R/E/P > Terry Manning

I'll Take You There

(1/3) > >>

David Kulka:
Terry, welcome to this forum!  Your career and credentials are remarkable, and I've enjoyed reading your comments.

After reading of your tenure at Stax, I wonder if you can tell me anything about the recording of I'll Take You There by the Staple Singers.  What an fantastic track!  As a teenager I worked at a record store when that one came out, and just loved it.  I still have the LP and got a CD version last year and man, that one sure stands the test of time.  The performance, recording, and mix are superb.

Was that one during your time?  Can you offer any details on the tracking session, the vocals, the mix, the general atmosphere, or the gear that was used?  Thanks in advance.

compasspnt:
David Kulka wrote on Wed, 02 February 2005 23:12
...I wonder if you can tell me anything about the recording of I'll Take You There by the Staple Singers....any details on the tracking session, the vocals, the mix, the general atmosphere, or the gear that was used?


Ah, yes.  One of my favourites, too.  Yes, I indeed worked on this one, and all of the other Staple Singers Stax recordings.

First, let me say how lucky I was to have been able to work with the great singers, musicians, and writers who were responsible for music like this one.  People like that made my job easy.

The song was written by Al Bell, with Mavis Staples contributing, as they sat around in a living room one evening.  Al was the producer, and I was his co-producer and engineer.  He had been to Jamaica on holiday, and had fallen in love with the Caribbean style, early reggae influenced music he heard there.  He wanted to get that kind of rhythm into an American R&B song.  So we were basically copying what the guys in Kingston were doing, adding it to our standard Memphis Soul "MO."  (Years later I told this to my new-found friend Sly Dunbar, Jamaican drummer EXTRAORDINAIRE; Sly replied that they were at that time trying to emulate the Stax sound, injecting it into their music.  Go figure!)

The basic track for "I'll Take You There" was cut at Muscle Shoals Sound in Alabama.  Even though Stax had (obviously) their own studios, and their own tremendous group of musicians, Al wanted to get something a little different sounding.  Plus, they did so much recording at Stax, it was sometimes difficult to get time, even for Chief Executive Al Bell!  Anyway, we trekked down to Muscle Shoals, and the great players there, Roger Hawkins on drums, David Hood on bass, and Barry Beckett on keys, put down exactly what we needed.  I played several guitars on the track, and there was another rhythm guitar also, I think.  Mavis did a guide vocal so that the band had the right feel.  We cut more than a whole album's worth of tracks at that time.

We brought the basic back (I think it was on 16 tr 2"; MS had a Studer, I think, and at Ardent we had a 3M.  There is a tiny chance the track was initially done on 8 tr 1", but I don't remember for sure) to Memphis, and went into the old Ardent Studio on National Street.  The Staples came in first for vocals.  Mavis did her lead by herself.  I think I used a U87, but it might have been a 67.  I did 2 or 3 takes, then did a comp onto another track.  After that, the whole group sang the backing vocals.  Mavis sang again with them.  They were all grouped around the same lead vocal mic.  The console was an early SpectraSonics, and I had a UA 176 tube limiter on all the vocal overdubs.  (Still have that unit; one of my all time faves.)

After the vocals were done, we called in The Memphis Horns and did their parts.  At that time, there were several of them, usually 2 tenor saxes, a baritone, and one or 2 trumpets.  Often there was a trombone as well.  I would mic them with Neumann 84's on the trumpet, and 87's on the saxes, most of the time.  Usually like instruments would group on the said mic.  I've never liked to have many mics open when few will do the job.  I prefer direct, phase-problem-free sounds wherever possible.  The M-Horns contributed their arrangement ideas, as did Al and I, to come up with the final; there were never any charts on these Memphis sessions, except for strings.

After the horns (this was not all on the same day, of course, I'm just giving the sequence of events) Al, as he was wont to do, left me alone with the tracks to come up with ideas.  I played a harmonica part, and some percussion, and several guitar ideas.  (There may have been more I did at this stage, but I can barely remember what I did today in the studio, much less that long ago!)

Then came the mix, which I did on the SpectraSonics desk onto a Scully 1/4" stereo machine.  Reverb would have been all EMT plate; we had two of them at that time, with slightly different decay times dialed in.

Anyway, that's about it.  Just a little before this, we also did "Respect Yourself," as well as the other tracks on the same album, all done basically the same way.  We were consciously experimenting with different types of sounds and styles.  I would play my (then) new Moog IIIC synth, use distorted guitar, sample little bells and manually fly them in, etc., just to see what we could get away with.  I even made a "string sample" machine by taking a huge length of 1" tape, using mic stands as extra tape guides, and making a very long loop which stretched out around the control room.  When doing string sessions, I would ask them to please all play a "C" note (ostensibly to check their intonation, but really to get the note sampled!)  Then a bit later, I would ask for an "A," and so on.  When I got a few good notes, I would later choose the ones most needed in a particular song, and use vari-speed to get other needed, but not recorded, notes.  I would then take the 8 most useful notes, and record them onto the tape loop, which would thereafter play incessantly.  Then I would "play" the notes by moving up the faders as the notes were needed.  Not great attack, but it worked pretty well!

Lots of fun back then!

Thank you for your comments, and your questions.

All the best,

Terry

natpub:
compasspnt wrote on Thu, 03 February 2005 00:31
 even made a "string sample" machine by taking a huge length of 1" tape, using mic stands as extra tape guides, and making a very long loop which stretched out around the control room.  When doing string sessions, I would ask them to please all play a "C" note (ostensibly to check their intonation, but really to get the note sampled!)  Then a bit later, I would ask for an "A," and so on.  When I got a few good notes, I would later choose the ones most needed in a particular song, and use vari-speed to get other needed, but not recorded, notes.  I would then take the 8 most useful notes, and record them onto the tape loop, which would thereafter play incessantly.  Then I would "play" the notes by moving up the faders as the notes were needed.  Not great attack, but it worked pretty well!




Sweet, a homemade "Mellotron!"

nice one  

Level:
Quote:
I would then take the 8 most useful notes, and record them onto the tape loop, which would thereafter play incessantly. Then I would "play" the notes by moving up the faders as the notes were needed. Not great attack, but it worked pretty well!



Good Lord. It sure is great to know some the crazy stuff I did in the day was being "topped" but excersizes such as this!

Bravo. Creative control never displayed better!

David Kulka:
Terry, sincere thanks for your lengthy reply, which painted a wonderful picture of how that great song came to be.

I was a suburban kid working at a record store in downtown San Jose when "Respect Yourself" came out in 1971, I think "I'll Take You There" was released in '72.  The store happened to be along the "cruising" section of First Street.  On Friday and Saturday nights when the low riders paraded by, those two songs blasted out of car radios and 8-tracks.  Both of those were such great songs, I loved the jaunty bass line, scratchy guitar, and your harmonica on "I'll Take You There".  And the album cover, with the Staple Singers posing around the fan blade of a huge jet engine.

It was interesting to read of that song's Caribbean influence.  I know there was a lot of cross-pollination between the States and Jamaica, and that a lot of American R&B was heard there over the powerhouse AM stations.  I believe that Caribbean grooves subtly found their way into a lot of our R&B hits.  Some of the Mary Wells singles on Motown are examples of this,"Two Lovers" and "You Beat Me To The Punch" come to mind.  (Both of those are great recordings, too.)

I have done studio installation and maintenance for many years, and worked on Spectrosonics boards back in the day.  They sounded great, but were a bear to work on.  I recall spending a lot of time on my back beneath one of them.   The audio path was clean and the amplifier circuits were hot, but the ones I knew were prone to RF and oscillation.  On at least one that I saw, the factory had soldered disk capacitors to about a hundred patch points, presumably to supress this.

The Universal Audio 176 dates back to about 1965.  I was looking at a schematic the other day, and noticed that the address shown for UA is 6000 Sunset.  UA was relatively small at the time, and they probably just occupied a few offices at 6000.  This of course was the Western Recorders building, which closed just last week.  

A few more questions, if I may.  I gather from the above that Stax had their own studios, and you also used Ardent at times?  What were those rooms like?  Also, how did Hi Records fit in to all this?  Did you also record Al Green or Ann Peebles?

That music was so great -- thanks again for your time.  The Memphis R&B records were a huge part of American music but we don't often hear about what went on in the sessions down there.

(edited)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page