Recording Credits: "Kung Foo," J. Doll (vanity release)

September, 1963 I was recommended for a job opening at Motown's Hitsville USA studios as an electronic technician/draftsman. A high school buddy of mine had the position and he was leaving for college in Ohio. I found it ironic that my decision to delay college made me eligible for the exact kind of job I wanted. My Cass Tech education had given me the exact skills that I needed at Hitsville. My starting wage as $2.25 an hour which, believe it or not, was 8% above "minimum wage" at the time. Because I now had a job, I called in to Motown on the Friday before I was supposed to start and asked if I could have Monday off because "I'm getting married to my girlfriend on Monday in Pennsylvania," I said into the phone.

In mid-October, 1963 I turned 18 and also started my new position at Motown as disc recording engineer (which today would be called a mastering engineer). I had intensively trained with the person leaving the job for the previous two weeks. It didn't take me long to realize that I was in trouble. The previous person had been asked to leave and he was the only person who knew the job. I had a couple of discs that I submitted that had problems, and I had little idea how to correct them.

My "trouble" prompted me to begin a year of self-study in the subject of mastering which involved heavy technical reading, inspection of released records and lots of experimentation. By the end of 1964 I was an expert at making an "on-the-edge" master that beat out all competition, complete with detailed procedures of how Motown's mastering was to be done. In 1964 Motown achieved the status of being the largest independent record company in the world. The amount of work skyrocketed and I officially became a recording supervisor with an junior engineer to direct. The company needed four "lathe rooms" (mastering suites) to get out the volume of jobs necessary. My test acetate became the "standard" that the contracted RCA studios in Chicago had to maintain in quality, and we wound up specifying to RCA how the Motown product was to be mastered. We even provided custom filters that they were to use on all of our jobs.

Recording (Mastering) Credits:
When the Lovelight Keeps Shining Through His Eyes (Supremes) Quicksand (Martha & The Vandellas), Live Wire (Martha & The Vandellas), Fingertips (Little Stevie Wonder), Where Did Our Love Go (Supremes), My Guy (Mary Wells), The Way You Do The Things You Do (Temptations), Baby Love (Supremes), Come See About Me (Supremes), Baby I Need Your Loving (4 Tops), Can I Get A Witness (Marvin Gaye),You're A wonderful One (Marvin Gaye), Baby Don't You Do It (Marvin Gaye), How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You (Marvin Gaye), Gotta Dance To Keep From Crying (The Miracles), Can't Help Myself (Four Tops).

1965-1967: Becoming an "Executive"

In this period I got another junior engineer and actively participated in two major mixing projects of past releases, in addition to making sure that the disc masters were being cranked out properly. I began recommending which mix would be used and developed extensive signal-processing procedures that were used on releases. Although not officially given the position at the time I became responsible for final "technical" quality control of the released product, adjusting the sound of mixes done at wildly different times into compatibility with the Motown standards of the time.

For the last year of this period I was promoted to the engineering department administrative assistant. I still supervised the disc mastering "sub-department" and also coordinated the efforts of a half-dozen technical engineers in charge of equipment construction, installation and maintenance of the recording equipment in Motown's two studios, two mix rooms and one mastering suite. With round-the clock shifts, Motown was able to get the normal output of more than a dozen recording, mixing and mastering rooms. With this amount of use of the facilities, a fully staffed and qualified technical engineering department was essential.

Recording (Mastering & QC) Credits:
Stop In The Name Of Love (Supremes), Love Is Like An Itchin' In My Heart (Supremes), You Keep Me Hanging On (Supremes), I Hear A Symphony (Supremes), The Happening (Supremes), Dancing In The Street (Martha & The Vandellas), Heard It Through The Grapevine (Marvin Gaye), Love Child (Supremes), The Same Old Song (The Four Tops), My Girl (The Temptations), Shotgun (Junior Walker), Roadrunner (Junior Walker), Jimmy Mack (Vandelas), The Supremes Sing Roger & Hammerstein, For Once In My Life (Stevie Wonder), Uptight (Stevie Wonder), Tears Of A Clown (The Miracles), Tracks Of My Tears (The Miracles), Heard It Through The Grapevine (Gladys Knight), Tony Bennett, Billy Eckstein, First I Look At The Purse (Contours), Bernadette (Four Tops), Standing In The Shadows Of Love (Four Tops)

1968-1970: Making a Change

During 1968 the Motown position became more and more administrative and less musical. I had a staff of five engineers and a secretary. I was officially put in charge of the sound quality control and reported directly to Berry Gordy in this capacity. Wanting a career more active in making the sound, rather than just judging its quality, I started looking for other employment. When Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown to form their own record label, I was part of a three-person team hired to establish and run their recording facility.

The new record company quickly established a new string of hit records and it looked like the company was going to be extremely successful. During this period I was constantly challenged to improve my engineering skills in both recording and technical. I had managed to get the kind of position that I sought in the industry.

Recording (Mastering & QC) Credits:
Bring The Boy's Home (Freda Payne), Band Of Gold (Freda Payne), Give Me Just A Little More Time (Chairmen Of The Board), Patches (Chairmen Of The Board) Westbound #9 (Flaming Ember), While You're Out Looking For Sugar (Honey Cone), Gonna Put It In The Want Ads (Honey Cone), Just Another Woman (Eighth Day), You Ain't Livin' Unless You're Lovin' (The Glass House), Finder's Keepers (Chairmen Of The Board), Someone's Been Sleeping In My Bed (100 Proof)

1971-1973: The Big Squeeze

The early 70's saw the HDH studios go from 100 employees down to four and then cease to operate as the payroll budget was depleted. It was a time where many independent labels went out of business as major record companies tried to squeeze the half-dozen largest independent black music labels out of business. CBS and other companies then sought to get artists to leave the labels that made them popular in favor of signing artist contacts directly with the major label. Even Motown was hit hard when Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 left for the CBS owned Epic Records label. Being part of the original studio staff, I was paid until the bitter end.

Recording (Mastering & QC) Credits
Stickup (Honey Cone), One Monkey Don't Stop No Show (Honey Cone), Women's Love Rights (Laura Lee), First Thangs (Parliments)

1974: A New Start

With the economy deep in recession, jobs were few and far between; and music related recording jobs had disappeared from the Motorcity. Some recording engineers were driving taxi cabs to make ends meet. Rather than accept a small weekly allowance to work with HDH trying to rebuild operations in LA, Greg Reilly (another HDH employee) and I began a recording services company called Superdisc, housed in the former HDH studio building. Times were incredibly hard that first year.

Recording (Mastering, Mixing, Tracking) Credits
The Hasting Street Jazz Experience, The Trumplets, Seger Seven (Bob Seger),

1975 - 1977: Building A Recording Services & Training Company

By Spring of 1975 Superdisc found new facilities by buying out "Pro Sound Studios" in East Detroit. With both Greg Reilly and Bob regularly doing sessions, the studio soon became the second most popular studio in the Motorcity.

Acquired in the purchase of Pro Sound Studios was the Detroit-area "franchise" to teach Recording Institute Of America Classes at the studio. Within a year RIA adopted class outlines and courses of study developed (and licensed to RIA) by Bob Dennis for Basic and Advanced recording classes for all franchise locations (approximately 20, nationwide)

Recording (Mastering,tracking, editing) Credits
Forever (Michael Jackson), Moving Violation (The Jackson 5), Lyman Woodward, The Four Tops, Beautiful Loser (Bob Seger), They're Coming To Take Me Away,

1978 - 1980: George Clinton Goes To School
In 1978 we did serious upgrading of the studio facilities and almost immediately I negotiated a production and recording supervision position with George Clinton and his "Thang" production company which was producing product for almost a dozen acts. Again, similar to my original Motown position, I was part of a team creating releases for one national client. But this time I was much more in the middle of things and, in addition to coordinating production and quality-controlling recording in several studios, I had new artists that the company was working with assigned to me to handle directly.
In 1978, I reorganized my "Recording Classes" into a fully-licensed trade school under the name of Recording Institute Of Detroit, rewriting all of my original courses of study and supplemental lesson material. I also started hiring and personally training additional instructors, as the school gained popularity.

Recording (Production, Tracking, Mixing, Mastering, QC) Credits
One Nation Under A Groove (Funkadellic), Motor Booty Affair (Parliament), Heard It Through The Grapevine (Roger Troutman), Electric Spanking of War Babies, Damn The TV's Gone (AC & The Kentucky Fox), Heavy Breathing (AC & The Kentucky Fox), The Soda Jerks, P-Funk All Stars

Recording (Production, QC) Credits
Atomic Dog (George Clinton)

Recording (Production, Tracking, Mixing, Mastering, QC, Guest Actor) Credits
Journey Of The Drums (Muruga), Terroristic Activity (Japan - Unified Field Marshalls), Blake Zolton (Europe), What's Love Got To Do With It? (European Video)

Recording (Production, Tracking, Mixing, Mastering, Songwriting, QC) Credits
Rock The Planet (Japan - Muruga UFM)

1994 - 1996: Producing Music

While steadily maintaining a 20 hour per week teaching schedule and added hours supervising the education being delivered by the entire RID staff, I still had time left over to devote to production of personal projects. I threw myself into launching the career a gospel artist, O. C. Tolbert. I completed a seventy track production of original gospel tunes. I co-wrote many of the songs and sometimes almost wrote note-for note arrangements for some of the guitar work in the recording. In addition to the release, I produced a half-hour weekly radio show for the artist that included recording over 30 additional traditional hymns by artists, interviews and guest mini-sermons. I was behind the pro-tools mouse 10-15 hours a week to meet the weekly submission deadline for the show. If you want to get good at editing, try producing a studio-generated radio show.
Although we received sales of 1600 units through personal artist appearances we were disappointed in the reception and limited airplay the record received in the Motorcity Area. "Choir" music was big in Detroit at the time and we had single-vocalist artist with choir parts on a few cuts, almost used as a "background" to the lead vocalist. In Alabama reception by radio stations, however, was strong. We had just arranged for Southern USA distribution and over 30 new stations had scheduled adding his tune, "It's Alright," into regular rotation airplay when Reverend Tolbert did his annual Salivation Army benefit concert. Coming off the concert stage he suffered a massive heart attack and passed in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. He was a great inspiration and performer - what a loss!

Recording (Production, Tracking, Mixing, Mastering, Songwriting, QC) Credits
For You (Rev. O.C. Tolbert), It's Alright (Rev. O.C. Tolbert)

Recording (Production, Tracking, Mixing, Mastering, Songwriting, QC) Credits
Sturgeon General Warning (Giftvs)

2006 ...

I'm turning my professional career back to mastering.
See my new site at: