Radio Recorders

Radio Recorders, Inc. located at 7000 Santa Monica Boulevard, was a recording studio based in Los Angeles, California.

Many notable musicians are reported to have been recorded in the studio include Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Jimmie Rodgers, Louis Armstrong, Mario Lanza, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Paul Frees and The Carpenters among others. In its prime, the studio was known as the best recording facility in Los Angeles.

During the forties and fifties, Radio Recorders was responsible for recording countless radio shows, both network and local, for delayed broadcast, not always for California, but for many western states. Telephone lines ran to all the important stations and the networks. Studio C was the nerve center with at least six recording lathes and turntables and an "on-the-air" playback turntable protected by a railing so that it would not be bumped while it was playing a program onto the air. The recording lathes were shock mounted in sand to prevent rumble from the street cars on Santa Monica Boulevard. For much of that era, the recordings were made and played back on lacquer coated aluminum discs, before tape recording was introduced. The room could handle several programs at once, 24 hours a day, and quite often a single engineer on duty would have his hands full.

Most of the major labels used Radio Recorders well into the 1960s. Columbia, RCA Victor, Capitol, and Decca ultimately had their own facilities, but Radio Recorders was still the choice of many independent labels and both popular and classical artists, from Stravinsky to Elvis. In addition, most of the jingles were recorded there. In 1962 H.B. Barnum and Bill Aken chose the annex to record their big band version of 'Goody, Goody" for Governor Goodwin J. (Goodie) Knight's re-election campaign. Additionally in 1962 Bill Aken would record the classic 'Theme For Shock Theater,' again with engineer Phil Yeend working the board. The main location at 7000 Santa Monica had two large studios and some smaller ones, as well as disc mastering facilities. In 1946, the company remodeled a warehouse at 1032 North Sycamore Avenue and built a large studio, capable of handling approximately fifty musicians. This studio was known as Radio Recorders Annex, or, within the industry, just "The Annex." The warehouse originally belonged to RCA Victor and "the Annex" was a legendary studio that Victor had built in their warehouse back in the `30's.

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