Lee Herschberg: The Time of My Life

<div class="captxt" style="background-color: #fff !important; color: #000 !important; text-align: center !important;">Russ Titelman (left) with Lee from early 1973. Photos courtesy of Warner Music Group.</div>

Lee Herschberg's achievements place him on a rarefied plane as a recording engineer. After stints at Decca Studios and United Western, Lee went to work for Warner Bros. Records in 1966. He became the company's Director of Engineering in 1969, a position he maintained until his retirement in the mid-1990s. During his storied career, Lee recorded everyone from Randy Newman and Liberace to Rickie Lee Jones and James Taylor. For his achievements, Lee received four Grammy nominations, and in 1966, he won a Grammy for Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical, for his contributions to Frank Sinatra's Strangers in the Night . This conversation, conducted in 2016 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Strangers in the Night , focuses largely on Lee's work with the legendary crooner, but also covers many of his other studio highlights.

What gave you the music bug? Did you grow up playing an instrument?

I was born in 1931 and grew up in Chicago. I had an older sister. She would take me on Saturdays to the State-Lake Theatre and the Chicago Theatre. They would have a movie and then a stage show. The first one I ever saw was Gene Krupa's Orchestra. That blew me away at ten years old. That was it for me. I wanted to take drum lessons. Then I went to the Roy C. Knapp School of Percussion. I wanted to play, but I didn't want to practice, so my drumming career went nowhere. [ laughter ] My sister liked big bands and [Frank] Sinatra. I was forbidden to touch her 78s, but I used to listen to them when she wasn't around!

Did you work in a studio in Chicago before you moved to Los Angeles?

No. I got out of high school in [Los Angeles] in 1949. In 1950 I was in the Air Force for four years during the Korean War. I was an instrument flight instructor for a flight squadron of four engine bombers. I managed to not have to go to Korea and get into combat. After I got out of the military, I worked for my dad for about six months, doing market research in New York. Eventually I said, "Dad, I can't live in this city." I quit and came home.

Your first studio gig was in Los Angeles?

What happened was that I ran into a friend of mine from high school. He and his dad had a little recording studio down on Melrose [Avenue] in Hollywood. They did demos and they did a Spanish radio show with live sound effects. They'd have a guy slamming doors. They had four disc cutting machines, so I started cutting the discs for them and I also did some mixing. Another high school friend's father was an A&R man for Decca and Coral Records, which had a studio right across the street from this demo studio. Through her, I got to know her father. I said, "If there's ever an opening, I'd love to work for you guys." One day he called me, and I went to work for Decca, and from there I was in the record business. It was a very fortunate moment for me. We were doing things like the Les Brown Band, Lawrence Welk, Liberace with the big orchestra, and a couple of jazz artists. We even did one session with Louis Armstrong and his band. That knocked me out to be in the same room with those guys. I'm happy I was at the right place at the right time.

During your career you worked in the world's greatest studios. How did Decca's studio measure up?

You wouldn't have believed the studio if you'd seen it. There was one big monitor speaker hanging from the [control room] ceiling, but the recording console was right up against the window, so the speaker was hanging behind the mixer's head playing right into the glass of the window. If you think about today, that was the last thing in the world that you'd do: Have a speaker playing at the glass. But it all worked somehow, and we got things done.

Sounds like a challenging way to work.

It was. Our studio was right next to the old Capitol Records building. Between our studio and Capitol there was a restaurant called the Nickodell Melrose that was pretty famous with people around Hollywood. We had a red recording light hooked up in the Nickodell, because when the staff would go into the freezer to get meat or whatever, they would slam the door. If we were recording, we could hear the door slamming. When the red light was on, they didn't go into the freezer. Back then, it was all about the performers, it wasn't so much about engineering. It was all about performance and getting the best shot on it that you could. It's a different story today. You can record in your bedroom.

What were those early years at Decca like for you?

When I first started out, I didn't do any mixing. I was working as a second engineer. We were doing mono only. We had a board that had eight rotary faders on it; no equalizers, no limiters, no nothing. Everything we got in the studio was from the [first] engineer mixing it live. For example, I'd record an acoustic rhythm guitar and a bass on one microphone. I'd move the mic until I'd get a good balance between the two.

When did stereo recording start at Decca?

We were doing sessions in the late '50s in mono, and then one day a truck showed up in the alley behind the studio, and they unloaded two, 3-track, 1/2-inch machines. Decca New York, which was our main studio, had sent them out here for us. Now we could do stereo and mono. This was around 1958, and that's when I started mixing stereo. I had two [Neumann] U 47s that I'd mocked up with a plastic disc in between so I could record binaural sound, more or less. Then I rigged up a four-mic mixer so I could go in and mic up certain things separate from the overall orchestra. We'd put them on the center track; we’d mix all together [from the] four channels, and then the left and the right on the sides on tracks one and three. We would cut the mix. That was the first stereo [tracking technique].

What was the first big session you ever live mixed as a first engineer?

It was for a Sammy Davis, Jr. album called Mr. Entertainment . I had come in at 9 in the morning for my shift. It turned out that our main engineer, Andy Richardson, was out sick. The chief engineer said, "You're going to have to do this session tonight." I went out into the alley behind the studio and was sick to my stomach. That was my baptism by fire. We worked until 2 or 3 in the morning with a big orchestra, strings, brass, saxes, background singers, and everything, recording to 3-track. It was extra stressful because mostly everything was mono in those days, up until 3-track. Then when we got to 3-track we didn't quite know what the hell to do with it. [Our machine] had Sel-Sync on it, which allowed us to record tracks and play them back from the record head, so that when we overdubbed on one track it was in line with the other two tracks so that they weren't out of sync. I knew how everything should sound, and fortunately, I was able to manage it. Really, I was just so glad when that session was over.

What was it like to work with Sammy Davis, Jr. in the studio?

Absolutely great. He was friendly, and he was such a pro. He had the greatest voice. I remember one of the first tunes we did with him was "Soliloquy" from Carousel . We did it in one take, and it was five-and-a-half or six minutes long, or longer. It was ridiculous. But, the thing is, if you were an artist in those days, you didn't come into the studio unless you were able to perform. The first time I ever saw a big orchestra in the studio, some 30 or 40 guys came in, they sat down, and they each looked at their piece of music. They rehearsed it one time and it was like they'd played that song together 100 times. I was flabbergasted.

Who else did you record at Decca?

Well, after Buddy Holly got killed in a plane crash, I did a session with The Crickets. This was around late 1959, early 1960. It was the first time I’d ever worked with anyone with an electric guitar. They wanted headphones and all this stuff. It was my first taste of recording rock 'n' roll, and it was totally foreign from anything I had been doing before that. I was used to working with an orchestra. When the guys came in with their electric guitars and wanted to wear headphones, the chief engineer said, "You're the youngest guy here. You work with 'em! Maybe you can figure out what they're talking about!" [ laughter ] I was in my late twenties at the time, or maybe thirty. They were great guys, and we had lots of fun.

They were on Decca?

Yes. The thing is, Decca had a bunch of great artists at the time, but they were mainly based in Nashville and in New York. Decca had a place in New York in the Pythian Temple. It was one of the greatest sounding rooms I’ve ever heard in my life. You didn't have to add reverb to it; you didn't have to do anything – it just had an incredible sound. They had so many great rooms back in New York, like Phil Ramone's [ Tape Op #50 ] place [A & R Recording]. Great sounding records came out of there. Another one was Columbia [Records'] 30th Street Studio, which was a converted church. I hated the room we had at Decca [in Hollywood]. We did one Bing Crosby session with an [RCA] 44 mic in the middle of the studio with him singing into it. What was leaking into the microphone was a pretty good mix by itself. It was a very live room, and it was tough to work with, but it was great fun to work those sessions.

Why did you leave Decca?

In 1962, when Decca was bought by MCA, MCA didn't want our studio anymore. Soon after, I moved to United Western Recording in Hollywood.

In the early 1960s, United Western was arguably the busiest and best studio in Hollywood. What do you remember about your first months working there?

Bill Putnam [ Tape Op #24 ] owned United Western. All the Sinatra records that Bill engineered were fantastic. He did the great Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre albums, with the songs from all the Broadway hit shows. Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin were on all of them. I remember Bill would have three or four of them in movable sound booths that we had in the studio, all singing at the same time. It was amazing. One of my favorite songs of Sinatra's is "My Kind of Town," from an album I seconded on for Bill, Robin and the 7 Hoods . I especially loved that Sinatra song – that one and "My Way."

Is this when you started working a lot of Frank Sinatra's sessions?

Well, in 1963, Sonny Burke – who was an A&R man and producer who I had worked with at Decca for years – moved to Reprise Records and started working with Sinatra. Sonny and I got along great, so it was a natural marriage between the two of us. The first Sinatra album I worked on was The Concert Sinatra . But I didn't actually work on the live session, which was done at Samuel Goldwyn Studios and recorded on Westrex 35 mm mag [magnetic recording machines]. Those recordings were transferred to 3-track stereo, left/right orchestra, and Sinatra in the middle. Reprise sent the tapes over to United Western; then I started remixing from 3-tracks for some of the tracks for that album – while they were still recording him – down to 2-track for the actual record. It was a pretty complicated process.

When was the first time you worked as a second in the studio with him?

The first recordings I ever did for Sinatra were in late 1964 for Softly, as I Leave You . We did "Dear Heart" and "Pass Me By." I don't know what the [third] tune was ["Emily"]. There were quite a few Sinatra sessions that I worked on as second engineer before I ever got to work with him [as a first engineer]. In 1966, Lowell Frank, who was head engineer at Warner Bros. Records, hired me. He was one of the greatest engineers I ever knew or worked with. I worked a lot of sessions with him. By then, he was [engineering] recordings for Sinatra. I got to run the tape machines. It was wonderful, because all I had to do was make sure everything was right, rewind for playbacks, and stuff like that. I got to sit and watch the goings on. It was a lot of fun.

What are your earliest memories of Frank?

I remember the one time I went out in the studio. It was one of the first times I worked with him. To me, sitting in the control room, it didn't look like his mic was quite in the right place. So, I went out to change it. He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I just want to raise the mic a little bit to make it easier for you." He said, "You go back in there and do your job. I know how to work a microphone. It's great. You do your job. I'll do mine." I thought, "Good point." He was really a good guy. He was at his friendliest and nicest when he was in the studio, because that's what he loved to do.

Frank's next album was September of My Years .

On September of My Years , Lowell Frank was mixing that Sinatra album. I said, "Let me come in and be your second. I'll run the tape machines." In fact, there's a video on YouTube of Sinatra recording "It Was a Very Good Year" in Studio A at United. If you look at the very beginning of it, you can see me standing at the tape machine while Lowell is at the console.

What did you learn from assisting Lowell on Sinatra sessions?

With Sinatra, you didn't have time to start listening to mics and listening to sections of the band, because he would come in, and if he heard about five seconds of an arrangement and he liked it, he'd say, "Let's go. Let's record this." Lowell was amazing. He could sit down and dial up a mix on a huge orchestra in about 30 seconds flat. I learned that from him.

Whenever I look at the photos of those sessions, I'm always amazed at how big they were.

Sinatra was a performer, and he was used to working with an audience. There was always a bunch of people there. We had a list before every session of the people who were approved and could come in the studio. So, not only did I have 20 or 30 musicians, but I also had to put out 15 or 20 chairs for the onlookers. I lined the seats up right in front of the control room window, but we were elevated a bit in the control room at Western, so we could see to the back of the room when it was full. But they were off to the side and not in the way [of the musicians]. These were friends of Sinatra's, as well as people in the music business. [Sinatra confidant] Sarge Weiss smoothed the way with a lot of the guests about who could get in and who couldn't.

For Strangers in The Night , Sonny produced, and you got to engineer for him. What were those days like?

This was the routine: I had an office there in Western and I had a piano in my office, which was adjacent to the studio. Frank was supposed to go in there an hour early with [pianist] Bill Miller, go over the arrangements, and learn the songs that he didn't know. Then he'd come into the studio. In the meantime, we'd be in the studio with the orchestra, fixing notes that were wrong on the arrangement, running the songs down, and getting a balance. Then he'd [finish with Bill], come in, and say, "Let's do it." But, more often than not, he'd just walk right into the studio because he loved the live orchestra. He'd hear the guys playing, and he'd say, "That sounds great! Let's do this," and we did. We had to really be on our toes, all the time. But I loved that. To me, being in the studio, having a huge orchestra, getting it all together, making it sound like it's supposed to sound, and doing two or three songs in three hours, that was a great high for me. It required total concentration.

Everything was cut live in those days, right?

Well, there were union rules [from the American Federation of Musicians]. We could only record up to 15 minutes of music in those three hours. If we ran over, say 30 seconds on that 15-minute session, the union would charge everybody another half session, I believe. So, it was a rush to get everything done in that three-hour block. We weren't allowed any overdubs either. If I overdubbed a tambourine or a handclap on something we'd done, and the union reps were there – and they were always there – we had to pay everybody on the session for another session. There was [almost] no overdubbing at the time; everything was live because it had to be live. After the session was over, a few people would stay behind. We'd lock the doors so the union guys couldn't get back in, and we'd do whatever overdub was necessary. [ laughter ]

It sounds like Frank wasn't a fan of overdubs or multiple takes anyway.

He would [almost] never do that. If the band was less than perfect, Sonny would say, "Can we do one more Frank?" Sinatra would look at us and say, "What for?" Well, that was it. If he liked his performance and thought it was great, we had to move on. I always ran the tape machines, even from the beginning, with the orchestra but without him, so, should that happen, we might have a piece where we could fix [intercut] something that went wrong. So, occasionally we did that. But, for the most part, our approach was, “We've got to get it right the first time, just in case that's the one .” He always had his opinion [about] when he got it right and when he didn't. I don't recall ever doing anything that wasn't okay with him and him ignoring it. That just didn't happen. He had too good of an ear for that.

I've heard outtakes from the Strangers… sessions, and Frank wasn't shy about saying what he thought about takes and arrangements.

He had no qualms, whether it was with Nelson Riddle or with someone else. If there was something about the arrangement that didn't like, he'd just say, "Take the brass off those eight bars. They won't be able to hear me over that." He knew what he liked in an arrangement and what he didn't. But [during his career] he had the best arrangers in the world. My god, what musicians wouldn't like those arrangements? Nelson Riddle, Don Costa, Billy May, and Gordon Jenkins – those guys were terrific, and they knew what Frank liked and what Frank didn't like. The arrangements were really right on; as good as a song could be.

Plus, obviously, the musicians he had in his session band were the absolute best in the world as well.

With Strangers , it was all the typical Sinatra setup for a big band. But there was a Hammond B-3, and I wondered, “What in the hell are they going to do with that?” It turned out great to use it instead of the piano. Artie Kane played organ on it. It accented a lot of parts and added that little something extra. I got everybody as close together as I could in the studio, as if they were playing live somewhere. Nelson wrote some great arrangements, and, for the most part, the songs were fun. Sinatra had a great time with it. The tempo on "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" was outrageous. Most of those were no more than two takes.

The drumming on "…Beautiful Girl…" is jaw-dropping. Who was the drummer on the album?

Irving Cottler, the great big band drummer, played drums. His timing was like a rock, but I wasn't a big fan of the sound of Irv's drums. He went on the road with Sinatra all the time. He had two or three different sets of drums that the cartage people would bring along. Every once in a while, they'd bring this one set that was loud and just drowned everybody out. The bass drum put a big boom through the room. I'd have it in every mic I had open. A lot of times I'd have to sneak up on Irv and put a blanket up against his bass drum. Because, if he'd see me doing that, he'd say, "Don't do anything! I like my drums the way they are." He played so loud sometimes it was incredible, but he was used to doing that from being on the road because he had to play really loud in an arena to keep the band together.

Did Frank ever sing in a vocal booth?

I never had Sinatra in a vocal booth. Never. He wanted to stand right behind the piano and right beside the rhythm section, with the orchestra spread around him; the brass on one side and the saxes on the other, and the strings in the back. He'd stand there and sing. He was great on the microphone. He probably worked a microphone better than anybody I've ever seen in my life. He was close in when he needed to be. He never missed a syllable. I didn't have to do a lot to his voice. All I had to do was leave him enough room for his dynamics. We could make adjustments afterwards. I always tried to mix around his voice, so we'd have something that would fit.

Did Frank ever get angry in the studio?

I never saw Sinatra angry in the studio. Sinatra loved to be in the studio because he loved musicians. And the guys loved him. When Sinatra was in the studio, he was there to work. He was familiar with most of the guys in the band. He knew them, he knew what being on the road was like; they all got together, bore down, and did their best. He was great, and he knew they were all great musicians. We never had anybody at all who wasn't great. They were all former guys who'd played in big bands on the road. They were all acquainted with each other. They were there to do a job, and they did it.

This is right around the time that Frank married Mia Farrow. Didn't she watch some of his sessions?

During the That's Life sessions, Sinatra brought Mia into the studio. They had just gotten married. He asked me if she could sit somewhere in the control room where nobody would bother her. We used to have the tape machines up against the wall in Western, so I'd pull the tape machines out and put a chair behind them, so she could see directly into the studio, but nobody could approach her and start talking to her. If I'm not mistaken, I think it was the night we recorded "The Impossible Dream." We had a couple of takes and a couple of pickups. We'd take it from the last 16 bars or something and do an ending. We'd ended up with three pieces. When we got done, what we had was terrific. He said, "Put those pieces together now." In the meantime, there was a studio full of musicians sitting around for 20 minutes while I had to edit the tape. [ laughs ] I cut the three pieces together and we listened to it. Editing takes a while. You have to make sure you get the right pieces together, at the right spot, so you don't disturb the tempo and you can't hear the cut. Everybody had to stand by while I edited the tape, which I was not used to doing then.

Do you have any particular favorite Sinatra albums you worked on?

The Sinatra and Duke Ellington album [ Francis A. & Edward K. ] is one of my favorites, in part because [Cornelius] "Johnny" Hodges, Ellington's incredible sax player, was in the orchestra. He played the greatest solo on "Indian Summer." That made my day, just to be able to be there. The Ellington stuff was great. Billy May wrote those arrangements, and he played piano on the sessions, actually. I can't remember if Ellington played piano on a couple of those songs or not. The sessions happened during Sinatra's birthday too. As I recall, a couple of very beautiful ladies came in with a cake and said, "Here's your birthday present, Frank."

You mentioned that "My Way" was one of your favorite Sinatra songs. What do you remember about that session?

A lot of times I didn't even have time to run down the orchestra and get a balance on anything. It was really hit or miss. That's what happened with "My Way." That's a long song; I only heard about a minute-and-a-half of the arrangement being run down before I had a moment to check for [bad] notes and things like that prior to Frank singing. About halfway through the take, I looked over at the tape machine, and the meters were pinned. I thought, "Oh, my god." My second engineer had made a little mistake in setting up the tape machine. Usually I'd leave a little pad. I'd be maybe 2 or 3 dB lower, so a bit less was going onto the tape machine. His voice had a little bit of an edge on it in spots.

Of course, no one wanted to tell Frank he needs to do another take for any reason, especially because of a mistake made behind the board. What happened?

Well, in the mix, with the orchestra, we never heard it. It was a very dynamic arrangement. It went from very soft to a huge, [loud] orchestra at the end. As a matter of fact, later on some people requested just the vocal track to use on some project. They then called me and said, "Are you sure that was a good transfer of the vocal?" I said, "Yeah, that's just the way it was on the record." There was a little distortion on his voice, because it was done in that one take. But that was not unusual at all for Sinatra. You had to be prepared to go from note one when he walked in.

[Producer] Ted Templeman told me a very funny story about a call you got at your home from Sinatra.

I only got one call from Sinatra. We'd done a session a couple of days earlier. Now, a lot of times I'd make rough mixes after a session, cut a disc, and the next day I'd drive it down to Sinatra's house in Palm Springs, [California], so he could listen to what he had done. I was at home one night. It was about 10 o'clock. I got a call, and somebody said, "Mr. Sinatra wants to speak to you." I first thought it was a gag, but it was Frank. He says, "Hey Lee, this disc keeps moving around. You need to make me one of those old-style discs. Make me something that I can play down here!" [Years earlier] we used to make acetates that, in addition to the center hole, had a second hole, for a little peg that used to pop up [on some turntables]. That [second peg] would hold the disc from being loose on the turntable. I guess the disc didn't have the extra hole in it, so I had to make him another disc and take it down the next day.

Frank and Mo Ostin, the CEO of Warner Bros., started Reprise Records together in 1960. Did Mo ever come to any of Frank's sessions?

The only time I ever saw Mo Ostin at the studio was for Frank's last recording session for Reprise, in the summer of 1988, I think it was. This was just before he went to Capitol [Records] and did the Duets record. I think Mo and Quincy [Jones] were there that night. He only sang live on one tune, with the orchestra. "My Foolish Heart," I think it was. I know it was the first thing we recorded digitally for Frank, and Frank [Sinatra] Jr. was producing. At that time, Sinatra was having trouble singing. He knew his own voice ­– he knew he couldn't really do what he used to do anymore.

In 1969, you became head of engineering for Warner/Reprise. You engineered so much great stuff for Warners, beyond Sinatra, during your long career. Who comes to mind?

I enjoyed the pop side of things as much as I enjoyed working with Sinatra. I did albums with Harpers Bizarre, Gordon Lightfoot, Randy Newman, Ry Cooder, Maria Muldaur, James Taylor, Rickie Lee Jones, Michael McDonald, Royal Crown Revue, and pretty much everybody that was on Warner or Reprise. No matter who I worked with, I always looked at it as, "Make everything sound the best that I can."

You definitely accomplished that. I wanted to ask you about one other session. In 1986, you recorded a live orchestra for David Lee Roth's cover of Sinatra's "That's Life" at the Power Station in New York City. How did that come about?

Ted [Templeman] wanted me to do it, because they had the track and David's vocal, but then Ted wanted to put on strings and horns on "That's Life." I was probably the only engineer [at Warner Bros.] then who had any experience at all with recording that many people at one time, and what do with it. All I did was the overdub: The strings, the brass, and the saxes all at the same time, in the big room. Jeff Hendrickson, who engineered everything else on the album, seconded for me and ran the tape machine.

From start to finish, it is a great career.

It was just my good fortune to be born at the right time, during a great era of music, and get to work with Sinatra, with Sammy Davis, Jr., with Ella Fitzgerald – just about everybody you could think of. I was having the time of my life!

Greg Renoff is a historian and the author of Van Halen Rising and Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer's Life in Music . @GregRenoff