[78-L] Where music never dies

[Cary Ginell]

October 1, 2009
ROOMS

At One Manhattan Corner, Music Never Dies


By ALAN FEUER
God’s work — at least as it appeared two weeks ago inside an oak-paneled studio on West 44th Street in Manhattan — consisted of the following acts:

A musical archivist removed from its case the sole extant copy of some 1941 session takes of Billie Holiday crooning “All of Me.” A recording engineer received this disc and placed it very gently on a turntable. The studio itself then did the rest: Its speakers cracked with static, a quick piano vamp followed, the horns came in on cue and then there was that voice — you were instantly transported to the eve of World War II.

Five days a week, musical journeys much like that one occur inside this studio, where a small team from Sony Music Entertainment performs the divine digital act of preserving the company’s archives. While the rest of the business spews out the latest candy pop song for consumption on the market, the team from the Sony archives digs into a storehouse of recordings, from Sousa and Caruso to Dylan and Miles Davis, protecting the unique and the endangered from the erosions of the past.

“Everything falls apart,” said Marc C. Kirkeby, an archivist and self-described “professional ear.” Records warp; metal plates rust. “We want to be the last best place in the world where all this stuff can be preserved.”

“All this stuff” is a staggering cache of 1.5 million items — perhaps the world’s best playlist — that Sony has accrued over the years by acquiring such legendary labels as Columbia Records and RCA Victor. Mr. Kirkeby refers to his job as “preserving the life expectancy of the source material,” and the material that he and his partners work with might include a one-of-kind recording of the heavyweight Jack Johnson narrating his 1910 title fight against James J. Jeffries, or the last known copy of Simon and Garfunkel’s final concert tour.

Historic work demands historic quarters, and the studio itself — digital sound board, leather chill couch, a garbage can that overflows with empty coffee cups — was custom built in the 1970s as the Record Plant Studio for a man named Roy Cicala, a celebrated recording engineer. Springsteen worked here, as did Aerosmith, Kiss and Billy Joel. John Lennon used to catch naps in the session booth. In fact, Mr. Kirkeby said, he left the studio one night in 1980, headed home to the Dakota and was killed.

The toolbox is extensive: a tackle box of needles, numerous Studer tape decks, a huge device that plays old steel recordings and goes by the name “the Tank.” There is also what is universally known as “the World’s Most Expensive Turntable” — an 800-pound, $65,000, granite-based, pneumatic Rockport Technologies special. Mr. Kirkeby said that only four like this were ever made.

With overhead so high, it makes a certain sense that the studio — while mainly dedicated to the archivist’s art — must also respond to the pressures of the market. “We try to be responsible to what’s going on in the culture, but also to the needs of the company,” Mr. Kirkeby said. So, for instance, if Ken Burns does a PBS documentary on jazz, the team is there to dig up old Fats Waller numbers; if a Toscanini bio-pic is in the works, it will find his music, too.

But mostly the studio is where the past lives on through its music — where Billie Holiday still breathes. Still, as Mr. Kirkeby put it, “Every recording is an illusion.”  		 	   		  
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