The Nwalins sound... Close on the heels of the news of the death of 60s NJ/NYC producer/arranger/songwriter Bob Crewe (ably eulogized in these FB pages by my old neighbour and erstwhile fellow piano student Charles Roth, who got to work with him in later years), comes this rocknroll milestone. The description of how in the early years Matassa got the most out of very basic gear reminds me of the stories of Jamaican dub pioneers King Tubby and Scientist, who did amazing things with *their* gear. (Jamaicans back in the day also listened to New Orleans radio stations, which had powerful transmitters.) It hardly seemed like the setting for a musical revolution. Upstairs, bookies ran a horse-betting operation. In the alley outside, a shoeshine man plied his trade. But Mr. Matassa engineered sessions featuring some of the biggest stars of the day, maximizing the sonic potential of relatively primitive recording gear. J&M became the New Orleans equivalent of the historic Sun Studios in Memphis, Tenn. In 1947, singer Roy Brown recorded the influential Good Rockin Tonight, the song credited with popularizing the term rockin, at J&M. Two years later, Domino, then an unknown 21-year-old rhythm & blues pianist, and Dave Bartholomew, an established jazz bandleader and aspiring record producer, first communed there. On Dec. 10, 1949 in J&Ms tiny back room, Domino cut eight songs, including his first commercially released single, The Fat Man, under the watchful eyes and ears of Bartholomew and Mr. Matassa. We felt good about it, Bartholomew said decades after that session. Cosimo had gotten a pretty good sound out of what he had.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 22:02:16 +0000
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