Page 24 - Love-of-Music-Magazine-winter-2019

Passion For Records, Recording, Writing and Radio

Introducing Chuck Grenata LOMM Reporter

For many years, I was a police officer. So, when people After years of
first learn that I’m in the music business, they inevitably ask, shunning my nerdy
“How did that happen? How’d you go from being a cop past, I come be-
to working on iconic sound recordings, writing books and fore you humbly
being on the radio? accept the mantle.
My fascination with music and anything ‘phonographic’ I can “twelve-step”
dates back to the beginning: my own beginning - the age of with the best of
one – when I’d sit for hours, mesmerized by records spinning them: my name is
round-and-round on the record player. I’m not sure what the Chuck, and I’m a
attraction was, but it didn’t matter what type of music was recordholic. I don’t
being played (although George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in have corpuscles
Blue was always a favorite from the time I can remember.) and hemoglobin in
this body; it’s vinyl
I was, admittedly, an odd child. coursing through
my veins. You get
the idea. Chuck at Sirius-XM Studios

I’m sure what I describe above – all of it verifiable and true
– resonates with many readers who, like me, have enjoyed
a lifelong obsession with music and its mediums. Finding
kindred spirits isn’t easy, and when we “record nuts” connect,
we tend to latch on for life. However, there’s a distinct differ-
ence between me and most other music and record fanat-
ics: for some reason, the Gods of amplitude and magnetism
looked down on me, and – by some miracle – at the age
of thirty I found myself where I’d always dreamed of being:
immersed in the business of helping to make records.

Now, it’s important to understand that I’d been preparing for
Chuck Grenata & Michael Feinstein at Sony Music Studios NYC
this moment all my life.
How else to explain a youngster who’d beg for record play-
ers for his second, third and fourth birthdays? Or, one who I’d diligently collected thousands of records, meticulously cat-
– at five – relished knocking on neighbors’ doors, asking if aloged them and spent thousands of hours compiling tracks
they had any old 78s they wanted to get rid of? The pre-teen into customized mix tapes. During my high school years, I
whose heart began to pound at the sight of a pile of detritus bought a four-track open reel and a cassette “Portastudio”
on bulk garbage day, hoping he’d find old tape recorders, recorder, a small mixer and some Shure SM-57 microphones
film projectors or ‘Victrolas’ nestled among the discards? and taught myself how to record and mix basic tracks. With
the care of a professional engineer, I had my semi-profes-
Such predilections come at a cost. For me, the expense was sional tape recorders calibrated twice a year, and had lots
being clumsy and useless when it came to the things my of fun turning out some nice sounding recordings. I worked
peers accomplished with ease: tossing a football, throwing as a DJ, mixing all sorts of music for local church and school
a layup, perfecting a tennis swing and learning to catch a events, and continued making mix tapes from my expanding
baseball. While they were out enjoying sunlight and fresh music collection for myself, friends and family. By the time
air, I much preferred being cooped up in my bedroom with Sony Music called and asked me to work on a Frank Sinatra
my records, drums and ramshackle assortment of recording project in 1992, I’d done – in Malcolm Gladwell’s term - my
and playback equipment. I was the kid who was setting up “ten thousand hours.” I had the talent, knowledge and exper-
microphones and taping my middle school band and chorus tise; it was the luck – and being in the right place at the right
concerts, then selling copies to all of the players. time – that really tipped the scales in my favor.

Photos used with permission Part one. Part two - to be continued in next issue
22 | The Love of Music Magazine - St. Louis
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