable experience as we had phantom power problems that day …. we eventually sorted it out and I think the excitement of that show was captured by Wally\’s team as it was.

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One time I was examining a horn miking setup in Studio B (at Ivar) with Wally. He told me the coolest, simplest horn miking technique I have ever heard of. “Sherman,” he said, “we always used to put the horn mike slightly above where the player’s horns were when they were seated. Especially for a live gig.” Why did you put the mikes off-axis? “The horn arrangements were/are very complex. You never knew which horn player was going to play a solo. So we mike them from slightly above so that when they stood to take their solo the would be exactly on-mike and would automatically be raised in the mix for their solo. If you got the mike position just right, you didn’t even have to touch a fader.”

Wally was always sharing secrets like these. He knew SO much! He is the one that should have written a book on how to do sound engineering!

Respectfully,
Sherman Barrymore Keene