Sonny & Cher are forever linked with Gold Star Recording Studios, and as the legend of the studio grows along with the acknowledgment of all who toiled and created there, so the earliest Sonny & Cher recordings become part of that story.

 

Time and history are kind to Gold Star for good reason: so many records which musically and culturally define the latter half of the twentieth century were made there. You could say the same thing about Sonny & Cher. Both entities were sui generis, and neither were defined by the times. But people make records; with tape machines, mixing consoles and echo chambers being also the work of people. Few products of Gold Star can truly be called "magical" because what we hear is usually underpinned by technical expertise and adventurous creativity. Across its thirty three and a third years in existence, Gold Star is remembered and experienced in a way that other recording studios like Abbey Road are not.

Undoubtedly it was Phil Spector who really put Gold Star on the map: he after all acknowledged the studios on his hit albums in a time when pop records carried few credits. He did the same for arrangers and musicians, and thus elevated Top 40 musicians to the status of "serious artists". And deservedly so: many who comprised The Wrecking Crew were adept and respected musicians in other fields, most notably jazz.

Gold Star grew in the mid-'fifties, along with a fledgling California music industry which was in the shadow of the dominant movie studio scoring industry. Starting as a Hollywood storefront for a tiny studio which made demos, it expanded to include unique echo chambers invented and built by co-owner Dave Gold. ("Star" is for the other owner, Stan Ross, who would engineer all of Sonny & Cher's sixties records.) Contrary to popular myth, Gold Star did not however offer a particular "sound" but instead featured custom technology, excellent acoustics and engineering skills which facilitated creative record-making outside the confines of conservativee companies like Capitol who also recorded in Los Angeles.

Sonny was down on his luck when he met Cher, but that began to change when he scored a job assisting Phil Spector in 1963. Sonny's old pal Jack Nietzsche was Spector's key arranger, and Gold Star sessions included all the musicians known now as The Wrecking Crew, but known then to Sonny & Jack as the union guys who'd been playing as a changeable aggregation since their days with H.B. Barnum. Cher's elevation from girlfriend to singer happened in July when she became a Ronette on "Be My Baby". For the next twelve months Sonny, Jack and Harold Battiste Jr made Caesar & Cleo records in various studios*, including Gold Star, while C & C broke in their act anywhere there was an audience. (Everybody was young and scuffling: The Turtles backed Caesar & Cleo live on one gig.)

* "The Letter", "Baby Don't Go" and probably "I'm Gonna Love You" were recorded elsewhere - only the three Caesar & Cleo Reprise tracks were done at Gold Star, with Jack Nietzsce producing.

Sonny & Cher were still with Spector at Gold Star when they hooked up with the management team of Charles Greene & Brian Stone, created York - Pala Records, and made "Baby Don't Go". Phil was impressed enough to pay Sonny $500 for half the publishing rights on the song. (Sonny & Cher's split with Phil Spector after the "Lovin' Feelin'" sessions wasn't as acrimonious as has been suggested: Sonny & Phillip continued to "do business" for some time afterwards.) While the Brill Building girl group sensibility had been dealt a hard blow by the British Invasion, American music was was moving ahead. Records originating from both Detroit (with Motown) and LA were doing well, and the Californian surf-cars-and-girls genre (especially) was evolving.

And the sounds of that evolution were coming out of Gold Star, for the most part. The Wrecking Crew were working 'round the clock, and not just on Phil Spector records. Thanks to relentless promotion and landing two major recording contracts, by early 1965 Sonny & Cher / Cher solo sessions for York-Pala* at Gold Star were becoming regular events. LOOK magazine got it very right early Summer by taking a cue from Shindig! ** and including Sonny & Cher in their "new teen rock" feature: within weeks "I Got You Babe" would be a worldwide breakout. As a new era in American pop was beginning, Sonny & Cher's epic love anthem would live on as a tribute to Gold Star long after fire destoyed it, and a good many of The Wrecking Crew had set up for that one last session in the sky.

* York - Pala sessions at Gold Star followed the Philles model, with Sonny substiting for Spector, Harold Battiste Jr for Jack Nietzsce and The Wrecking Crew of course filling the place. Details of Sonny's other York-Pala records are here.

** All Shindig! music pre-recording was also done at Gold Star.

Wrecking Crew guitarist (and all round plucker of anything with strings) Tommy Tedesco's son Denny has taken fifteen years to put together an awesome documentary which is awaiting cinema and DVD release, while playing festivals and arthouses. Click on Denny's logo to watch a mouthwatering trailer, find out all about the film and see some wonderful then-and-now pictures. Cher is featured in "The Wrecking Crew", along with her warm memories of some brilliant and amazing men (and one woman). The film includes interviews with Wrecking Crewmen who've passed on since Denny began his momentous project.

Sonny & Cher in Studio A at work on "The Wondrous World of Sonny & Cher", with Stan Ross at the the console but who's the guy in cap and shades?

Interest in The Wrecking Crew and Gold Star attracts fans and scholars alike nowadays, but as a working business in its heyday it attracted little documentation. And as an independent studio it documented virtually none of its sessions (the Musician's Union did that) since there was no way of knowing that posterity would need anything preserved. But unknowingly, Sonny & Cher played no small part in documenting the great studio. While researching exactly what studio set-up Brian Wilson used (for some PET SOUNDS sessions at Gold Star) archivists found vintage color film of Sonny & Cher at Gold Star. Using this fim as a guide, Josh Hoisington and Craig R. Clemens have mapped out a diagram of a Gold Star session set-up in 1966. It's a great read - especially if you're intrigued by the mystery man above right!

Sonny & Cher with "The Real Don Steele" of KHJ Boss Radio (1966)

Co-owner and Sonny & Cher engineer Stan Ross enthuses over the making of "I Got You Babe", and how he tested its radio-readiness:

"But the 604E s and the 604Ds (studio monitors) were the best Altecs you could have and that was the one that gave me my solid sound. When it was good on that it was good on the air. And then what I would do, I would take a copy of the record and play it on a one-tube oscillator and sit in the car and dial in 600AM on the dial and he would broadcast it outside.

" Listen to it on the radio. I said come here, here’s what your record is going to sound like when it’s on the air."

There was a disc jockey named Don Steel who was a very dear friend of mine. He started [to play] Sonny and Cher. He got the first release on KHJ Boss radio. So the thing is this, when we made Sonny and Cher’s record I took the tape, played it on the thing and listen to it on my car speaker and I’d say here’s what’s on this side, so I add a little more bottom, little more top, then I make the master and get it a demo over to Don Steel and he had it on the air. The next day at three o'clock we went on the air. So everything was equalized. I knew exactly what it was it going to sound like."

Michael Fremer's extended interview with Stan Ross on the history and workings of Gold Star can be found HERE.

Although Sonny gave "exclusives" to KHJ, "Boss Radio"'s competition in Los Angeles was KRLA. Their weekly newspaper KRLA BEAT chronicled the local and international music scene in detail - if not accurately - from late 1964 onwards. Their rise exactly paralelled Sonny & Cher's, and they dutifully added melodramatic teen puff to major and minor events behind The Making Of Sonny & Cher. The friendly "truce" with the Byrds re "All I Really Want To Do" (long-term bitterness actually underpinned the truce), and Sonny's hurt at being booted out of Martoni's (resulting in "Laugh At Me") were prime BEAT fodder, and their "Salutes Sonny & Cher" edition on Cher's 21st birthday in 1967 gave no indication that - for the time being at least - it was essentially all over for Sonny & Cher.

Fascinating reading, the KRLA BEAT Archives can be accessed HERE.

 

Phil Spector inspired many to emulate his commercial success, as well as his art. Working for him was an apprenticeship, and to some degree or another, Sonny Bono, Jack Nietzsche, Nino Tempo, Bill Medley, Jerry Riopelle, Steve Douglas and many others learned record production from him. The Wall Of Sound seems to have a hypnotic effect on creative record-makers to this day, but doing it successfully wasn't as easy as booking time at Gold Star. (Nino Tempo was unable to mix "All Strung Out" at Gold Star without expert help, and to his credit he admits it). Phil inspired the musical sub-genre of Spector Soundalikes, and there are hundreds of them from 1963 onwards. Few of them hit the mark.

By the time Sonny could afford to cut at Gold Star, his initial efforts there were stellar. Cherilyn's "Dream Baby" and Sonny & Cher's "Just You" are superb Wall Of Sound records, representing the two main arms of Spector Souudalikes: girl-group witha rolling beat in the first instance, "Lovin' Feelin'" knockoff in the latter. With The Standell's "The Boy Next Door" somewhere in between. Sonny knew exactly what he was doing, and his superbly balanced mono mixdowns prove it. Sonny was arguably the most proficient Son Of Spector to take on The Wall, but he was certainly the most prolific. He put out eight albums and numerous hit singles of the stuff over less than three years, at a time when Phil Spector was neither selling nor recording. Spector (and a newer version of the wall) would of course make a ferocious return at the end of the decade via Apple artists; but for a few years in the mid-'60s Sonny's musical vision, Gold Star and the Wall Of Sound were inseparable.

Or perhaps David Gold did lock a magic talisman in the echo chambers all those years ago: the sound of Gold Star is etched into the collective consciousness far beyond the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vine Street.

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