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Veteran Recording Engineer Roy Halee On Recording Simon and Garfunkel and Others—Part I

Roy Halee

You won't find Roy Halee's name on many great sounding records. Not because the veteran recording engineer hasn't made them, but because Columbia Records' policy for many years was to not credit the engineer on the jacket. So, aside from the few that do credit him, the others require you to know who they are. That's one reason I tracked Roy down through Sterling Sound's Greg Calbi who has mastered many of Halee's recent projects. But more importantly, as with Bill Porter, I just wanted to sit down face to face with someone who has consistently provided us with great sound, and find out why and how he managed to do it, when so many others failed.

Some of Halee's recording credits are well known:all of Simon and Garfunkel's records, the best sounding Byrds albums (Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart of the Rodeo), and of course, Paul Simon's two fascinating and extremely successful projects (both commercially and artistically) Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints.

Halee, who grew up in the New York metropolitan area, comes from a musical family. His mother played violin in Al Jolson's band. His father was the original singing voice of the cartoon character Mighty Mouse among other musical credits. His sister sings opera professionally, and Roy plays trumpet for his own amusement. Despite his long association with pop and rock, Halee is a devotee of classical music-especially opera.

While some people leave their work in the office, Halee has no problem taking it home with him. Nor would you if you had his stereo system, which includes a Rockport System III Sirius, Wilson Alexandrias and one of Wilson's refrigerator sized Xcess subwoofers.

MF: As an engineer who's been around for awhile and who knows what good sound is, how do you reconcile that with the need to make records that sound “contemporary”-usually meaning not good sounding. How do you balance those conflicting sensibilities?

RH: That's a good, good question. First of all, I come from the school of making pop records, where you have to get it and you have to get it fast-that's where I came from at Columbia Records. The arranger is out in the studio running down the tune and by the time that's done, you have to have the sound because he's got to do four songs in three hours-and that includes possible overdubs. So you've got to get it fast, and sometimes sound has to take a backseat.

MF: How did you get started at Columbia?

RH: I began at Columbia's classical division. I was laid off at CBS television, a hundred guys were laid off.

MF: Interesting, because that's how Bill Porter got started. He was in television and got laid off and ended up at RCA Nashville.

RH: When I was there, they were doing Gleason, Playhouse 90, and all those shows-live. I was lucky to get into the record side-because my father was in the business, a singer. Mitch Miller got me in actually-and I started editing tapes of classical performances. This was in the late Fifties-the stereo era had begun.

MF: And you worked down at the East 30th Street studios?

RH: Well, no. In those days, the studios were studios, the editing room was an editing room, and the mastering room was a mastering room-all separate. Dates were done, the tapes came into an editing room where they were edited and mixed down to a two-track and a mono, from there to a mastering room. I found myself in an editing room, editing a lot of classical music-which I like, because my real love is classical music.

They started occasionally sending me on remotes-to Manhattan Center to run the tape machines, whatever. Gradually they were breaking me in. And I found-I was a little disappointed-that there wasn't a lot of experimenting going on. It was a set thing. You go in, that mike goes there, that one there-ten AKG C-12s up there and boom boom boom! It's done the same way every time and nobody changes anything. They used a lot of mikes on a symphony orchestra in those days.

MF: An didn't they add a great deal of artificial reverb to those classical recordings?

RH: Well, not necessarily to the Manhattan Center recordings. But that was the so-called “golden age” at Columbia. They had The New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra. And I think some of the stuff done in Cleveland was a little dry.

MF: Well there's a very famous story about George Szell having an AR-3A under his couch and he'd bring a temp mix back home to listen, and he'd say “Too much bass!” So they'd turn it down, and those recordings ended up bass-shy.

RH: I believe that. You should talk to Buddy Graham [a still active remote engineer who recorded the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle choir among many others for Columbia Classical Masterworks].

MF: That's probably one of the reasons the Columbia pressings are out in the bins for a few bucks while the Mercurys and RCA-well you know.

RH: Well I have a lot of those wonderful old mono Mercurys and I noticed in the notes how they were recorded using one microphone hung directly over the conductor's head…that's what I grew up with though I learned fast that that is not always practical!

MF: At that point, Columbia wasn't doing much rock and roll.

RH: No. Mitch Miller who was head of A&R did not like rock and roll. He was a pop man. Sinatra. Percy Faith. So somehow I was able to break out of classical editing and do more pop editing, like Steve Lawrence and Johnny Mathis. And I'm thinking to myself, musically I don't really love this, but it's more fun, more challenging.