[78-L] Meyer Berger's New York

[Taylor Bowie]

Very entertaining book...I have a little collection of stuff about NYC and 
have always liked that one.

Just a head's up...I'm not sure how much the reprint edition was,  but a 
quick check at abebooks.com turned up a dozen decent second-hand copies of 
the original edition at ten dollars or less.

Taylor



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Malcolm Rockwell" <malcolm at 78data.com>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 10:19 PM
Subject: [78-L] Meyer Berger's New York


>A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about a book I'd read when I was a
> kid called "Meyer Berger's New York" and mentioned it in passing on this
> newsgroup. Berger was a newspaperman in the 50s/60s and based his
> articles on the odd and interesting things he discovered about New York
> and its environs. Well, it's been reprinted and I found a copy on
> Amazon. Glad I did too, because this article appears near the beginning
> of the book:
>
> April 22, 1953
>
>     "Modern fire laws don't permit recording companies such as Columbia
> and R.C.A. Victor to build wooden studios, which are the best for making
> records, so company engineers in New York keep looking for existing
> structures that have mellow interiors they can adapt for that purpose.
>     "The old Adams Memorial Presbyterian Church in Thirtieth Street
> east of the Third Avenue "El," put up in 1875, was Columbia Records'
> best find. Johnny Ray has wept in it, Rosemary Clooney and Marlene
> Dietrich have sung "Too Old To Cut The Mustard" in it and its ancient
> rafters have reverberated to the full Met cast doing "Cavalleria
> Rusticana" and to Charles Laughton in "Don Juan In Hell."
>     "The other day the full cast of "John Brown's Body" with Tyrone
> Power, Raymond Massey, Judith Anderson and a chorus, toiled through the
> entire play in the old church. Resonant declamations and thick, rich
> snatches of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" were put on recording tape
> with a minimum of fluffs and retakes.
>     "Miss Anderson had to do one passage over because her chair creaked
> when she leaped from it on cue, and the tape took notice of it. William
> Bachman, a Columbia engineer, recalled that a few weeks ago Rudolph
> Serkin was all but finished with a flawless version of Beethoven's Third
> Piano Concerto when they pulled the stop light on him. The clinking of
> silver in his pocket got on the tape as obbligato when he bounced on the
> piano stool. An assistant held his change while he did the number over.
>     "Mr. Bachman said he and his staff made extensive tests before they
> leased the old church. They figured they could remove the old stained
> glass windows, substitute concrete brick and kill the traffic and other
> street noises. Borings and intricate electronic tests established that
> Adams Memorial was built on solid rock and would not communicate the
> rumble of the "El." Thick cement banks on the church's outer walls gave
> double insurance.
>     "The dimensions of the church were close to perfect for recordings
> - ninety-six feel long, sixty-five feet wide, forty-five feet high. Any
> dimensions greater than 100 feet spawns echos that double-track on
> sensitive tape, one reason why such places as Madison Square Garden
> won't serve. Carnegie Hall would be all right except that it is directly
> over a subway, and its lush carpeting, heavily upholstered seats and
> voluptuous drapery swallow reverberations that give recording depth and
> "human" dimension. "Like hearing a string orchestra on Flushing Meadow,"
> Mr. Bachman explained.
>     "Even with almost perfect conditions, though, it's the human
> element that tries engineers' sanity. When the Balinese were in town a
> while back they went to the church to do a record, but their four-foot
> gong wasn't registering on the tape with a satisfactory impact.
>     " "Hit it as hard as you can," the Balinese gong artist was told
> through an interpreter. He shook his head, gave long and fluent answer
> (sic). The interpreter made appropriate palm gestures, shrugged, and
> told the engineers: "He says he won't do it. He has too much reverence
> for the instrument." They never got him to do it, either."
>
> I'm enjoying this look back immensely.
> Mal
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