The Doobie Brothers (1973)
Tom Johnston – guitars/harmonica/vocals
Pat Simmons – guitars/arp/vocals
John Hartman – drums/percussion/vocals
Tiran Porter – bass guitar/vocals
Michael Hossack – drums/congas/timbales
Additional Players:
Bill Payne – piano/organ
Jeffrey Baxter – pedal steel guitar
Nick DeCaro – string arrangements
Malcom Cecil and Robert Margouleff –
ARP synthesizer programming
Recording:
Copyright 1973 Warner Bros. Records, Inc.
straightforward, as well. From what the track-sheet read, the main rhythm guitar track
was played by “Tom,” which I’m assuming
was Tom Johnston, the band’s lead singer
at the time and the writer of the song. An
additional guitar overdub was added later
to fill out the sound and thicken up the
rhythm section. I spent a significant amount
of time balancing and panning the rhythm
guitars to get them to match the original
album version, but couldn’t quite seem to
nail it. I threw on some headphones to get a
closer inspection of the original and noticed
that the quarter-note delay that is on the
main guitar track in the intro and re-intro is
bypassed once the verse kicks in. This one
subtle change allowed the rhythm guitars to
sit properly in the mix.
I added a bit of reverb to both guitar tracks,
but automated both the reverb level and the
track volume of the cleaner guitar track in the
bridge. Back in the day, this would have been
done manually by whoever in the room could
lend an extra hand to the mixing console. In
1973, fader automation on a recording console
wasn’t a standard feature like it is today, so
any volume, pan, or effects rides would have
to be done in real-time as the mix was being
laid down. This used to be part of the magic
of mixing. It was a performance in and of itself.
Today, one engineer can replay the mix over
and over recording each and every push of
a fader and turn of a knob until it’s just right
before having to commit and print it as the
master mix.
Mix Masters
In the days predating automation, it wasn’t
uncommon to find the engineer, producer,
band members, and sometimes even assistants performing these same moves all in
one pass, like a well-rehearsed orchestra. If
someone didn’t hit their cue, or adjusted the
wrong knob, the whole mix would need to be
done again from the beginning. Everything
from grease pencil marks on knobs to razor
blades taped above the faders (to block it
from moving too far) helped make this cumbersome process a little easier. In many cases,
the relative inaccuracies of this method produced some really magical results.
I have fun mixing just about every song we
release for Jammit, but for some reason this
one made me feel slightly nostalgic, even
though I wasn’t even a glitter in my mother’s
eye at the time it was made. It made me
remember the stories I’ve heard many times
over of how things used to be done when
motorized faders on a console was as far-
fetched as a little white box that can hold
10,000+ songs in your pocket. Having these
limitations really put a premium on talent and
ingenuity. Now I’m not going to go as far as
to say that today’s music isn’t as good as it
once was. (I wouldn’t want to sound too much
like an old fogey, would I?) But it definitely
makes me wonder if a lot of these songs that
we call classics today would have been the
same, worse, or better had the musicians,
producers and engineers had all the tools
and freedom from limitations that we seem to
have today. I guess the only way we’d ever be
able to find out is if we could take a nuclear-
powered DeLorean back to 1973. Unlikely,
just like the iPod 37 years ago.
To see/hear how you can play along to (with
tab) and make new mixes of “China Grove”
and other songs from the original multi-track
masters, check out www.jammit.com
Chris Baseford is a Canadian-born recording engineer/mixer/
producer who has worked
with some of the top names in
the rock music world. Having
spent many years mixing on
large format analog consoles,
Chris has made the transition to mixing “in-the-box”
and continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in the all-digital domain of music production.
