Posts Tagged ‘Joe Klein’

By Joe Klein

There has been a whole lot of hoopla over the last couple months about the existence of so-called “lost” Michael Jackson songs or recordings. One of the biggest and widely-circulated rumors was that Michael’s sister Latoya Jackson had “smuggled out” a hundred or more recordings contained on hard drives, CD’s or cassettes from the mansion rented by the King Of Pop in the hours following his sudden and unexpected death. LaToya denied this allegation in an interview with Barbara Walters that aired last week on ABC’s 20/20 telecast.

Almost immediately following Michael’s passing in June, the lust for songs and anything and everything recorded by Michael Jackson has been building, almost to a frenzy not seen since the glory years of MJ in the late eighties and early nineties. A frantic search has been on for new, undiscovered or otherwise “lost” material.

Besides all the gossip surrounding Latoya, rumors have also been circulating of the existence of a library of unreleased material at Epic Records, the label that Michael Jackson and The Jacksons recorded for following their departure from Motown Records in the mid-eighties. However, until now, there has been little buzz about the existence of “lost tracks” of Michael or the Jackson 5 in the most obvious “lost and found” department of all, the vaults of Motown, Berry Gordy’s storied Detroit label where their fabled and historic careers began.

The day after the MTV Video Music Awards played homage to MJ, we posted a story online that broke the news about a cache of early recordings of Michael and the his brothers had been found! We released a second story the following day.

Apparently the old multi-track analog master tapes, which are early recordings of the Jackson 5 with a pre-teen Michael Jackson singing lead vocals, were uncovered at some point over the summer and converted to digital audio data. At the end of August, Harry Weinger, a senior executive at Universal Music Enterprises (who markets the old Motown catalog product) contacted my old friend Russ Terrana, the highly respected and gifted engineer who mixed and recorded most the early Jackson 5 and Micahel Jackson Motown hits. Weinger asked Terrana if he would be interested in digitally mixing several newly-discovered Jackson 5 songs, and Russ jumped at the chance.

I posted the story here on our company’s blog just after the second breaking news story appeared online. I was thrilled for Russ when I first learned of the project back at the end of August and asked if I could blog about it. I was even more excited to break the story to the world and help get Russ some newly found attention and much-deserved recognition for the mountain of success and accomplishments he’s achieved over the years, plus his unquestionable contribution to the history of recorded pop music.

Terrana is currently mixing down eleven songs never before released in a small facility in Scots Valley, California called ROCKER STUDIOS, owned by a good friend of Russ’ named Rick Vierra. Russ hopes to have the mixes done at some point over the next week or two. Meanwhile, Weinger told Russ that UME is planning to release the tracks as a “new” Jackson 5 album in November, just in time for the holiday buying season, and this seems consistent with another story that appeared online just after our first story broke. This item reports that the new collection will be called “I Want You Back” (a pretty good, an appropriate title for the package) and that UME has scheduled a release date of November 10 for the new album! This seems consistent with what Weinger told Russ a couple weeks ago.

As far as the existence of more “hidden gems,” nothing further has been confirmed at this point. But there’s little doubt the rumors, speculation and reports of more discoveries of MJ and J5 material will continue for some time, and the story of “lost tracks” of Michael Jackson will go on for months, if not years, to come.

The story about the first confirmed “find” of “lost tracks” featuring Michael Jackson is sure to build excitement to fans the world over and is already starting to create a stir among fans of the King Of Pop and his storied family as it starts circulating around the net. The first story we published online is here and our follow up story, released a day later, can be found here.

By Joe Klein

Earlier this week, New Media Creative associate Brett Bumeter and I teamed up to write and post a cool blog story about the release of new recordings of Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5. A friend of mine for over three decades, recording engineer Russ Terrana, was recently asked to mix a collection of newly-discovered, never-before-heard tracks that were unearthed from the vaults of Motown Records over the summer. It turned out to be the first story to be blogged about the project and we ended up with an unplanned breaking news story online!

Russ was the chief recording engineer for Motown from 1966 until the closing of Motown’s Hollywood studios in 1988. During his two-decade tenure at the label, Russ mixed and recorded a large percentage of Motown’s hit records, In fact, he mixed 89 number one records, more than any other recording engineer in history. Throw in over 300 additional charted hit singles and many more hundreds of tracks from hit albums, and my old friend truly ranks as a music business legend!

Near the end of August, Russ was asked by HARRY WEINGER, a senior executive in charge of A&R at Univesal Music Enterprises, the division of the Universal Music Group that oversees the creation and marketing of Motown’s catalog product, to mix the collection of vintage tracks. They are early recordings of the Jackson 5, featuring an energetic, pre-teen Michael Jackson performing lead vocals, as he did on all the early Jackson 5 hits. The songs have never-before been released to the public, and, apparently had sat buried deep in the Motown vaults, unnoticed for decades. Weinger had eleven songs contained on the old analog multi-track masters converted to digital audio and sent to Russ the week before Labor Day.

(***UPDATED ON OCTOBER 26, 2009*** UME’s Harry Weinger contacted me with a clarification of facts in this post. it was actually early this year that the additional masters were first found, as UME, already in the midst of the year-long 50th anniversary celebration of Motown Records, was preparing for the 40th anniversary of the Jackson 5 this fall. Of course, the untimely passing of Michael put the newly-discovered J5 tracks into a “bigger spotlight,” according to Weinger. We appreciate this updated information!)

Russ went to work on the process of mixing the tracks just before the holiday weekend, working in a digital recording and mixing facility in Scots Valley, California called ROCKER STUDIOS, located not far from Russ’ home in Santa Cruz. The state-of-the-art facility is owned by Rick Vierra, a local sound engineer Russ has been friends with for several years. According to Russ, the mixes are proceeding smoothly. Using a high-end, top-of-the-line ProTools digital audio system, a vast array of software “plug-ins” in and some very cool vintage “outboard gear” (visible in the picture to the left behind Russ), Russ says he’s getting some really great mixes. Many of the tracks sound, he says, are sounding as pure and pristine as if they had been recorded last week!

Russ is hoping to have all eleven songs completed over the next few weeks, in time for a fall release now being planned by UME. This “new” Jackson 5 album is the first to be released from the legendary group in decades and, as such, has a historical significance unlike any other yet-to-discovered treasures of later-day recordings of MJ or his brothers that may have been recorded in the seventies, eighties or nineties. The package is yet to be named, and should be available in mid-November, just in time for the holiday buying season.

With the sudden and unexpected passing of the King Of Pop at the beginning of the summer, anticipation of and interest in the project is expected to be at a very high level. This could very well turn into new ‘”Motown Gold” and most definitely marks a new chapter in the recorded music of the fabled Jackson family.

I’ll be posting more stories about the project, the sound mixing process (then and now), and Russ himself, who is the subject of a recently completed and yet-to-be-titled book about his accomplishments and storied career as a major influence in the recording of pop music of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

I couldn’t be more excited and thrilled for my old friend and cohort Russ Terrana, who, to this day, is still not widely known for all his major accomplishments. As I sit and pen this posting, I’m grinning “ear-to-ear” (audio reference) with pride over the fact that this modest and gifted genius of recorded music and sound should now be getting the attention and recognition he so truly deserves! Stand by for more stories that will be posted here in the days and weeks to come!

By Joe Klein

Okay, I admit it. We haven’t blogged in quite some time, taking a few months off to work on lots of other projects. Plus there was a lot of travelling (and a bit of vacationing) since our last writing!

Interspersed between completing jobs and coordinating projects, I, personally, managed to visit some cool places and catch some great shows, including a few great oldies acts in my current home base of Laughlin, NV. Since early spring, some great artists appeared, including Eric Burdon (of the Animals), former Righteous Brother Bill Medley, Tommy James, Felix Cavalerie (from The Rascals), former Monkee Davey Jones, Gary Puckett (lead singer of the Union Gap) and “Bad To The Bone Man” George Thorogood. I caught most of the shows, and they were great. Here’s a couple of shots of me with Tommy James and Bill Medley taken a few months back when they appeared in Laughlin.

At the end of August, I ventured to Chicago for a big family event over the Labor Day Weekend. (I was born in Chicago and still have family there.) New Media Creative’s “voice of god,” Bill Fortune, is a lifetime resident of Chicago (except for a few short periods when he worked in other cities as a disc jockey). Bill has a very nice pad in the suburb of Palatine and I stayed with Bill for a couple days before checking into a Skokie hotel for the family events on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday.

Sunday night Bill and I met up in Schaumburg (not too far from Bill’s home) for the second night of the 2009 SeptemberFest. The SeptemberFest is a huge festival that happens every year over the Labor Day Weekend. The event is staged in a very large park in the heart of Schaumburg, and features lots of big carnival rides, carny style game booths, a huge bingo game to support charities, dozens of food booths with faire from many of Chicago’s most popular restaurants and nightly free concerts staged on a huge lawn in the park. Saturdays and Sundays are the biggest days, of course, and the concerts on those nights usually feature pretty big name bands, or, more accurately, bands that were big names several years back. Saturday night Randy Bachman performed (and we couldn’t attend due to my big day of family stuff) and Sunday night’s concert featured Starship with Mickey Thomas, joined by Bobby Kimball, the former lead singer of the hot seventies and eighties band, Toto.

As it happens, I hired Bobby Kimball to sing lead on some very cool radio station jingles I produced over thirty years ago (way back in 1976) and, about two years later, Toto was formed and really took off, with hits like “Hold The Line,” “Rosanna” and “Africa.” I had also hired a couple of other members of the band (Jeff Porcaro and Steve Lukather) to play on recording sessions for other projects (not related to the radio jingles) in the seventies. So when Toto took off, it was really exciting, and I partied with the hot, new band on a couple of occasions in the late seventies.

The concert at SeptemberFest was really great. Each year they build a large and very respectable outdoor concert stage and, with at least 50,000 people assembled on the massive lawn in front of the stage, the concert resembles a mini-Woodstock event. The show lasted a little over an hour and a half, and was then followed by an awesome fireworks show that lasted over twenty minutes and was, admittedly, one of the best fireworks displays I’ve ever seen! The SeptemberFest is really a HUGE event that attracts over a quarter million people every year, and this year marked the 39th year of the annual festival. Kudos to the city of Schaumburg for staging a truly memorable event, for me at least.

Another cool thing about attending was having a chance to meet, for the first time, a fellow blogger named Kent Kotal, who maintains a cool blog at his website, ForgottenHits.com. The blog, which grew out of a twice weekly newsletter that Kent has been sending out for many years, is centered around fifties, sixties and seventies oldies music, radio, the Chicago music scene and, during the summer, baseball, of course! Kent is, admittedly a real “die-hard” fan of sixties and seventies oldies. Kent loves stories about oldies radio, radio in general from the sixties and seventies and other subjects related to oldies music, sports and Chicago itself. He still sends out the newsletter twice a week via email to a mailing list of a few thousand friends and fellow fans, and updates the blog several times a week. The blog contains many of the stories contained in the newsletter. This past summer, Kent featured scores of blog entries, stories and shared memories from the “summer of Woodstock,” forty years ago in 1969.

Kent is a really great, dedicated and hard working guy and his blog and newsletter have built up a loyal following of music artists, songwriters, record producers and deejays, who contribute their own stories and comments by emailing them to Kent on a regular basis. So the blog and newsletter has, in its own small way, become an invaluable source for news about oldies, radio and the Chicago music scene. It’s now a great place where many people involved in the radio in music business a few decades ago (myself included) can write—and read—stories about the music and radio business that can’t be found anywhere else! The blog and newsletter also, sadly, serve the purpose of a kind of “oldies obit page” and are often the first source for the sad news of the passing of a forgotten, but notable, music or radio legend from bygone days. The blog is really worth checking out if your in to oldies or radio from the era, and, at the blog, you can click on an email link and sign up for the email newsletter as well. The Forgotten Hits blog can be found here.

It was great meeting Kent and attending the concert with him and his wife and my old pal and partner Bill. With all the people amassed on the lawn, we chose not to try and sit too close to the stage. The have a huge, thirty foot wide projection screen and display a very nice four camera shoot of the concert. So we sat back a bit and off to the side and enjoyed the show as a TV broadcast on a huge big screen with the most awesome sound system around!

Here are a few shots from  the 2009 Septemberfest. There are shots of Mickey Thomas and Bobby Kimball (taken from the big screen) a shot of Bobby Kimball and myself backstage after the show (where Bobby appears like “The Ghost Of Toto’s Past” because I think the camera was at the wrong setting) and a picture Kent Kotal, Bill Fortune and myself at the festival.

Chicago was a blast, and, having to travel there from Laughlin, I was forced to make an overnight stop-over in Las Vegas going and coming home. It was a burden, but thanks to the Hard Rock Hotel for lightening the load! Stayed in their brand new tower on the top floor. Check out a few shots of the cool new rooms and the awesome view of the infamous Rehab pool and the Vegas Strip from the south facing rooms in the Paradise Tower…..

Now that I am back at home base (at least for a few weeks before my next trip, which will be to Los Angeles at the end of the month) it’s time to settle down and move into the next projects that are up on the board. Look for a cool story soon about my close friend, Russ Terrana (who was the chief engineer of Motown Records from 1966 until 1988 and mixed a large percentage of the label’s biggest hits). More stories and updates in the weeks to come and, hopefully, on a more regular basis now until the end of the year!