Dick Hyman | TapeOp

Dick Hyman has had an amazing career in music at the keyboard. With 60-plus years of experience, he's seen the industry go through many twists and turns. He's played with greats such as Benny Goodman and scored films for Woody Allen. He's also worked as an arranger, musical director and composer for countless albums, TV shows and concerts, and, if that all weren't enough, he was a pioneering performer on the Moog synthesizer in the late 1960s.

I saw that you're still performing "The Minotaur" (A hit from his first Moog record Moog: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman).

Well, "The Minotaur" has come back into my life. Some years ago I took it out of hibernation and converted into a violin-piano piece, which I recorded with Yuval Waldman in the '90s for Capitol under the title Jazz Sonatas . Since then I've added a full orchestra to the arrangement. Lindsay Deutsch and I have performed it that way, most recently at the Siletz Bay Music Festival in Oregon. I'm hoping for more performances in the future.

And do you feel that, even though the piece was launched from the synthesizer, it translates well to traditional instruments?

Originally it was just an improvisation done with three overdubs on top of a drum machine track. We added the melody line, the bass, and finally the drone. The drum machine beat was an odd result of combining a waltz with a bossa nova. It was a lucky inspiration, all around.

Was that first Moog record done on a 4- track?

It must have been.

There's a photo in the second Moog record (The Age of Electronicus) of a 2-inch, 8-track deck.

I can't recall. I remember only that we worked in a very small editing studio run by Walter Sear [ Tape Op #41] and that the equipment resembled an old-fashioned telephone switchboard with a keyboard and some pedals fastened to it.

That first Moog record was my introduction to your work. It's a very strange record, even today, because it's so experimental. In the liner notes you talk about trying to humanize electronic music, and there are elements of that. But there are other parts of it that are still kind of bizarre.

I suppose so. Incidentally, not many people remember another Moog track I did that wasn't in either of the Command albums. Enoch [Light] had moved onto Project 3 Records by then, so this was not in the Command Records catalogue at all. I guess we had this track left over somehow ["Exploration for Moog"], and Enoch chose to put it on the end of an otherwise big band album called The Brass Menagerie 1973 . We had already done two earlier Brass Menagerie [records], which I had arranged.

I was going through my Command collection last night. I've got maybe 70 of them and I'm realizing that I probably don't have even half!

I've been looking through my own collection as we talk. The ones I had something to do with were ones under my own name on piano, organ, harpsichord, or synthesizer. There are others where I played, arranged, or both for Enoch, Doc Severinsen, Tony Mottola, the Ray Charles Singers, The Free Design, Urbie Green and others.

Yeah, I've got some of those by you: Happening, Fabulous, and Electro-dynamics. The titles themselves are just so great.

I think that was Enoch's particular contribution.

Can you tell me a little bit about what the Command sessions were like?

They all took place in the ballroom of a hotel on the corner of 57th Street and 6th Avenue in New York City. The sessions were all recorded by Bob Fine [ Tape Op #90], a great engineer; Enoch, of course, was in charge. Bobby Byrne and Loren Becker were his assistants. The ballroom had wooden floors and, as I recall, wooden walls. It was very resonant. The sound on those recordings was quite natural, although there might have been some reverberation added. The personnel almost always included Bobby Rosengarden on drums and Don Lamond, also on drums (if Bobby played bongos, etc.). There was also percussionist Phil Kraus and the other percussionist, Phil Bodner. Stanley Webb was on reeds, Bob Haggart on bass, Mel Davis and Doc Severinsen on trumpets, Urbie Green on trombone, and Arnold Eidus, the violinist who acted as concertmaster. There were other players in addition, of course. I guess I did most of the sessions on one instrument or another, and maybe also as arranger. As I mentioned before, the Moog performances were recorded in Walter Sear's editing room; but those tracks that had some real rhythm instruments (like "Topless Dancers of Corfu") required that we lay down a track first in the ballroom. Then I'd add the Moog upstairs in Walter's place.

So when they were doing the ping-ponging stereo effects, was that all done in post with editing?

That was done in the editing. But I remember Don Lamond and Bobby Rosengarden being instructed to play a drum break and then a bongo rhythm so they could be positioned on opposite sides of the stereo recording.

And that stuff was mostly live to two-track tape, I imagine. At some point the Command records started being recorded on 35mm film?

Well, yes. Enoch did his Dimension 3 process with a big orchestra — was it in a concert hall? I was not a part of that.

So you weren't involved with any of the sessions where the recording took place to film?

Not that I recall.

At some point the record jackets start talking pretty specifically about that 35mm film technique and the clarity of it. Certainly all the Command records really shine when compared to a lot of the other percussion crazy records from the '60s. They're brilliant sounding still!

The sound is wonderful. The separation is exactly what was intended and, to my knowledge, they were the first of that sort of thing. It was a wide-open market. Enoch beat the big companies to that target and, much to his credit, everyone scrambled to keep up with him. And his was only a small company.

And, at some point, the company was purchased by ABC Records.

Enoch's recording history is something like this, as I recollect. I first became involved with him when he was with Waldorf Music Hall Records, if I have it right. They were covering current hits. We made a lot of albums — sound-alikes, really. That's when he first asked me to do a honky-tonk piano as Knuckles O'Toole. Other companies were having success with that style, which featured a jangly pseudo-ragtime manner. He had these performances issued, as well as on other labels he controlled, each with a different pseudonym: Willie "The Rock" Knox, Puddin'Head Smith, etc.; but they were all my identical tracks. He followed Waldorf with Command Records, which he then sold to ABC; he finally established Project 3.

Session Players in New York in the '50s & '60s

There was a great camaraderie among the musicians. We all freelanced for whomever phoned first, moving from studio to studio throughout the day and evening. A typical day would begin in the morning with a 10:00 am session. That would last until 1:00 pm, then some of us would rush over to the next studio (perhaps in a different part of town) for a session with another label from 2:00 to 5:00. There was a dinner break; then, if you were lucky, a final job from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. If there was overtime on the earlier dates, it could be tricky. It was very bad form to arrive late for a session — you might not be called again by that contractor. It rarely happened. There were, as far as I could judge, several hundred players doing this sort of thing. It was great fun, although challenging in some ways. You never knew what you might be expected to play, and some parts you might encounter could be demanding. Others were so boring that, with such a schedule — particularly later in the day — there was a danger of dozing off during a performance of, say, rock 'n' roll ballad triplets, over and over. All of this took place during the era when everyone performed together. This was before it was discovered that the band could be prerecorded. You might have to play endless takes for a singer, or vocal group, until they got it right. But there were many nice things to play, the Enoch Light sessions in particular. They were done so meticulously and were usually interesting instrumentals. Also most took place in the morning, when you were bright-eyed and looking forward to the coffee and Danish, which would be your reward at 11:00 for finishing the first of three or four tunes.

And that's where the band The Free Design comes in.

The Free Design was arranged for, and led by, Chris Dedrick, who was the nephew of my good friend, the trumpeter Lyle "Rusty" Dedrick. I played on those dates, as I did on other Command albums, by Urbie Green, Pearl Bailey, the Ray Charles Singers, Tony Mottola, and Enoch himself. And, as I have said, I was often the arranger. The original arranger for Command was Lew Davies, and he did my earliest albums. Later on Dick Lieb and Jeff Hest arranged various sessions; I played for them too. When Enoch established Project 3, I wrote for the Brass Menagerie. I also continued my own albums, one overdubbed affair called The Sensuous Piano of "D" (after a notorious book of the period), Ragtime Stomps & Stride , a Baldwin organ album, and so on.

Would Enoch say, "I have an idea for a new thing. Come on over for a session"? It seems you guys were doing an astounding amount of recording back then.

Well, you understand, we weren't only working for Enoch. Business was booming and I was very fortunate to be in it for that 25 years. We would play for everybody without any planning or rehearsal. We'd show up at the appointed time, get paid union scale and that was basically it; unless one of us was the arranger. Then, of course, I had to meet with the producer and get the recordings, get the understanding and work out the personnel, the instrumentation and everything; and then produce arrangements. That was quite a bit more complex, but normally a musician would just show up and play whatever was given. Not to say that there wasn't a lot expected contribution-wise that might not be on the paper. People were hired because they had certain musical and improvisational skills. It was assumed they played certain instruments in certain styles, but that was the nature of the recording business. On a good week you might do ten to fifteen such sessions.

Is there much improvisation on those records? It sounds really tight to me.

If it was of a jazz nature in some way, it was improvised. Certain players were known for their ability, along those lines. Of course, if it was a completely written out part you played it as is; but often the arranger would just write in the chords and suggest that you be creative. It was the nature of the jazz-pop crossover that we all practiced then. But you had to exercise some discretion and be in the context of the arrangement. On my own things, naturally, I gave myself free rein.

And you guys weren't ever working to a click track or anything like that?

We used click tracks for film sessions, but generally not for pop or jazz recordings. You did want to have a headset so that you could hear the drummer and bassist clearly. However, films and TV commercials required some exact timings; clicks were often used on those.

And possible editing of master takes together, on occasion?

Yes, editing is part of the process. For example, the best intro combined with the best reading of the rest of the take.

Sure. Now you mentioned overdubbing. Your record, The Mirrors: Reflections of Today, makes great use of that.

Well, that was a thoroughly overdubbed one. I think I laid down piano tracks and then overdubbed the organ.

In the sleeve notes you guys are making a lot of the fact that there're two Dick Hymans: one playing the piano and one the organ. Was that really such a novelty then, that it would be something to talk about in such detail?

It wasn't as commonplace as it became thereafter, but it was by no means the first overdubbed kind of performance. You know, some of this is record company hype.

Along with the great graphic design of the Command records, there are also so many gatefolds with lots of text. I kind of miss that in modern recordings. Every song gets a little story, a little explanation; there's a nice big statement about the intention of the record, and you have all your microphones listed.

Well, I personally think we've lost something with the smaller dimensions of a CD, let alone simply downloading one track at a time. We've lost a whole background explanation of what we're trying to do. And I think that's unfortunate.

It almost seems to me like downloading is a returning of sorts. If you go back to when music started being recorded it was essentially singles on 78s and then 45s. It was two songs at a time and no real context. And then that blossomed into having LPs at 33 1/3 with double releases...

Even before LPs there was the album, which contained four, five or six 78s. And the first Broadway show to get released as a book-sized album with a few 78s in it was a big innovation.

Hadn't thought about that. I've seen some of those. They're heavy.

They are heavy. [laughs] Yes, and those records are terrifically breakable also.

Do you still have 78s?

I do. I have a wall full of ancient technology. 78s and LPs.

So you've been an archivist of your work, and of others, I imagine, throughout this career?

I have a big collection and, I have no doubt, the most complete collection of my own stuff. I was around at the very end of the 78 period when I was recording for MGM. My first records were released as 78s.

Is there anything about the 78 that you liked better than the 45 or the 33 1/3, quality-wise?

I think they may have been recorded with better sound because of their higher speed, but the playback mechanism was far inferior, and the surface noise was always a problem. There are many people today who believe that LPs had greater capacity than CDs have.

Have you ever had a home recording situation?

In my own home, no. But once I took an old cassette recorder with me to a gig and simply put it in the piano. Later on, that was issued. The sound is pretty bad, but at least it's a document.

So you never felt inspired to get on the other side of the glass?

Oh, no. I really thought I'd get terribly distracted by the mechanics of it, to the detriment of the music, so I didn't do it.

One of the records that I really love of yours is the Moon Gas record with Mary Mayo.

That was ahead of its time. On that one we didn't have synthesizers yet.

What was making the crazy noises? There's odd little embellishments throughout.

Well, there were three major things. A Hammond organ used in some odd ways, a Lowrey organ which had some special devices on it and Vinnie Bell, the guitarist, who was way ahead of everybody in synthesizing. He could summon up sounds from a battery of approximately a dozen different pedals. I got to understand what was available from his catalog and we used them extensively on that album. We also did some other funny things. I had heard that there was a unique sound, which resulted from dipping a vibrating cymbal in a pail of water. And we did that. What happens when that takes place is that the resonance of the cymbal goes up. So we did that; we also got a number of odd things from the Carroll Musical Instruments rental company. We rented a doorbell; we used that in one of those songs. I don't think we used an Ondioline, but I was also fooling around with that in those days.

Did you own one of those?

I didn't own it, but I think I was one of the first American players. Jean-Jacques Perrey introduced it to me — his sponsor in those days was Carroll of Carroll Musical Instruments.

In one of your liner notes it says you used an ondes Martenot [early electronic keyboard].

Carroll also showed me that. I recorded some things for Jean-Jacques with that. I have the recordings, but I don't know if they were released. So I did get to play them, but I don't think I used those on Moon Gas . I think it was mostly the elements that I described.

Do you have any stories about some atypical recording sessions you were involved with, or that you witnessed?

There was one: Bobby Rosengarden, a very enterprising fellow, was contracted to play a single vibraphone note on a commercial. This was odd, but apparently the producer of the commercial realized at the last minute that he required one tone to emphasize a certain dramatic moment in his commercial. Bob had apparently told the client that it would be unnecessary to book a studio for this minimal purpose, and that he could take care of the recording of the one tone. So, on one of Enoch's sessions, which had nothing to do with Rosengarden's commercial, as the orchestra was pausing in between takes, Bob Fine's voice announced from the control room, "Quiet, fellows." We heard Rosengarden play a single note and then Fine announced, "Okay." We asked, "What was that?" Bob Fine answered, "Oh, that was another date." We marveled that only Bob Rosengarden would have had the nerve to do this. Even among friends we realized that we had experienced an unprecedented event: a date on a date.