A photo of a young Whitney Houston, taken in this room, hangs on the wall. Our group gathers in the studio area folks take turns putting on earphones and make-believe they are singing into the mike, making their own record. Upstairs, a large window divides the space between the engineering room and studio, the large console is a sea of levers buttons and switches, walls and ceiling are covered in soundproofing materials. We are led up to Studio B as our guide gives us a bit of history, United Sound is a recording studio, not a label initially commercials and advertising jingles were recorded in the building. We wait for the tour to begin in the basement level with a number of other visitors framed album covers from MC5 and Aretha Franklin hang on the walls. The interior is still a work in progress as tours and events are being established. Explaining we are here for the tour we are welcomed inside and ushered to the gift shop where we purchase tickets. We park in the adjacent lot, walk to the front door finding it locked I give it a knock and it opens immediately. From the outside it looks to simply be an old house with dark windows on the second floor a blue sign splits the levels with the name United Sound Systems in white letters. It’s a gorgeous afternoon, we have driven by this building a hundred times over the years and never realized what it was. You may be asking yourself, I wonder who recorded there? Are you ready for this? Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Jackie Wilson, The Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, Isaac Hayes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Seger, Luther Vandross, Aretha Franklin, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Marvin Gaye, MC5, and Whitney Houston…….to name a few! For more than 70 years some of the best vocalists, musicians and sound engineers came together at United Sound Studios to record an astounding variety of successful Jazz, Rock, Soul, Blues, Rockabilly and Funk records. Early on it was used for industrial and promotional film production, then it became a full service recording studio that gave artists, musicians, writers and producers the ability to record music, cut the record and get airplay without being signed to a major label. Turns out this place was one of Detroit’s first independent recording studios. In the meantime, tours will be held Friday-Sunday each week, with admission of $10 for adults and $8 for kids and seniors.Have you ever stumbled upon something super-cool and asked yourself, how did I not know about this? That’s exactly what happened to Kris and I a while back when we showed up for a tour of the United Sound Systems Recording Studio on Second Ave in Detroit. According to the Detroit Free Press, work on the proposal continues, and officials are mulling options, which may mean moving the studio to a nearby empty lot or possibly leaving it unaffected, depending on how architects devise the highway expansion.įor now, however, things are now looking up for the facility at 5840 Second Avenue United Sound Systems is set to appear in both a History Channel program this summer, where funk impresario George Clinton will present the studio with a piano, and a separate documentary film on the studio itself. United Sound Systems isn’t quite out of the woods yet, however. Opening the facility up to the public comes following an Open House that was held at the studio in December by owner Danielle Scott, who said at the time in a statement, “The lights are coming back in Detroit’s music world and when they do, the world will see a little known group at United Sound Systems made up of a team that was too afraid to fail.” While the tours will be held on weekends, the facility is underway to become a working studio again, and has undergone extensive renovation in recent months. The facility, shuttered for the last few years, came back into the public eye last summer when a proposed expansion of the nearby highway was made-a move that would mean tearing down the historic studio. Photo by Ed Wolfrum, United Sound’s Chief Engineer from 1969 to 1973.ĭetroit, MI (January 28, 2014)-United Sound Systems, the legendary recording studio off I-94 in Detroit that recorded many of Motown’s greatest artists, including Aretha Franklin, George Clinton and Miles Davis, will open its doors to the public with weekly tours starting February 8. United Sound System’s Studio A is large enough to record a whole orchestra on site.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |