Uncle Justin

Justin Gordon 1917 - 1998
an appreciation

Thanks to my new Facebook friend Carol Kaye, who encouraged me to write a piece about my late uncle, saxophonist Justin Gordon:

I didn't know my relatives on my father's side very well.  They lived in either Cleveland or California, while we were in New York.  My father at some point had abandoned his idea of becoming a rabbi, went to social work school, and horror of horrors, married a Protestant girl who would not convert!  That put a distinct chill on his relationship with his family for many years.

I recall meeting my Grandma Sylvia exactly once.  Grandpa Jack had died before I was born, although my 8 year old self struggled mightily with his full-sized violin for several years before abandoning it for the guitar.  Then there was Uncle Justin, to whom my father was always being compared unfavorably.

When I was growing up and wanted to become a musician, Uncle Justin was probably the main reason my parents didn't instantly try to get me to abandon music and turn to something actually lucrative.  Uncle Justin was the family success story.  He lived in LA and collected antique cars.  He dutifully sent money to Grandma Sylvia.  And he was a musician!

When I was younger, Uncle Justin didn't have much use for me.  I later learned that, as a child of the big band era, he had little use for most music made after about 1960, even though he played a lot of it.  He knew that my reading was poor, and that I liked the Beatles. That did it.  The gulf was too wide.

But as I started to tour and get around to his part of the country, I would visit him, which he seemed to like.  He came to see me perform once backing up Suzanne Vega, and thought I was good - or at least said so.  So a visit to Uncle Justin became a regular feature of my trips to LA.  And bit by bit, I learned some of the details of his career:

Justin played many of the reeds, but his specialties were alto sax, clarinet and flute.  He got his start as a teenager playing in movie theaters and restaurants around Cleveland in the early 1930's, but with the decline of movie theater orchestras, he moved to New York in 1939, where he played in big bands and radio orchestras.  A thrill for me was talking to society bandleader Lester Lanin who enthusiastically told me "I remember Justin Gordon!  He played his buns off!"

He served in the military in WWII, and in 1946 moved to California.  In 1949 he signed a contract with Paramount and started to work onscreen in the movies and in the studio.  One of his earliest gigs was in the onscreen orchestra of Bing Crosby's less well known brother Bob.

In approx. 1956 he began recording with bandleader Billy Vaughn, known for his "Twin Saxes" sound.  The twin saxes in question were usually Justin playing lead alto and overdubbing a second part in thirds. According to posts on saxontheweb.net, Justin boasted that he could "overdub an album in an hour".  Record dates from this period include Gale Storm, Laurindo Almeida, Pat Boone, Benny Carter, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Connie Francis, Barney Kessel, Frankie Laine, Peggy Lee, Dean Martin, Ella Mae Morse, and Louis Prima.

In 1959, he released an LP of standards called "Justin Gordon Swings" on the Dot label, but although it enjoyed some popularity in Germany, there was not enough of a buzz to take him away from his studio career.

On each visit to Uncle Justin, I would learn new tidbits about gigs he had done, often accompanied by tart comments about the artists.  I found out he had played on orchestra dates for Frank Sinatra, whom he liked, and Barbra Streisand, whom he did not.

I learned that he was in the on-camera orchestra in most of the Elvis Presley movies.  His comment about the King?  "I never liked Elvis's music.  But he always made sure there was good catering for the band."

Perhaps his most heard work was in a 1974 Francis Ford Coppola/Gene Hackman movie called "The Conversation" in which the Gene Hackman character was an amateur saxophonist.  There were several scenes of Gene Hackman moodily playing the alto sax in his room.  According to Justin, Gene Hackman thought he could "just pick up the sax and do his own playing".  When playing the sax proved to be a lot more daunting than expected, Justin was called in.  All the sax heard in the final movie was dubbed in by my uncle.

As time went by, Justin found the music he was called upon to play less and less to his taste, but as a consummate professional, he continued to do it on a first call level.  He made a lot of money playing the flute.  There was one period in the 60's where all the contractors were calling for electric flute.  So Justin got himself an electric flute, an amplifier and an effects box that made all sorts of crazy sounds.  He enjoyed a rep as one of the premier electric flutists in LA all the while thinking that the electric flute was the height of silliness.

In the 1970's he recorded a number of well known TV themes, including Bob Newhart and Mary Tyler Moore.  He continued to be somewhat active until his retirement in 1985.

He died of lung cancer in 1998, and is survived by his wife Fern, his son David and stepson Paul.

I am always moved when I consider how much of my uncle's story plays out against the backdrop of technological changes that drastically altered the prospects of professional musicians. His career began in the waning of the silent film era with the great die-out of movie theater orchestras and extended into the early days of synths, drum machines and digital recording.  He went where the work was and was quick to adapt and prosper.  I will always be grateful that uncle Justin was the man who made it okay for me to pursue a career in music.

Jon Gordon
September 2011

Promotional Messages Versus The "Private" Facebook Message Box

re. Public messages sent to the private Facebook Message Box: Is it just me, or is this to be discouraged? 

In my line of work- music/entertainment related- Facebook has revolutionized the way we promote ourselves, and our gigs, projects, etc.  It is cheap, effective and eco-friendly.  I really enjoy having a handy way to see what my friends and colleagues are up to, and to learn about shows to attend. All in all it's a great thing!

However, lately it has become common practice by some individuals to send mass notifications to the "private" Facebook  Message box.  Every time someone does this, I get an email saying "so-and-so has sent you a message".  When I get to the message it turns out "so-and-so" is actually playing Googie's Lounge, or has started a kick-start promotion, or some such thing, and doesn't have anything specific or personal to say to me.

Forgive me, but I find this a little irritating.  Facebook has any number of very effective forums in which to promote yourself, and I feel like posting to the message box inconveniences the recipient unnecessarily.

I have occasionally indicated to posters, via private message, that I would prefer to receive their promotions by other means.  Mostly this has gone well, but on at least one occasion, I fear I may have offended an artist whom I've enjoyed recording, and whose work I like very much.

Maybe it's not such a big deal- I get promotional emails all the time and think nothing of it- (although I have set up my mail server to weed some of them out.)  It's not like the "private" FB message box is so private that I use it for serious communication anyway. Still, when all is said and done, I would prefer that people didn't do it.

Do you have an opinion on this?  I'd be curious to know what people think.

Remembering Frozen- yet another brush with greatness

This time, gentle readers, we are going to take a stroll down memory lane, to the early 1980's:
Spotting a friend's Facebook post reminded me of a period of my career as a freelance guitarist-around-town.  She was responding to this interview by Eric Abrahamsen of singer Frankie Vinci, formerly of the band Fotomaker:

http://www.glorydazemusic.com/articles.php?article_id=3465

Fotomaker was a vehicle for Gene Cornish and Dino Danelli, formerly of the Young Rascals. They made three albums for Atlantic in the late 1970's, but never quite caught on.  My story begins after the demise of Fotomaker, as Gene and Dino were casting about for a new vehicle.

To quote Abrahamsen's interview:

"After Lex left Fotomaker we disbanded. Dino, Gene and I kept the music going for years. We had progressive ska band called 'Modo' and we had a single release called 'I Wish I Could Dance like Fred Astaire' on the MCA/ Deli Platters label. Then we had a band called 'Frozen' which was an underground techno pop rock throw back like Devo meets David Bowie. We had a pretty good industry following. Paul Stanley from Kiss would come see us as did Deborah Harry of Blondie and Rick Ocasek from The Cars. Even Andy Warhol would frequent our shows."

That was my period with them. I played on "I Wish I Could Dance Like Fred Astaire" which was sort of Cars- like.  Gene and Dino managed to acquire some studio time at The Record Plant, and we went in with an engineer named Randy and cut the track. Automation was uncommon in those days. The mix was one of those many hands on the board mixes, where Randy assigned us all knobs we had to turn at strategic times in the song.  Gene and Dino conceived of the idea of subtly increasing the volume of the master fader at the end of the song, to add an excitement factor.  This trick is one that I started using again on mixes for industrials some years later, and it is a valuable weapon in the mixing for maximum impact game.

At some point we also cut a bunch of tracks at the original Right Track studios, which was in a smallish space on 24th Street near 6th Avenue.  When we went in there we sort of took over the place and reconfigured it to our specs.  I had played many jingle sessions there in the main room, but for Modo's sessions they commandeered a tape library room as a separate drum room for Dino, and ran mic lines there. I believe that Frankie, Gene and I were in the main room, but Gene's massive bass amp was out in the hall somewhere.  I don't believe that any of those tracks were released.  I recall being paid for the sessions with Fotomaker checks.  Fortunately the checking account lived on even though the band bit the dust.

I played a number of shows with Frozen (essentially Modo retitled), notably at the upper-west-side club Trax.  They had us dress in clothing  we picked up at Patricia Field, a trendy store at the time.  My outfit was based on a disposable white jumpsuit which I think must have been made of fiberglass- My skin was irritated for some time afterwards.  There was also a belt made of rubber matting material and red bicycle-type reflectors. In those days, my hair would have been spiked in an early 80's new-wave do.  Probably red Converse Hi-Tops to complete the look.

That was also around the time that my swimming-pool colored Fender Strat with a blood-red pickguard and mismatched chicken-head knobs came into being.  This very new-wave guitar would incongruously go on to be the main axe I played with Suzanne Vega.  It can be spotted in the Left of Center video.  I still have the guitar, which received an amazing setup a few years back from luthier Stephen Marchione.  It is still my go-to rosewood Strat.  But I digress.

Gene and Dino were a trip. They were stars who had had it all, but as band after band failed to make a name for itself, "it" was starting to fray a bit around the edges. Still they soldiered on, going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm*.  They seemed to know restaurant owners all over town, and were never at a loss for a drink or a meal.  Dino was a monster drummer- played with complete authority.  Gene had switched from guitar, which he played in the Rascals, to bass.  Frankie Vinci was quite a prolific talent, and very much fun to work with.  In that band, he sang, played keyboards, and wrote most of the songs we performed.

Until I saw my friend's post, I had sort of forgotten about this episode.  I have to say that I do not recall Paul Stanley, Deborah Harry, Rick Ocasek or Andy Warhol attending any of our shows.  But Frozen may have continued with a different guitarist after I left.

For years, I would get a call from Gene Cornish every few months, telling me that the Rascals were about to do a reunion tour, and that I was on it.  My impression was that getting Felix Cavaliere on board was the sticking point.  I guess the tour eventually did happen, but without me.  I don't recall the specific circumstances of our parting- my guess is that I simply got busy with other gigs.

The Rascals had been among my childhood idols.  Gene Cornish's aggressive guitar solo in "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore" was an incomprehensible marvel to my younger self.  So it was a thrill to my twenty-something self to get to play with them.

Til next time-

Jon Gordon

* This is a paraphrase of a great Winston Churchill quote, which I learned from renowned mixer Bob Power.

Tongue Twisters

What is a Blog? I barely know, but I gather that you publicly opine about stuff in hopes that people will come to regard you as a pundit, and follow your musings, thereby increasing your gravitas.  People near and dear to me have told me that I must start a blog.  They must feel that I'm gravitas-challenged, and they may be right.  So here I am blogging away:

At first I assumed that all my opining would be about music and audio, and that's why I named my blog accordingly.  So sorry if you thought I was going to talk about music and audio.  But I am not going to this time.  There is so much more in this world to opine about.   For instance tongue twisters:  I like 'em!  I don't actually like reciting them, but I love to make up ornate ones.

Such as:

Silly Shelly sells she-crabs while
Silly Sally shells sea-crabs

Try saying that once, let alone five times fast!

Or my current favorite:

Choosy Suzie's special sushi skins,
Choice of choosy sushi chefs

If you have a favorite tongue twister, please share it with the class.  You have those comment boxes. Use 'em for Pete's sake!

I will be back at some time in the future talking about serious music and audio stuff.  And I will be very pundit-like. Really.

Cheers,

Jon

Auto tuning and vocoding- the jury's out

Dear Readers:

Welcome to my brand new blog!  As most of you must know, I am an audio engineer/producer with a background as a musician, and a career that has now spanned several decades.

I find my head buzzing with things to say about the impact of tuning technology on making recorded music!  Here in the audio trenches, we grapple daily with a digital genie that will not go back in the bottle:

When I drive in the car, radio tuned to the R&B station that my kids insist on, I hear almost nothing that sounds like it was sung by an unassisted human voice.  Technically the stuff is interesting to me, as I use many of the same digital editing techniques used to create these effects.  But my use of Autotune, or my new fave, Melodyne Editor, is very different in emphasis.  Usually I am trying to leave no trace, to give the impression that the singer just naturally sang more in tune than they really did.  The contemporary R&B use of retuning is an entirely different animal.

Current R&B producers use the software to superimpose the desired melody on the original recording, leaving very obvious distortions of timbre in their wake, and sharp-cornered pitch stair-stepping that no human voice could actually do.  Plus, the kind of hashy digital buzziness that this extreme processing adds to the voice has become the standard sound for vocals in this new world.  It's a style now, a very identifiable one, and in R&B pop it is the new normal.

Many producers are taking it further into vocoding, an old technique that is experiencing a renaissance.  That is when the articulation of a human voice is mapped to the sound of another instrument- usually a synthesizer. The effect is an even more pronounced "sung by robots" effect because the base sound is no longer that of a human voice.  The current single "Take it Off" by Ke$ha uses liberal amounts of vocoding, as does "Fireflies" by Owl City and "Stronger" by Kanye West.

So there it is, it's new, it's fun, it's hip, to geeks like me it's an interesting technical challenge, but- and it it was inevitable that I would come to a but- is it a permanent part of the pop music vocabulary now- or is it a novelty that will fade sooner or later into obscurity?

In my heart of hearts I have to vote for eventual obscurity:  When I listen to contemporary pop, it has the feel of a well-crafted novelty record.  It is very hard to imagine that all these singing robots will sound good ten years from now.

Even now, the Rihanna single "Rude Boy" seems to spell the beginning of the end. The track is a pop juggernaut- compelling ear candy from start to end. But even so, the vocals have been cleaned up so much as to nullify the emotion that should form the core of the song.  The song is a pretty unvarnished sexual come-on, yet the sex seems to have been leached from the core of it by the antiseptic vocal.

I've always felt that the essence of pop music is the power of the human voice to convey emotion and to draw us in. Ultimately those towering vocal performances are what hooks us, whether by Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Patsy Cline, Aretha, Bono, or any and all points in between.  These records can still call to us across the decades and mean something, because the human voice stirs us on a level beyond artifice.

To be continued...