The Cosimo formula worked well for Ace Records chief Johnny Vincent, who landed durable hits in 1958-59 by Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns, Jimmy Clanton, and Frankie Ford. Other musicians included Alvin “Red” Tyler, tenor and baritone saxophones guitarists Ernest McLean, Edgar Blanchard, and Justin Adams Edward Frank, piano and Frank Fields, bass. The New Orleans session musicians became known as the “studio band” and featured two of the top accompanists in rock ‘n’ roll: tenor saxophonist Lee Allen and drummer Earl Palmer, who was succeeded by Charles “Hungry” Williams in 1957.
Little Richard, another major international artist of the rock ‘n’ roll era, recorded many of his unforgettable hits at Cosimo’s for Specialty Records in 1956-57 after cutting the transformative “Tutti Frutti” at J&M in 1955.
Through the early 1960s, he recorded hit after hit here under the production genius of Dave Bartholomew for Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records of Los Angeles. The primary artist recorded at Cosimo studios was Fats Domino, who in 1956 was at the peak of his popularity as an unlikely rock ‘n’ roll star. At Cosimo’s, which like J&M was the only significant recording studio in the city at the time, the sound of New Orleans R&B came alive as it spread throughout the world. Located in the heart of the French Quarter in a former wholesale grocery warehouse at 521-23-25 Governor Nicholls St., the facility was opened in spring 1956 after Matassa had made his mark at J&M Recording Studios on Rampart and Dumaine in the preceding decade. Golden age of New Orleans R&B is synonymous with the Cosimo Recording Studios, owned and operated by sound engineer Cosimo Matassa.
0 kommentar(er)
