Bell Sound Studios
At its height, the studio was the largest independent recording studio in the United States, and the site of recording sessions that produced seminal hits by Jimmie Rodgers, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, the McGuire Sisters, the Flamingos, Dion and the Belmonts, Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, the Drifters and Ben E. King, the Four Seasons, Lesley Gore, the Dixie Cups, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and Kiss.
Co-founders Allen Weintraub and Dan Cronin were classmates at Brooklyn Technical High School and aspiring radio engineers.
Needing a larger studio space to accommodate recording sessions of these small ensembles, Bell moved to West 89th Street in Manhattan.
By 1957 the company had grown to 17 employees, and again moved, to 237 West 54th Street, where the studios eventually occupied the largest portion of a five-story building.
He appreciated Bell's innovative isolation capabilities to record the rhythm as he heard it and was amazed by the unusual clarity of each musical element.
Paul Anka was a regular customer at Bell Sound under the direction of producer Don Costa, beginning in September 1957 with the recording of "I Love You Baby" and "You Are My Destiny".
Anka recorded almost exclusively at Bell Sound until 1961, including such hits as "Put Your Head on My Shoulder", "Lonely Boy", and "Puppy Love".
Ferrante & Teicher, both Juilliard alumni and faculty, had their two grand pianos hoisted into the studio, where they were recorded with full orchestra for the duo's hit instrumentals "Theme from The Apartment" (July 1960) and "Exodus" (November 1960).
Dion returned to Bell Sound as a solo artist in 1961 and recorded "Runaround Sue", the song for which he would be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002.
On July 13, 1961, while performing as a background singer on the Drifters' song "Mexican Divorce", Dionne Warwick was discovered by producer and composer Burt Bacharach, the beginning of one of the most successful teams in popular music history.
Another Luther Dixon-produced group, the Shirelles, recorded several hits at Bell Sound, including "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" (November 1960), "Baby It's You" (1961), "Mama Said" (April 1961), and "Soldier Boy" (March 1962).
Gene Pitney began his studio career at Bell Sound with "(I Wanna) Love My Life Away" (January 1961) and "Every Breath I Take" (August 1961).
Phil Ramone - himself a studio operator - acted under producer Quincy Jones to engineer Gore's vocal overdubs for the recordings.
Other songs recorded at Bell Sound include Garnet Mimms' "Cry Baby" (May 1963), the Dixie Cups' number one hit "Chapel of Love" (May 1964), and "Gloria" by Them with Van Morrison (May 1965).
[10] The same year, after renewed interest in the band's 1964 regional release of "Hanky Panky", Tommy James, backed by a freshly-recruited quintet that would serve as his new Shondells, re-recorded a new version of the song and its eponymous LP at the studio.
[10] In 1961, the studio hired 15-year recording industry veteran Irv Jerome, who grew the studios' business recording commercials for radio and television, including work for Madison Avenue firms like Ted Bates, J. Walter Thompson, BBD&O, Benton & Bowles, Young & Rubicam, Ogilvy & Mather, and produced ads for Pepsi, Coke, Ford, and Barneys.
In November of that year, faced with rising rent and other financial challenges, Weintraub sold Bell Sound Studios and its affiliates to Viewlex, a Long Island music and entertainment conglomerate that purchased a controlling interest in the Kama Sutra and Buddah Records labels.
