[Dixielandjazz] BENNY GOODMAN 1938 Carnegie Hall Recordings.

[Steve Barbone]

"Robert S. Ringwald" <robert at ringwald.com> asked (about the recording
information & microphone placement during the 138 B.G. Carnegie)

> Steve,

> Where did you get this info?

There are several sources on the internet two of which are quoted below.
That plus a little deduction about B.G.'s Band sound. e.g. There are
photographs of BG at the Paramount theater in NYC. (1937) Some indicate that
21,000 kids were in the audiences (combined afternoon & evening shows) at 25
cents a pop. There are at least 3 visible microphones in front of the band.
One in the center, one on stage left and one on stage right near the vibes
and piano. (BG can be seen playing close to the center microphone)

Interesting aside about the Paramount engagement is Goodman's quote about
audience involvement: "We looked at them as if we were the audience and they
were the show." That came to be a self fulfilling prophesy for many of his
future engagements. Somewhere along the way, many jazz bands seem to have
forgotten that a dancing and or "moving" audience was indeed, The Show. The
R & R guys blew us jazzers away on that score.

Even though the 38 Carnegie suffered from poor recording quality and the
degradation of the original acetates, Carnegie has superb acoustics. Since
the arrangements of big band music then was oriented towards "section"
passages, they could be heard acoustically in a large venue. But the
soloists were at a disadvantage in large venues and microphones were usually
placed as those seen in BG's Paramount engagement.

With a Paramount size audience, in that venue and others like it, I think it
is a pretty safe bet that BG and all the other soloists used a mike. There
are photos of Earl Hines in 1943 at the Apollo (Eckstine, Parker, Gillespie,
Sarah Vaughn (some piano as well as vocals), Benny Green, Benny Harris and
Hines are using mikes.

You can see similar mike placement in photos of most outdoor jazz concerts.
Like the 1938 Randall's Island Swing Festival, ( Basie, Ellington, Herman,
et al), and/or the Newport Jazz Festivals.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Start snips

"And we see some great Carnegie Hall footage. (Despite the persistent myth,
the great big overhanging mike wasn't used to record that concert; three
mikes off to the sides of the stage recorded it. The NBC "Diamond"
microphone, used to record Toscanini's famous broadcasts, was switched off
that night.)" 

AND

"Alas, much of the concert has been 'lost'. True, he concert was recorded
and is available on CD; however, the technology of recording was very
primitive. Only three microphones were used -- a 144BX above the conductor's
podium and two others at ends of the band. The feed went offstage to a mixer
and then to a CBS truck in the alley. Strangely, engineers on site did NOT
control the mix. Therefore the settings were the same for each song. From
there, it was sent by broadcast-quality telephone line to the CBS master
control room downtown who then patched it on to Harry Smith's Artist's
recording studio and Raymond Scott's Universal Recording studio. Both
studios cut acetate records but they were limited to 8 minutes 45 seconds
each. Thus, two turntables were in constant use in each studio --- alas,
synchronization had not been invented and half the recordings are at a
slightly different speed than the others. In the CBS studio, a master was
cut on a 33" aluminum studio transcription discs. The aluminum discs were
filed away and 'disappeared'."

"Benny Goodman eventually came into possession of the acetates. Because
Goodman had used musicians from a variety of bands, contract difficulties
made it virtually impossible to issue a recording. Everything faded from
view until about 1950 when the acetates were discovered in (of all things)
his sister-in-law's house. Needless to say, the quality had degraded even
further. With heroic engineering, it was possible to restore about 75% of
the concert. The re-engineered version was issued in 1950 and became one of
the first of the 33-1/3 rpm long play records to sell over a million copies.
A rework of this recording is available on CD. In early January of 1998, it
was announced that the aluminum studio masters had been rediscovered,
allowing the entire concert to be reproduced with much better fidelity."