Natalie Cole, Unforgettable With Love Full Album Zip
Simone Whitmeyer
One of Schmitt's earliest sessions was with Duke Ellington, and since then, via stints at Apex Studios, Atlantic and Prestige in New York City, as well as at Radio Recorders and RCA in Hollywood prior to going independent in 1966, the artists with whom he's been involved have run the gamut of popular music. These include jazz greats like Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and Thelonius Monk; vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Connie Francis, Eddie Fisher, Rosemary Clooney and Sammy Davis Jr; composer/orchestrators Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones; artists such as Toni Braxton, Anita Baker, George Benson, Luther Vandross, Vanessa Williams, Dave Grusin, Diane Schuur and Al Jarreau; and rock icons like Elvis Presley, Ike & Tina Turner, Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, Steely Dan, Madonna and Michael Jackson.
Recently, Al recorded Bruce Willis singing for the Rugrats Go Wild film soundtrack and mixed a Lee Ann Rimes Christmas record, and in early May he commenced work on a Barbra Streisand album of movie songs at the Sony scoring stage in Culver City, a place that he describes as "one of the most beautiful-sounding rooms on the planet, along with Abbey Road and AIR studios". Thereafter, in the first half of June, he segued to a project with Diana Krall, justifying his assertion that "my plate is pretty full, and I'm really lucky because I get to work with the best people and a lot of interesting people".
Al Schmitt with Natalie Cole during the recording of 'Unforgettable'.The first of Al's Grammy Awards was for Henry Mancini's Hatari! film score in 1962; his most recent was for Diana Krall's 2002 The Look Of Love and Live In Paris albums. Between the two came a similar award for his work on Natalie Cole's Unforgettable album in 1991, including the title track that paired her vocal with that of her late father, recorded at the Capitol Studios in Hollywood exactly 40 years earlier.
"Natalie's very easy to record," says Schmitt. "At one point, instead of being in a vocal booth, she came out and stood right there with the orchestra, la Frank Sinatra. She was amazing. I used a Neumann U67 on her voice, along with just 2dB of a Summit limiter and a Neve 1073 preamp. I like the 67 a lot, it seems to work well on vocals, and with her it worked really well. When her father recorded 'Unforgettable', he used a 47, and the 67 matched up pretty well with that.
"I do all of the miking myself," Schmitt continues. "My assistants will know what mics I want and generally where I want them to be, and they'll put them out there, but then before a downbeat when the musicians are there I'll go into the room and place every microphone exactly where I want it. I check the piano mics, I check all the drum mics, I place the string and brass mics, and I always make sure that all of the musicians are comfortable. If you've got happy, comfortable musicians, you're gonna have a great day; if you've got guys who are unhappy and uncomfortable with the way they're set up, it's gonna be a little bit more difficult."
In the case of 'Unforgettable', Al Schmitt was relieved to discover that, unlike the three-track projects with which he had been involved, Nat King Cole's vocal was alone on the centre track. "We never kept the lead vocal separated in that way," he says. "Sometimes, I would place the rhythm section and the vocal in the centre, whereas when we went to four-track I'd place them alone on their own tracks and split the orchestra across the outside tracks. So, I was very surprised to hear Nat's vocal by itself in the centre, and that was a blessing.
"As it happens, by the time I heard the tape, Johnny already knew that Nat's vocal was alone in the centre, and he knew the spots where we wouldn't be able to remove stuff and where he'd therefore have to cover things up. Back in the early '50s the studios didn't have isolation booths. Nat was in the room with the orchestra, so there was some bleeding from the orchestra into his mic, and we therefore tried to filter out as much of that as we could. Still, there were spots where we just couldn't filter out the leakage, and so when Johnny Mandel did the arrangement for the new recording he compensated by way of writing similar instrumental parts to cover up the leakage in those particular areas.
"Through the years you do certain things that become recognised as an identifiable sound," he explains, "and that's down to microphone technique; the microphones you use and where you place them. So, that's what I think I bring to a session. I remember back in the '50s, when I was in New York, I was working with a drummer by the name of Tiny Cahn on a small jazz date and he asked me to put a microphone on the kick drum. Now, we'd use just one mic on the drums in those days, and since we were working with such a small section, I kinda looked at him as if he was strange, but I said, 'Sure, we'll give it a try,' and when I miked the kick it really made a difference. So, from that point on, whenever I could and whenever I had the availability, I tried to put a mic on the kick drum, and a lot of guys then followed suit.
When I ask Schmitt if his approach is notably different to that of his fellow engineers, he laughs. "It was for a while," he says. "Even then, there were a few people who did work the same way, including Armin Steiner and Bruce Swedien. But what's happened is that a lot of the assistants with whom I've worked have gone on to work with other engineers on big string dates and big band dates, and the first thing these engineers will tell them is 'Set it up the way Al Schmitt sets it up.' So, they set up everything the way I do and they use the same microphones, and I'm therefore not so sure that what I do is as unique as it used to be."
"Natalie's an amazing singer, and she completed her vocal in three or four takes," Schmitt recalls. "We didn't need to do any punching in. David Foster produced this particular cut, and when we got into the mixing process he figured out where Nat and Natalie were each going to sing. This was helped by the fact that it was easier to mute Nat in certain spots and Natalie in others. However, while it was easy for her to sing answers to him, it wasn't quite so straightforward getting him to sing answers to her, and so what we had to do was put him in the sampler and move his vocal around.
"Afterwards, when the album won a Grammy for Best Engineering, everybody said, 'Oh my God, the title track's incredible! How did you do that?' Well, it was a pretty simple process, and today, thanks to Pro Tools, it's a hell of a lot easier to do than it was back then. The most difficult part was stripping Nat's vocal and getting him on there, whereas the rest was just like a normal recording. Still, that having been said, even if we had Pro Tools back then I wouldn't have used it, because the early Pro Tools sounded terrible. Now, I use it quite a bit, because I love the 96k or the 192, and I think it sounds really good and is so much closer to the analogue."
"When I used 67s on the band I had them all in a non-directional pattern," he says. "They were open omni, and the reason for that is, because the trumpets and trombones play so loud, you don't worry about much stuff leaking into them. You achieve a bigger and better effect by going for the overall room sound. What's more, I did have the drums isolated in a booth, so I wasn't worried about them leaking in."
Schmitt states that, when he's recording, he is constantly mindful of the upcoming mix: what echos he will use, how he will take care of the panning, and so on. To that end, either he or his assistant will keep notes on what he is doing and how he is doing it. That way, when he actually gets to the mix, the procedure is fairly straightforward.
"I know pretty much how I'm going to lay out the board and what form the panning will take," he says, "and then it's just a matter of balancing and echo, and if I need to use a little EQ on something to bring up the high end I might do that too. On 'Unforgettable', David Foster left pretty much everything up to me. He would come in and listen and say, 'Yeah', or 'I need a little more of this and a little more of that,' but in general he'd leave me alone and I would get the whole thing together, and then he'd come in and we'd do some tweaking. However, it was some pretty minor tweaking at that point."
All in all, Al Schmitt confirms that the Unforgettable project was just that for everybody involved: a memorable experience that pertained especially to the title track. "David Foster certainly knows what he is doing," he says, "so he had his job down, Johnny Mandel had his job down, I had my job down, the musicians had their jobs down, and between us we made it work."
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