Wild Percussion - Dick Schory

Chime, I'm Sure

Wild Percussion And Horn's A'Plenty
Dick Schory's New Percussion Ensemble
Produced by Bob Bollard
Recorded in Orchestra Hall, Chicago
Recording Engineer: Bob Simpson
Two truckloads of instruments courtesy of Ludwig Drum Co., Musser Marimba Co. and J. C. Deagan. Brass instruments by the Frank Holton Co. Auto horns by Frank Arsenault.
RCA Victor LSP-2289
1960

From the back cover:

This is stereo-er stereo!

No other percussion album quite like this one has ever been recorded before. We absolutely will not be responsible for any overstimulation of your playback equipment – or for the friends and freeloaders who are encouraged to hang around for another playing.

Your stereo set never had it so good. In fact, it may never be the same. There are many fine percussion albums available... but where else can you find one with:

A real live moving tap dancer (Lou Wills, Jr.) in Dancing On The Ceiling.

13 assorted cymbals simulating moving waves in Beyond The Sea

A 50-yard run for a bass drum (Impossible to explain but hear end of Stumbling).

7 percussion virtuosos who would just as soon hit an instrument as look at it (121 separate instruments, to be exact).

A brass corps playing stereo hide-and-seek in the vast corners of Chicago's Orchestra Hall. Our motto: "Every trumpeter a Peanut Vendor."

A phony musical traffic jam (Lullaby Of Broadway) which would have delight Cecil B. DeMille. (Auto-mobile horns courtesy of a dozen South Rampart Street used car lots.)

The fattest solo trumpet sound ever put on microgroove (Bill Hanley in My Funny Valentine).

Music, too. In spite of all this sound stuff, this is music you can dance, read, drink, relax or eat to.

It has come to be considered good form on percussion albums to document with sincere-type notes "how it was done." We'd just as soon not go into that.

Dick Schory has mad these albums. The first. Music For Bang Baa-Room And Harp (LSP-1866), already has made history – on the sales charts, at audio shows – and a few enemies among landlords. The second Percussion! Music To Break Any Moon (LSP-2125), features the now-famous mammoth gong; the sound is kind of a cross between the roar of Niagara Falls and an A-Bomb.

This third album was by all odds the most chaotic to make. Maybe it was the addition of brass players to his usual battery of percussionists. Maybe we were over-eager.

As in the first two albums, there was no set 'orchestra' or pat floor plan. We swapped efficiency and common sense for freedom. Each of the twelve selections has completely different instruments, different microphoning, different position and balances, in an attempt to bring out the most in each arrangement. In an era when it is "commercial" to jam close microphones down the throats of the slide trombones and up timpani, we deliberately chose what might be called an open microphone play – wide open. We gave each instrument its own envelope of space to speak in... and let the sound wallow around in the gorgeous acoustics of Orchestra Hall before sending it downstairs to our three track tape machines.

Actually, our "how it was done" list is extremely short and powerful... Bob Simpson.

Bob can be safely called the industry's best engineer, at least when he made this album. He holds this year's Grammy Award for the best engineered pop album: Belafonte At Carnegie Hall (LSO-6006).

We were also lucky enough to challenge the arranging services of Sid Ramin and Irv Kostal, the talented duo who, with Leonard Bernstein, wrote Broadway's sparkling "West Side Story" arrangements. It would be presumptuous to say that this album is their first collaboration after "West Side Story" – but it happens to be true. Each has been busy elsewhere: Irv on "The Garry Moore Show," Side with his own RCA albums. One of the irresistible persuasions which encouraged Kostal and Ramin to lend us their talents was the opportunity and requirement for the approach to be creatively unrestricted. It was. Whoever heard of doing The Continental with a tuba?

Two of Chicago's brightest arranger-composers, Willis Charkovsky and Bobby Christian represented the swinging Midwest, Dick Schory, of course, kept his talented hand on all ingredients... at the same time touring, appearing on TV, directing radio and TV commercials, acting as advertising manager for Ludwig Drum Co. and playing with the Chicago Symphony. In an age of hyper-striking instruments. When invited to a party he is one of the few asked to bring his drum.

Technical notes these days are getting to be more common than pretty girls on album covers. Briefly, we used the same top equipment everyone else uses. Not many use it in this manner, to be sure. One thing we can guarantee – this sound has not been homogenized. We threw out the traditional array of equalizers, limiters, echo chambers, compresses, filters, pitch generators and dirty ash trays. It is not that we wish to attach any moral virtue to purity. It is just that these are the real sounds as they happened for two days and two nights in the fabulous Orchestra Hall acoustics... and we're glad. We hope you and your equipment will be, too. – Bob Bollad.

From Billboard - October 10, 1960: An unusually well-engineered package whereby you can show off your stereo equipment. The arrangements are by Sid Ramin and Irv Kostal, who arranged (with Leonard Bernstein) "West Side Story," "Material includes "Lullaby Of Broadway," "Misirlou" and "The Peanut Vendor." Some real novelty touches are here, and yet it's good music.

Lullaby Of Broadway
Dancing On The Ceiling
Misirlou
Till There Was You
Chimed, I'm Sure
My Funny Valentine
Stumbling
The Peanut Vendor
The Continental
Serena
The Thunderer
Beyond The Sea