Talk:The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert

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It seems that the timings of the original released from 1950 is slightly different from the remastered CD.
The album covers are labeled "Set of two", auto coupling. That's probably the reason of the differences in the track listing orders. Kumeon (talk) 07:40, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The original acetates were recorded by Albert Marx for his personal use. He later gave one set of acetates to Benny Goodman who did not listen to them, but stored them away in a closet. He finally listened to them in 1950. He was so impressed with the sound quality, he got Columbia to release them. Albert Marx was not credited at the time, never received monetary gain for his recording effort, however, that has since been rectified, and a little before his death, Albert did receive credit as the recording engineer. This Wikipedia entry needs to be updated and show Albert Marx as the recording engineer for the session.^[1] 96.41.90.218 (talk) 19:12, 19 August 2015 (UTC) Lee M. Cohen[reply]

Ref

This edit (and four edits subsequent) seems to have uncredited

This concert was not slated to be recorded. Arthur Marx, husband of Helen Ward (earlier singer with Goodman), was in attandance with Helen,and was familiar with a wire recorder in a room over the stage at Carnegie Hall. Wire recorders aren't noted for their sound quality or consistency. As the name implies, a wire runs through the recording head and becomes magnetized, and in doing so, captures what comes through the microphone. A single microphone hung over the stage that night, and it was a miracle from God, with help from Marx, that this, one of the greatest jazz concerts of all time, was recorded at all, let alone the fact that it actually has pretty good sound quality and mix for a recording of that era thanks largely to the acoustics of the stage and the microphone's placement, which was likely haphazard at best. The recorded wires were left in boxes, ostensibly in one of Goodman's closets, and he found them 15 or so years later and released the set. As this is still considered one of most historic concerts ever, Jazz fans should be grateful to be able to hear it again and again when all odds were against its recording and release. Joe Cash, Jr.

[Disputed content added here 5/27/2018 by Wikiuser100 (talk) 16:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)][reply]

It should either be cited properly, or removed. -- David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 18:13, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Removed 5/19/2010, placed here for reference 5/27/2018:

Recording The Concert

There never would have been a recording of the concert if Albert Marx had not taken the initiative. Marx was married to Helen Ward, who was Benny's vocalist from 1934-1937. He decided to record the concert as an anniversary present for Helen. Two copies were ordered, one for Helen and one for Benny.

At the time, recording technology was still in a fairly primitive state. Only three RCA 44BX microphones were used, one above the conductor's podium and two others at ends of the band. (Other reports claim that a single RCA 44BX mic positioned above the podium was used.)

The feed went offstage to a mixer and then to a CBS truck in the alley. The engineers on site did not control the mix and thus the settings were the same for each song. There was no attempt to bring out individual soloists or to make adjustments appropriate to the unique nature of each song. From the truck, the feed was then 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. There, acetate records were cut but each was limited to 8 minutes 45 seconds. (Some reports claim that a wire recorder was used to record the concert. This is false.)

In order to capture the entire live concert, two record cutting turntables had to be used in relay. Smith only had two turntables, so he "subcontracted" the job to Raymond Scott's Universal Recording Studio. Scott received the same feed from CBS master control as did Smith. Thus, the concert was recorded on four different cutting machines --- alas, synchronization had not been invented and half the recordings are at a slightly different speed than the others and it was virtually impossible to attain continuity by "splicing" the records together using analogue methods.

Meanwhile, in the CBS studio, a master was cut on aluminum studio transcription discs. The discs had much higher quality but were useless for commercial use because Goodman had used a number of people from other bands and it proved almost impossible to resolve the contractual issues. Also, the American Federation of Musicians demanded prohibitively high royalties for playing transcribed (recorded) music on the radio. The purpose of this was to provide employment for large numbers of musicians since all performances were "live". It was not until 1947 that the Supreme Court invalidated prohibitions on broacasting recorded material.

Benny shelved the idea of issuing a recording from his acetates due to the same contract issues that stymied CBS. Since Benny was busy with lots of other projects, his set of acetates also drifted into obscurity. In 1950, the acetates were discovered by Rachel Speiden (Benny's sister-in-law) when she took over Benny's New York apartment and cleaned out the closets. Needless to say, the quality had degraded even further.

With heroic engineering by Harvard physicist/CBS engineer Bill Savory, it was possible to restore about 75% of the concert. Benny's acetates were transferred to tape and then worked on from there.

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. Producer Phil Schapp oversaw the new remastering.

(This information was borrowed from http://www.jitterbuzz.com/carcon.html)

Wikiuser100 (talk) 16:27, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Both critical and public reception of the performances was outstanding."

This is simply not true. The mainstream publications at the time, both straightforward newspapers and "serious" music magazines, panned the concert, describing it as a monotonous series of fox trots and a "bore." The reviews from sources such as the New York Times and FM Magazine are online and can be googled easily enough. It's common knowledge the concert was not regarded as anything important or special until the records were issued in 1950. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:643:8201:6140:A5D2:8DE:5F27:D1B9 (talk) 23:08, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the note; I've removed it. I don't know much about this subject, but I found this thing, for a start. Graham87 11:08, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]