Here's a tune from a recording session that I did back in 1991 for the hit movie Fried Green Tomatoes for MCA Records featuring Peter Wolf on vocals, Ronnie Earl on guitar, Dave Maxwell on piano (who just recently passed away), Michael Mudcat Ward on piano and Per Hansen on drums
---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Wow Todd! It's been so long that I don't even remember sending one to you!! (Old age catching up on me!!! lol) ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Well it was years ago! There was also a cool version of "Woman Don't Lie" on the CD, and some nice chromatic stuff too. I need pull it out and give it another listen - it's somewhere in my stack of CD's.
Nice,Bob! That's a band I'd drive several hours to see. Didn't know Dave Maxwell passed. That sucks,he was a premier blues piano player.Didn't know Mudcat played piano. He's also a pretty good bass player. >:)
Bob: Great recording and playing all around. Days gone bye............ Makes me remember when live music was everywhere. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year in the Tunnel of Dreams Studio. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
First of all, let me correct something on the personnel listing. Mudcat's on electric bass and the late Dave Maxwell is on piano, but Mudcat does play a pretty good piano in his own right and actually taught Anthony Geraci (Sugar Ray Norcia's piano player) some stuff.
A bit of a back story on this session. This session was produced by a guy named Arthur Baker, who had produced a number of very well known non blues artists who have recorded on MCA Records as well as a few other labels. They originally wanted to have Magic Dick play on this recording, but at the time, Peter Wolf and Magic Dick had a huge falling out so that fell thru. The next choice was Jerry Portnoy, but he was in court litigation against Ronnie Earl, so that fell through. Next in line was Pierre Beauregard, who was also a close friend of Magic Dick and big time buddy with Jerry, but because of that, he backed out and so I wound up getting the call because I had no beef with anybody on the session, which was recorded at the now defunct Syncro Sound Studios in downtown Boston.
We actually cut two tunes, this one, which was a cover of Lightnin' Slim's classic, Rooster Blues, and a Hank Williams tune, of which the title escapes me at the moment. We did five takes of each tune, all done on a 48 track recorder and EVERY track on EVERY take got some sort of tweaking.
The session started at about 12:30 in the afternoon until about roughly 2:30 in the morning. It took some 90 minutes to get the miking of the drums right, which for those who have never been involved in a recording studio with real pros at this stuff, 90 minutes is actually considered pretty quick and many pros who have had much more experience in a real pro recording situation have often told me that getting the drums properly miked up often takes roughly 3 hours to get it right and the difference of as little as 1/2 inch can make a HUGE difference in the way the drums sound in a recording.
I was told straight up front by the producer that they wanted all of the solos to be as close to almost exactly alike damned near note for note on EVERY take, plus they wanted the solo NOT to be complex at all or overly aggressive in its approach, which if you're not used to it, can be a struggle, put a real pro knows that comes with the turf if you're gonna be a studio session pro.
I used my real '59 Bassman in the studio, but they had the amp isolated in another room (I had a matching line transformer at the mike end, the a 100 foot low-z cable, and then another matching line transformer reconverting the signal back to high-z directly into my amp and I didn't have any effects on my amp and any reverb or delay you hear is strictly from the studio board. They recorded my amp using the old school ambient miking technique, where you have one mike directly on the speaker of the amp, another mike on a stand in the dead center of the room and a third mike on a boom stand way in back of the room, which is still the best way to record amplified harp, hands down.
There was tons of waiting around, which got everyone absolutely exhausted but so much tweaking and no one got away without some tweaking on at least on track somewhere out of all the takes.
I came away from this session with more than just a new found respect for musicians who are full time recording session pros and understand why so many recordings of different genres takes so long to record. This stuff is real WORK and not fun and games at all and every little screw up shows up like a sore thumb.
In the actual movie itself, they used the last 30 seconds of the tune in the car accident scene. This may sound strange, but often times entire tunes aren't used in movies, just swatches. On the credits, it's listed as done by Peter Wolf and Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters.
@Todd -- The chromatic on that little sampler CD was one of the tunes on my CD, but the the final master of the tune. Here's that chromatic tune from my CD fully mastered:
---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
