Too Hot To Handle An Illustrated Encyclopedia

Throughout the 20th century, American recording studios turned out some of the world’s greatest hits. Now Randy McNutt, an award-winning journalist and record producer, lists more than 500 of them while recalling their unusual stories. “Too Hot” is the first book to list many of America’s smaller but successful regional studios as well as the larger national ones. As Marc Bristol, editor-publisher of Blue Suede News, says of the book: “The stories of the places where the records were made are just as interesting as those of the bands and artists.” For the author, heaven is finding another old two-track studio and a veteran recording engineer who’s willing to talk about its heyday. McNutt interviews dozens of recording engineers, studio owners, label executives, musicians, singers, songwriters, music publishers, and other talented people who personally provided much of the information about their historic studios. In this indispensable reference work aimed at music fans, historians, and recording enthusiasts, McNutt interviews studio owners from Maine to California to learn about their rooms, hits, innovative recording techniques, and, of course, their challenges. (The story about crickets living in the old echo chamber of Cinderella Sound is worth the price of the book.) McNutt also details the types of recording equipment, studio addresses, kinds of echo chambers, studio quirks, and whatever other important information he can find. A strength of the book is its large listing of studios from the 1950s to the 1970s, including the hit factories ABC Recording (later Lion Share) in Los Angeles, American Recording in Memphis, Amigo in L.A., Electric Lady in New York, Motown in Detroit, Sun in Memphis, and other seminal recording sites. But readers particularly enjoy reading about the many smaller, unsung studios, including the Music Factory in Miami, Jewel and King in Cincinnati, Accurate Sound in San Angelo, Tx., Royal in Memphis, Sambo Sound in Louisville, Ruby in Hami