Producing Country. Michael Jarrett

overall situation.

      Sam had a way of recording. He had three tape recorders in the room. He had two Ampex recorders. He used one of them to record on, and he used the other one in case he wanted to run a copy of the tape. Now the third machine was a wall-mounted Ampex. He would record the desired signal onto machine number one. Machine number two just sat there unless you wanted to run a copy later. Machine number three, which was the mounted machine, he could take whatever signal he wanted from whichever instrument or vocal, and he sent that to the third machine, and it recorded along with the desired signal that went to the first machine. Then, at the same time that would be playing back through the console. So you had your desired signal. Then you had a slapback signal that came out of the third machine. You got that by delay. He recorded the third machine at the slow speed so you could get a wider delay in between the notes or what have you. That’s how he created and got the slapback effect.

      The way most people got it, they recorded on your one machine and ran it back through the board and then back to the same machine. When you did that, everything that went onto the machine had slapback on it. Sam, using the other machine in his method, he could have slapback on one thing and not on the rest of the band. Or whatever combination he wanted. That’s the reason he had the good slapback, and he could have a good clean slapback. Everything wasn’t slapping back all over the place.

      We hung around the studio. Someone would say, “What are you doing tomorrow? You want to come in and record with Jerry Lee?” Everything was really laid back—not really laid out and planned out like the sessions are nowadays. It wasn’t always the same musicians on sessions. It was a matter of whoever was available. If someone was out of town, we didn’t let that stop us. We’d take somebody else and go ahead and do the session.

      They were great musicians. Carl Perkins, I thought, was a fine musician. Of course there was Scotty [Moore]. Scotty had his own sound. We each had our distinct sound. But in the final analysis you can almost always tell it was a Sun Record sound, even though played by different people in a different manner. In a different style even. It still had the Sun signature to it.

      The slapback might’ve had something to do with it, but everything didn’t have slapback on it. Maybe the engineers had a lot to do with it. Engineers have a hell of a lot more to do with a good record than people realize—usually more so even than the producers. A lot of the records I’ve worked on over the years, the producer is out in the lobby on the telephone through about 90 percent of the session. So, basically, if you get good communication between the musicians and the engineer, then you’re going to get yourself a pretty good session. It may not be a hit every time, but it will be a pretty good session. If the engineer has worked both sides of the glass, and a lot of the musicians out in the studio have worked both sides of the glass, they can communicate almost without saying a word.

       CHET ATKINS

      Elvis was one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. Goddamn, he was always shaking something on his body. I loved him. His first session [produced by Steve Sholes], I told my wife, “You’ve got to come down and see this dude. You won’t get a chance anymore. He’ll be so hot.” So she came down and watched a few minutes and went home. I never did ask her, “What did you think?” Of course, she loved him. A lot of people love Elvis now who didn’t love him back in those days.

      I talked to Scotty, once, his guitar player. We were talking. I said, “Why’d he shake his leg like that?” He said, “You know, he did that instead of patting his foot.” Most musicians will pat their foot to keep time, but he’d shake his leg, and it’d make the girls squeal. And so he’d exaggerate it.

       What is now known as the “Million Dollar Quartet” was a chance gathering (and a casual recording session) of Mt. Rushmore figures—Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins—at Sun Studios.

THE MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET, THE COMPLETE MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET (1956, RCA/SONY BMG)

       JACK CLEMENT