Re: [Harp-L] little walter



 
 
 
--- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Bob Maglinte" <bbqbob917@xxxx> wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <Toungblock@xxxx>
> To: <harp-l@xxxx>
> Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 9:52 AM
> Subject: [Harp-L] little walter
> 
> 
> > listing to LW for 30 years and trying to sound like him,it sounds like he 
> > is
> > using a reverb all the time.somtimes i here a echoplex type sound like on
> > juke.do you guys agree???
> >
> > tom in ct.
> 
> Hi Tom,
> When Juke was made, the Echoplex wasn't invented until a good five years 
> after the tune was recorded (Juke came out in 1952, and the Echoplex in 
> 1957). 
 
The Echoplex was first introduced to the market c. 1964.  Prior to that, the "slapback" type echo produced by the Echoplex was generally only available in recording studio situations by using a second reel-to-reel recorder as an outboard unit to the reel-to-reel that was actually recording the master.  This is what was done at Universal studios where LW recorded most of his early hits, and other studios like the one run by Sam Phillips in Memphis.  
 
 
Elgin Edmunds drumming is not an effect at all from reverberation 
> chambers or anything else, but it is a drummer's echo effect that they 
> actually play with the sticks, and I've seen a number of big band as well as 
> blues drummers do it well (and these are guys that did NOT have the drums 
> miked at all). 
 
If BBQ Bob says big band drummers did this, I'll take his word for it, and I've also seen drummers play Juke by imitating the echo.  But Elgin Edmunds wasn't a big band drummer, or anything close to it.  In fact the reason Muddy eventually let him go was because his drumming was too primitive and "country", and he wasn't able to do the things that guys like Below, Odie Payne, and Francis Clay could.  But aside from that, that's not what I hear on Juke - to my ears, it sounds like the tape echo decribed above.
 
 
The reverb back then was often came from the signal fed into 
> a pipe that was routed to a bathroom with a mike at the other end, if at all 
> during that time, so basically, it was recorded dry. He did use an echoplex 
> and/or reverb unit much later in the 50's, as Louis Myers attested to in an 
> interview of him and Walter in an early Living Blues mag issue.
 
 
The clay pipe (or sewer pipe) story is one that I've heard for years, but not a single person I talked to in the course of researching the LW book, or anyone else I ever talked to who recorded at the Chess studio, ever saw it or otherwise confirmed it. In the Louis Myers / LW interview Bob refers to, they are asked about how the reverb was added to LW's records, and it here's everything they had to say about it (B is Bill Lindemman, the interviewer):
 

B: Did they add anything to that, any reverberation or anything?

 

L: Yeah, something. They had a echo chamber, something they called like a viba...vibaration (sic)... 

 

B: Reverberation?

 

W: Vibrato.

 

L: Vibaration.  Walter, wasn't some of those you did had vibaration on 'em, didn't they?  Echo chamber, they called one thing they did.

 

W:  Uh-uh, I was doing that.  That was before they started making them things.

 

L: I know it, but they had...

 

W: Doin' it with the hand.  (L: Huh?)  He doin' it with his hand.  Remember when we made "Off The Wall"?

 

L: Yeah.

 

W: You was doin' that.

 

L: That sound was an echo chamber or somethin'.

 

W: Uh-huh, tip, you know...(apparently gesturing)

 

L: But now it's a revibe.

 

W: Oh, yeah, they got all those great things...

 

L: They got a revarb now, they call 'em.

 

B: Uh huh.

 



W: I think...I know we made "Off The Wall" on that echo chamber..."Blue Lights", too.

 

 

Based on the above, it seems pretty clear that they didn't really know exactly *how* the reverb was added to the recordings they made.  But I can tell you with certainty that Universal Studios did not use a clay pipe or anything primitive like that for reverb - they had the same type of echo chamber / reverb that every other top studio used at the time.  They had an acoustic echo chamber (not unlike the bathroom Bob describes above) which was a tiled room with a speaker at one end that the signal was fed to, and a mic (or mics) at the other end of the room to feed the signal back to tape.  Additionally, they had a large plate reverb that was designed by Bill Putnam, the recording engineer (who also owned the studio).

 

BTW, as far as I've been able to determine, LW never used any outboard echo or reverb effects on live gigs.  Basically, all the echo and reverb stuff was studio-only.

 

Scott


		
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