Phil's Story In Print

PHIL'S STORY IN PRINT

Excerpts from

IF THESE HALLS COULD TALK:
A Historic Tour through San Francisco Recording Studios

by Heather Johnson

* * *

In the 1960s, the real action in that triangle-shaped, copper-clad structure known as Columbus Tower, happened in the basement—ground zero for Columbus Recorders. George Horn, the studio's manager, met a young and very green engineer named Phil Edwards. Edwards majored in music at San Francisco State University and took a few classes in broadcast electronics on the side. He also played saxophone with his brothers in a band called the Edwards Brothers and worked occasionally as a sideman. Horn needed an audio mixer. Though Edwards had no technical experience, he had a lot of moxie for a kid in his early 20s. "Oh, I can do that!" he told Horn, who took down his name and number.

Months later, during an Ornette Coleman show at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, for which Edwards was hired to play flute, he bumped into Horn again. They spoke only briefly before the show, but the conversation must have left an impression on Horn. Recalls Edwards, "About a month later at 7 a.m., I got a call, saying. 'Can you come in and mix a 4-track date?' I said, 'Well, sure!' I had just enough knowledge to fake my way through it. Later George took me out to lunch and said, 'How would you like a part-time job?'" Edwards accepted.

He remained at the facility until it closed in 1970, engineering whatever unmanned projects came through the door. Columbus also did its fair share of commercial work, some of which migrated from its competitors. States Edwards, "We got a client from Honig-Cooper & Harrington who wanted to do some voice overs. All of a sudden we had all of Honig's accounts."

In November 1969, Coast Recorders, an already established studio, celebrated the grand opening of its new facility on Folsom Street. Phil Edwards, who first got Coast's attention by engineering a few advertising spots, joined the staff in 1970. He made the move after once again successfully "faking his way through" a session. This time he had more tracks and a higher profile artist to improvise with. "I got a call from the studio head saying, 'Can you do a date over here?' I said, 'Sure, what do you want me to do?' He says, 'We want you to do Duke Ellington. Do you know how to work a 16-track machine?’" (There were a total of two in Northern California at the time, and Coast had both of them.) "I said, 'Sure! I can do that!'" Laughs Edwards, "I didn't know what I was doing. A 16-track was like a rocket to Mars, nobody knew what to do with it. We recorded some stuff of Ellington's that was of no consequence. I don't think they had any intention of releasing any of it. But I guess my boss was sufficiently impressed, because he offered me a job on the spot, and a sum of money that left me speechless."

Among his other varied engineering gigs was recording Indian Puddin' and Pipe, a Seattle band who migrated to San Francisco around 1967. "It was sort of a mystery band," recalls Edwards, who engineered what seems to be their first and only album, which never got released and whose masters were lost until a few years ago. "Turns out I was the fifth of five engineers to work on this project. I didn't know this, so I went in and worked on this stuff. They were totally tripped out, stoned out people. They would send a guy to go out and score a 'brick' of marijuana, which is like a kilo or two, then bring this enormous thing back to the studio. The players would smoke these bombs and go crazy. This was my inauguration into the world of pop music!"

In August 1970, Coast Recorders acquired the Mercury Records Sound Studios West facility on Mission Street, christening it "Coast-at-Mission" (CAM for short). Phil Edwards joined the team as engineer. He formed a good working relationship with Concord Records, a leading independent jazz label founded by Carl Jefferson. Edwards recorded Seven Come Eleven, the classic release from the 1973 Concord Summer Festival featuring Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Jake Hanna. Dozens, if not hundreds, of subsequent Concord Jazz albums were either fully or partially recorded at the new Coast studio through the 1970s, including ones by Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, Marian McPartland, and Rosemary Clooney, among many others, with Edwards handling most of them. Edwards remembers introducing the iso-booth concept to crooner Mel Tormè, when it was still a relatively new idea.

To deal with the large volume of work, which usually involved a live remote recording at an out-of-town club or jazz festival, Edwards opened his own two-room post-production facility right next door to CAM, which he held for about 10 years. "At one point," says Edwards, "we had as many as 40 album projects a year. There were sessions going night and day. We'd often track at CAM and bring projects to my place to mix."

Phil Edwards moved out of his studio in 1985 when his landlord tripled the rent. He closed the studio but kept his remote truck, formerly owned by Stu Cook and Doug Clifford of Creedence Clearwater Revival, and moved his business to Hayward, in the East Bay.

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