Ewing D. Nunn
The story of the ORIGINAL Audiophile record label
Robert
Gilchrist Huenemann
June
21, 2007
Images of the early version of Audiophile AP-1, which Jay Tonkinson donated
to the Stanford
Archive of Recorded Sound.
Click on each image to view a larger version.
Click
here to view an 850 kilobyte image of the AP-1 back cover.
Click
here to view a 235 kilobyte image of the D-1 album front cover.
Click
here to view a 220 kilobyte image of the D-1 album back cover.
The
Original Audiophile Discography
(The discography is now on a separate web page. Click here to view it.)
Paul Dumke’s Web Site, with Ewing Nunn’s Photo Collection
Allan Evans and the Doc Evans web site
Memories of E.D. Nunn and Frieda Nunn by Richard Greiner
Ewing D. Nunn: An American Original by Larry Forbes
In Memoriam Ewing D. Nunn, 1900-1977 by Al Webber
Nunn But the Finest by Fred Reynolds
My Thoughts on Ewing Nunn’s Contribution to the Audio Art
Paul Dumke’s Web Site, with Ewing Nunn’s Photo Collection
Paul Dumke is Ewing Nunn’s grandson. He maintains a
web site with a collection of photos taken by
Allan Evans and the Doc Evans web site
Allan Evans is the son of the inimitable Doc Evans, and he maintains a web site with complete details of Doc’s records on various labels. The following CDs are available from the Doc Evans web site, remastered from E.D. Nunn’s original Audiophile tapes:
AP-11, AP-12, AP-29 and AP-30 are available as JCD-19.
AP-33 and AP-34 are available as JCD-312.
AP-68 and AP-69 are available as JCD-195.
Recollections by Steven Blons
(Steven Blons is the son of clarinet
player extraordinaire Harry Blons. He sent the following information.)
My father, Harry Blons, was on
several of those LPs, under his own name and as side man with both Doc Evans
and Red Dougherty.
I was a kid when he made those recordings but I remember bits and fragments
of stories he told about the sessions.
Like what a fanatic Nunn was for sound and how he made them play in
certain ways to get what he wanted.
Harry had great fondness for Ewing Nunn and when my youngest
brother was born in 1953 he was named Charles Ewing Blons.
These recordings were, I believe, made in the 1950s. Harry was born in 1911 so he was in his
40s. I am now 59 and have been playing
guitar and banjo since I was a teenager.
I got to play often with my father and a few times with Doc Evans. I still play regularly with a local trad band
called The Mouldy Figs, and there are several other trad bands playing in this
area. But as I listen to these
recordings, I'm hearing a level of musicianship and artistry that no one here
is close to these days. Many of these guys worked together night after night on
club dates for years and had worked out a lot of clever stuff. These bands were tight, and crisp. Still fun to listen to.
I'm trying to recall if I ever met Nunn, but I don't think
so. I would have been 10-12 years old at
the time.
I do remember one more thing.
Nunn influenced my Dad in terms of hi-fi equipment. With Nunn's advice, Harry assembled a set of
top-line components. There was a custom
cabinet he had made for it all that was a fixture in our house for many
years. I especially remember the big
round back Bose speaker. It was the
hi-fi I played all my records on as a teenager and it had a great sound. So I guess I have Nunn to thank for that.
Recollections by Don Gibson
(Don
Gibson of
When going to stereo
he built his own after testing the best that Neumann, AKG, and Sony had to
offer. They are about 3/4" diameter, go out to about 20K, and are frequency
modulated R.F. All of his microphones were Omnidirectional. He positioned his
musicians around them rather than multiple mics and a mixer. He was a
perfectionist - especially about distortion. In stereo he separated the musicians into two groups - far enough
apart so there would be almost no cross-feed. He used the hall acoustics to
blend this into stereo.
HORNS (group one) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - RHYTHM (group
two)
trumpet trombone clarinet
sax
piano bass drums guitar
When Ewing died I purchased his mikes - and still have them.
Several of the Audiophile recordings were available in both monophonic
and stereo versions. According to Don Gibson, there were two recorders running
simultaneously at the session for AP-66 – one monophonic and one stereo.
Recollections by Stan Ricker
IT WAS STATED THAT THE PRESSINGS WERE DONE AT WAKEFIELD/PHOENIX. THIS MAY BE TRUE IN SOME INSTANCES, BUT ALL THE RED ONES I HAD EARLIER, AS WELL AS THE ONES I'VE GOTTEN FROM EBAY HAVE SCRIBING INFO IN THE LEAD-OUT THAT INDICATES THAT THEY WERE PRESSED AT KEYSOR-CENTURY IN SAUGUS, CA.---------------------------------THERE IS A COMMON "V4605" SCRIBED IN FRONT OF [ OR AFTER] THE LACQUER# [LIKE 127] AND THE AP CATALOGUE # [AP-12-A].
THESE
"V-NUMBERS" WERE K-C'S WAY ------LIKE AN IN-HOUSE VOL. NUMBER FOR
CUSTOMER ID AND BILLING----------IT'S PRETTY CLEAR THAT
WHEN I FIRST
BEGAN WORKING FOR KEYSOR-CENTURY IN 1969, I WAS HIRED BY JIM AUCHTERLONIE, WHO
WAS NATIONAL FRANCHISE SALES MGR, AND I WAS WORKING A CENTURY RECORDS FRANCHISE
IN KANSAS CITY-----------------------I WAS HIRED TO THE HOME OFFICE IN
CALIFORNIA IN THE POSITION OF HEAD, QC DEPT, BECAUSE OF MY KNOWLEGE OF THESE
AUDIOPHILE RECORDINGS/PRESSINGS---------------------------------------JIM
HAD BEEN THE MAIN PRESS OPERATOR FOR EWING'S PRODUCT!!!!!!
AND, OBTW, IT
WAS I WHO CUT THE
CHEERS, STAN
STAN RICKER
MASTERING
www.rickermaster.com
Memories of E.D. Nunn and Frieda Nunn by Richard Greiner
(Professor
Richard A. Greiner of the
Memories of E. D. Nunn (
By Dr. R. A. Greiner
August 7, 2002
When I go into my kitchen and look at the refrigerator I think of
I knew
I first met
I remember this first visit well since we had a chance to listen
to some of
I know he was friends with Paul Klipsch and Rudy Bozak and many
other audio personalities at the time.
We were very impressed with the sound, which was some of his Jazz
recordings used on his early Audiophile records. I remember that I was just a student with
no income and he was very generous with giving me some of his early Audiophile
records. He would play one and then look
at it very carefully. There might be a
small spot on the label so he would take a crayon and make a big black check on
the label and give it to me saying, "This is a defective one, you can take
it along with you." I know he gave
me at least a half dozen or more records this way in the several times I got to
visit with him while I was a student.
I also heard the train and thunderstorm records which he did right
from his home. The microphone for the
thunderstorm was placed under a metal awning on his back porch. The trains ran right along his back yard lot
line and he captured them for these early recording efforts.
I did not see him for a few years in the early 1950s since I had
gone to the University in
He was then using Magnacord tape machines, much modified, and
Ampex also much modified. The control
room was modest in size, about 12 by 20 I would guess, but loaded with
equipment. There he had Fairchild
turntables, and a cutting lathe. As I
remember a Scully or possibly a Western Electric. He used a Western Electric cutter head with a
McIntosh amplifier and head feedback.
It had hot stylus cutting capability.
By this time he was using B and K microphones and had some of his own
design. His own were small microphones
that looked like small silver saltshakers about 2 inches tall. They used a frequency modulation
circuit. He also had some Sennheiser
microphones. I remember consulting with
him about many electronic circuits since I was specialized in solid state
devices and electronics.
As stereo came to the fore,
speakers. There were three very large floor standing panels on each
side. They were electrostatic speakers designed by Art
Janzen. I remember hearing them a number of times. They were
very good, but did not really fill the big room with bass to my
satisfaction. I never was a fan of flat panels, but these were really
quite good. The high frequencies and the transients were excellent.
I remember that he liked them a lot.
I do not believe the story of a turntable mounted through the
basement to a concrete pillar. I think
the control room and main great room had no basement. There was a basement under the rest of the
house. The tables were mounted on large
steel cabinets that sat on the concrete floor of the control room. The same for the cutting lathes. So they were on a concrete floor and thus
very solid.
He also had a company that made road barrier flashers. It was called Northern Lights. I believe it was a very successful company
but I do not know much about it. These
flashers were solar cell charged during the day and flashed at night. We see them currently everywhere. He also had a few other electronics projects,
some of which were successful. But his
true love was recording and jazz music.
I regret that I do not have a chronology of his recordings. At one
time I had all of his records from the beginning through the first 50 or
so. His tapes and the Audiophile name
were sold to someone and I lost track of how to find them. Only recently have I found a source for some
CDs of his work.
He and Frieda loved shuffleboard.
He had a full sized board next to the house and they played
regularly. Frieda was a wonderful and
charming person. She was a great cook as
well. Shrimp Scampi was a favorite. I had it many times with them. He was a nut on coffee. He made the brew by the cold extraction
method. Coffee steeped in the
refrigerator and the liquid put into a cup with hot water. It was very nice and strong but smooth. I remember that
One time when I got there he was recording pocket watches. He had the microphone a fraction of an inch
from the watch and cotton packed all around the setup. He then played the watch
recording back very loudly creating gigantic clicking and thumping. What fun!
(This article by Larry Forbes appeared in
the Autumn, 1985 issue of The Absolute Sound, page 95.)
the music
OF MEN AND
RECORDINGS
EWING D.
NUNN: AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL
Over the years, The
Absolute Sound has praised the many great recording engineers of yore -
Lewis Layton of RCA, Robert Fine of Mercury, Bert Whyte of Everest - who were
there at the dawning of the stereo age and whose work still astonishes us
today. But one man has gone unacclaimed: Ewing D. Nunn, founder of the
legendary Audiophile label, who was perhaps the greatest of them all. For 30
years, Nunn produced some of the finest sounds ever put on disc.
In addition, he belongs
to that strange non-tribe of beings whom the British dub ec-centrics and we in the
Ewing Nunn, born on
November 25, 1900 in
At sixteen, Nunn
enlisted in the Navy and that kept him out of trouble for awhile. He was put to
work as a radio instructor. His formal schooling ended with high school, but he
continued educating himself for the rest of his life, in part by experimenting
with electronics. At twenty-three, he became vice president of the Radio Parts
Company in
Then in 1937, a man
asked him to make what farmers euphemistically refer to as a "fence
controller" - an electric fence to you and me - and so Northern Signal
Company was born. Nunn built the fence: His problem, according to Mrs. Nunn,
was one of circumventing existing patents rather than inventing a design. He
went on to produce flashers for road barricades as well, and these devices
became Nunn's major vocation for the next 30 or so years. Intermittently he
found other outlets for his inventiveness (among them a toy called Hootenanny,
a device with arms which drew marvelous geometric designs). Whatever he
concentrated on, he could never resist the urge to "make it better".
And in the Forties he turned to his avocation and the big love of his life
-music.
Nunn had begun
collecting records in 1920, "the year before Enrico Caruso died and Arturo
Toscanini cut his first disc for RCA Victor"3. In the
midForties, in a quest for better sound than he heard on the records he'd
bought, Nunn decided to make his own. He was, of course, uniquely successful.
He had originally
intended to produce small quantities of records just for his friends, but his
efforts were so superior to commercial products they attracted the attention of
the audiophile community. His records caused a sensation at the New York Audio
Fair and other exhibitions. Charles Fowler of High Fidelity magazine was an early enthusiast of Nunn's records.
So was G.A. Briggs, the great speaker designer of Wharfdale, who used them
during his famous demonstrations at
This recognition
created demand, and so, in 1947, what had started as a hobby became Audiophile
Records, of
Audiophile's first commercial
issues were 78-rpm monophonic microgroove discs with 19 1/4
minutes of playing time per side. They were pressed on clear red virgin vinyl
by Wakefield of Phoenix, Arizona (jazz collectors to this day refer to them as
"Great Old Reds".) These records Nunn himself referred to in the
album notes as "Grade A".
The discs are
intrinsically beautiful. They exude quality: thick, dense ruler-flat red vinyl,
the edges milled as finely as cut crystal. The 78s were packaged in envelopes,
complete with a flap affixed with the Audiophile seal. The back of the jackets
contained technical information, record cleaning information (he suggested
Joy), recommended cartridges (Pickering or Fairchild, mounted in a Fairchild
190-D arm). The album notes suggest that the user frequently has his playback
equipment checked for continuing good performance. "We would advise,"
he wrote, "against the purchase of this record if the user is unable or
unwilling to follow the above suggestion." 4 Wonderful.
The sound on those records
in unforgettable. Vivid. The wide dynamic range afforded by 78-rpm brought
instruments to life with keen realism, and this despite the limitations of the
playback equipment of the day. The dynamic range permitted by the high groove
velocity certainly rivals that theoretically claimed for today's CDs - without
CDs flaws, of course. On the great speakers of the Forties and early Fifties -
800 pound Altec Voice of the Theatre horn-loaded behemoths or the massive
Electro-Voice Patricians - the sensation was visceral. Those 78s still are
unrivaled in sonic purity and dynamic range.
Nunn went over to the
LP format only after he became convinced that phono cartridges had been
sufficiently improved to justify the slower speed "although, necessarily,
with some sacrifice in quality. We designate such records as 'Grade B', which
indeed they are, by 'sound' comparison."
Nunn's recording
equipment was primarily of his own design. He was the forerunner of men like
Keith Johnson, who are never satisfied with commercially-produced equipment.
What electronic equipment Nunn didn’t make entirely, he had modified to meet
his specifications. He owned two large houses in the
Audiophile's initial
recording system was centered on a Magnecord M-80 tape recorder modified to run
at 30-ips. Later when Audiophile began making stereo records, Nunn switched to
a Magnecord M-90, finally to a ReVox machine, (modified, of course.)
Nunn tried many
different microphones. In the early days, he used condenser microphones from
Stephens Tru-Sonic, Neumanns from
To say that Nunn was
ahead of his time is an understatement. His technical achievements were, and
still are, a paradigm. Though he would have scoffed at the notion, those who
knew him considered him a genius. He was also a perfectionist. He would
sometimes spend an entire day getting just the right location for his
microphones. In some of his early mono recording sessions, Frieda Nunn would
hold the microphone, since the human body is the perfect vibration absorbing
microphone stand. "There all of us were, playing, and there was that one
microphone Frieda was holding. And she would turn it from time to time. When
somebody played his solo, she'd turn it and so on. That was all they did - and
when you think of all the microphones today!" Knocky Parker, the jazz
pianist, recalls. "It was a lot of fun," says Frieda Nunn.
When Nunn found what he
thought to be a suitable recording location, he would test the acoustics by
rolling the tape and walking about in a predetermined pattern, clapping his
hands. He could then tell on playback just how well the room could be recorded.
(He monitored not with speakers, but with a pair of Permoflux headphones.)
He was never satisfied.
After a recording session in the early Seventies, he wrote, "I think if
the records were melted, they would make good chewing gum; but aside from that,
I have difficulty figuring out what they are good for." He rejected
flattery. He once said he had made only one good record: Yellow Dog Blues (AP-66). He had a crusty demeanor, and a sardonic
sense of humor that sometimes turned puckish. Here is a bit of vintage Nunn,
from his catalogue: “The thunderstorm isn't all, however - on the reverse side
of the record we have that celebrated water-dripping-into-the-bucket routine -
which, as Dr. Edmund Souchon once said '...caused severe taxing of the restroom
facilities,' when played in his home during a meeting of the Ladies Aid
Society." In his album notes he never left off his gentle ragging nor did
he let up in his efforts to get quality.
He was, in fact, a
lover of quality in all things. His favorite camera was a Hasselblad and he was
expert with it. He was equally at home with 16mm cinematography and gave
lectures on techniques of film-making. He used to talk wistfully to his son,
Ewing D. Nunn, Jr., about buying a Duesenberg, back in the days when that was
the ermine's fur. But a streak of Yankee thrift forbade such extravagance.
Nunn's friends still
treasure his prolific correspondence; much of it was hilarious. They urged him
to write to a larger forum, but he refused, save for one foray, an article of
classic humor about a design for a squirrel-proof bird feeder. This appeared in
The New York Times garden section in
1974.
Nunn was a man of
rather austere principles, despite (or perhaps because of) his love of fine
things. He quit smoking abruptly in 1954. "I reminded him of a cough he
had," Frieda Nunn says. "He hadn't noticed it. I thought it was from
the cigarettes. He didn't say anything, but several days later, I noticed that
he wasn't smoking. 'Oh, I quit,' he said. And he never went back." From
then on, he wouldn't even allow cigarettes in the house. On recording sessions
he'd rag the musicians a bit. He couldn't stop them from smoking of course. But
he could and did refuse to tolerate liquor. He was a teetotaler and wouldn't
make a recording when alcohol was on the premises. "He said the musicians
didn't perform well when they were drinking," Frieda Nunn says. "He was right."
His recording sessions
were fast-paced and business-like, if somewhat bizarre. Some of the musicians
thought of him as stern. "They didn't like him much, I guess. But the good
ones loved him," Mrs. Nunn says. Sometimes the players would grumble among
themselves about his no-nonsense direction, never suspecting that he could hear
them through his monitoring headphones. He delighted in this rather innocent eavesdropping
and never let on.
Nunn never really cared
for stereo. He opposed the sonic compromises the 45/45 stereo cutting technique
inflicts on the record groove. He once wrote a mock sales booklet: "This
recording was made in sterno. Only sterno captures the true beauty of the
music....A recording made in sterno enables the listener to hear with both
ears; people have found that listening with only one ear requires a lot of
practice...." 5
He changed reluctantly
with the times; and in the late Fifties and Sixties, Audiophile began to make
stereo records. We cherish them, the blessed few, to this day.
His stereo recording
format for traditional jazz groups generally consisted of one microphone for
the rhythm section and one for the "front line" - the horns and the
piano. He was a purist. He abhorred the multi-mike-with-mixer technique adopted
with unthinking abandon by many recording engineers.
Decades ago, Nunn
became aware of something most of us have only begun to appreciate, thanks to
today's best equipment: the importance of capturing the sense of acoustic space
on a recording. He preferred acoustically "hot" rooms, a formidable
technical challenge that many recording engineers prefer to avoid, because it
is very difficult to get right. Nunn considered this aspect of the acoustic
picture a necessity, and accordingly, he made many recordings on location - in
clubs, halls, churches, ballrooms and occasionally movie theaters (but never
with a live audience). Nunn and his wife drove to locations all across the
country, with 500 pounds of equipment. He would go to where his musicians were,
then scout the town for a proper recording environment.
An example of how well
he accomplished this objective can be heard on The Salt City Six Plays the Classics in Dixieland (Audiophile
AP-80). This recording was made in the main ballroom of the Penn Sheraton Hotel
in
Nunn's records are
bright - not in the pejorative sense, but in the same way live brass are
bright. To describe the sound is not necessary - it has all the qualities of
classic analogue: a three-dimensionality of the instruments, defined in space
with that palpable quality so treasured by audiophiles.
With the exception of
some later recordings, Nunn used the two-mike, two-track stereo recording technique,
with an "air" mix-down, a technique of recording straight into the
tape-recorder. (Conventional multiple mikes go into a machine called a mixer;
each mike has a separate volume control. In the "air" mix-down, the
volume, once set, is basically left alone.) This purist approach has defeated
many a recording engineer. The two microphones must be spaced far enough apart
to avoid bleed-over, which distorts the size and shape of an instrument. But
widely-separated microphones often result in a sound stage with a hole in the
middle. (The larger the ensemble the easier it is to use the two mike/two track
technique - as on the very earliest Reiner/Chicago RCA recordings.) Bleedover
was intolerable to Nunn, so he always opted for the lesser evil, a hole in the
middle of the soundstage. He took great care in placing the microphones to keep
the soundstage otherwise coherent; but there is a definite hole-in-the-middle
on many of his stereo records. We forgive this minor anomaly as we bask in the
glorious sound. What's more, the hole-in-the-middle effect here is not a
vacuum, but live room space, part of the true acoustic environment, and
pleasing to the educated listener.
In his last years Nunn
did occasionally use more than two microphones - usually no more than three -
plus a simple mixer. These records are excellent by any standard, with the
instruments ranging clear across the soundstage, left, right and middle.
Nunn retired from
Northern Signal in 1965, which gave him more time for his record company. Then
in 1969, he sold the Audiophile label to Jim Cullum, Sr., a fine
"trad" clarinetist, whose Happy Jazz records Nunn had recorded for
years. By then Nunn and his wife had moved to
The list of jazz
musicians who recorded for Audiophile is long and distinguished - Paul W.
"Doc" Evans, John W. "Knocky" Parker, Albert Nicholas,
Raymond Burke, and others. While some of these artists are well known, others
have more regional fame, such as Doc Evans, whose home base was in the
Nunn involved himself
in the planning of Audiophile's recording sessions. His knowledge of
traditional jazz was encyclopedic. Knocky Parker recalls the day he and Doc
Evans were playing the verse of a Jelly Roll Morton number the way they'd played
it for years. Nunn took exception, arguing that they had an incorrect verse.
And a check of the original music proved him correct.
Nunn made over a 100
records between 1947 and 1969, and many are landmarks. His most famous mono
recording, The Echoes of the Storm,
ranks, for dynamics, ahead of Mobile Fidelity's awesome The Power and the Majesty. This record also includes some other
shockingly lifelike cuts, including a drum set that sounds every bit as
realistic as Hot Stix, or The Sheffield Drum Record, or Charlie
Byrd's "Old Hymn" number on a 45 rpm Crystal Clear record. The storm
on Echoes was later reissued in rechanneled stereo in answer to demand.
That must have nettled Nunn, the purist. "He was a monophonic man,"
says Frieda Nunn, "no doubt about that." He once told a friend that
the best way to record a thunderstorm in stereo would be to have the
microphones spaced hundreds of feet apart. Logical.
Nunn's homes always had
a playback system as a centerpiece. The last home in
Nunn's built-in home
monophonic playback system included eight 12-inch Bozak woofers, four midrange
cone drivers, and eight of Arthur Janszen's then-new electrostatic tweeters.
The speakers were driven by two 60-watt (tubed) McIntosh amplifiers working in
parallel. Behind a curtained window in the living room was the control booth
and laboratory. His early playback equipment included a Rek-O-Kut turntable
with two
Nunn made a number of
classical recordings. Thirteen are listed in one of his later catalogs. All but
one are monophonic. The exception is the Mozart Horn Duos (AP-110), performed
by Paul Binstock and Christopher Leuba on French horns - an unusual
accomplishment, Nunn noted, because Mozart "composed these duos prior to
the development of the modern French Horn."
Among the Audiophile
mono classical recordings are organ classics: Organ Music of
(I cannot study this
body of work without wishing that Nunn, who was active during the Reiner/CSO
years, could have recorded that magnificent instrument.)
The earliest Audiophile
monophonic records are very, very, hard to find. They are collector's items of
no small value. One very famous early recording is considered by some of
Audiophile's 100 or so
records were all issued in small quantities. For that reason, they are hard to
find on the used record market. I spent nearly two years locating a couple of
dozen stereo discs. I also obtained several mono records, which are very good,
and depending on size of the ensemble, strikingly lifelike, even in mono. I
have one great record, a 78 rpm disc, Easy
Listening, Volume 2, W.J. "Red" Dougherty and his band.
The most effective way
of unearthing Audiophile records is to place wants in jazz record collector
journals. Records obtained this way are usually in excellent condition (record
auction lists always give condition), because they were for the most part owned
by jazz buffs or audiophiles. The records are not always easily identified as
stereo. Some jackets give no hint of this; sometimes neither do the record
labels themselves. At the end of this article is a list of records that are
(usually) in stereo. The discs may be in red vinyl or black. In the early
Sixties Nunn did switch to black vinyl which he considered to be superior
because of better inner-groove hardness. He remastered a number of issues with
more modern equipment, and these were then pressed in black. The surfaces and
sound quality on both are equally excellent.
One album still in print
that you may wish to purchase is a very special one. The recording was made by
Nunn toward the end of his life and released after his death: A Midsummer Night's Dream (dedicated to
E.D. Nunn) The music is by the New Black Eagles jazz band, from the
By this time Nunn was
quite ill. "But he never wanted anyone to know," Frieda Nunn says.
"And that was too bad. There were people - friends - who would have wanted
to see him before he died. But he was a private person about such things, and
wouldn't want much about his illness and death to be made public, even
today."
Though he was in a
wheelchair, he was still hard at work in July 1977, "I drove him to his
last session," Mrs. Nunn says, "he was recording Jim Cullum's band,
he'd recorded them for ten years or more. That was either for Happy Jazz label
or maybe American Music, I don't remember which. Afterwards, he said it was 'an
ok job'. Nothing was ever quite right for him, you know. But Jim Cullum was
quite pleased. It was a good job." On July 24, Nunn died at home.
All of his friends and
colleagues, writing or talking about him for this article, remember him with
affection. "He was an interesting man to talk with," David Howse of
Would Nunn have liked an
article on himself? "Yes," said Frieda Nunn. "He'd have been
tickled, though he'd never have let on. Oh, he'd have sputtered like nobody's
business. He was like that."
He was an interesting man," she said after a bit. "He had a
great many ideas and he carried them out. Some of them worked out
beautifully."
-Larry
Forbes
1 Al C. Webber, “In Memoriam
Ewing D. Nunn - 1900-1977,” from the album The New Black
Eagles Jazz Band, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
2 Fred Reynolds, “Nunn But
the finest,” Music at Home, November-December
1954, p. 25.
3 Reynolds.
4 Album notes, Easy Listening, Vol. 2 Audiophile AP-13.
5 Webber.
6
Harry Pearson, founder of The Absolute Sound (rgh).
Audiophile records either are numbered with
the prefix XL or AP. XL denotes a 33 1/3 rpm record originally mastered at 78
rpm. AP denotes all other issues, from the earliest, Audiophile AP-1, with
Harry Blons's band (that record must be worth a fortune), to AP-115/116.
Determining if the record is stereo is not that simple. Audiophile's first
stereo record was AP-56 (Muskrat Ramble, one of Audiophile's finest stereo
recordings, with Doc Evans, Knocky Parker, et al.), but only perhaps half of the recordings
between AP-56 and AP-115/116 are in stereo.
Here are some Audiophile numbers that are
(probably) all in stereo: AP-56, AP-57, AP-59, AP-63, AP-66, AP-69, AP-75,
AP-80, AP-82, AP-83, AP-84, AP-85, AP-86, AP-88 to AP-94, AP-97, AP-100 to
AP-115/116.
I wish to thank the following people for their help on this article:
Frieda Nunn, Professor John w. "Knocky" Parker, Ewing D. Nunn, Jr.,
Al C. Webber, David Howse, Don Gibson, John Steiner, Bob Koester, Robert
Thompson, Art Kay, and Ralph Jungheim.
Reprinted
by permission from The Absolute
Sound, Volume 9, Number 35, Autumn 1985, pp. 95--101.
Larry
Forbes is a retired
(The following material is taken from the liner notes for A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, album BE-THREE, by the New Black Eagle Jazz Band from the
IN MEMORIAM EWING D. NUNN,
1900-1977
(by Al Webber)
E.D. Nunn died July 24, 1977, at his home in
Typically, he was hard at work up to the day
of his death, in the field in which he had carved out unchallenged preeminence:
sound recording.
To jazz collectors, E.D.N. is best known as
the founder, in 1947, of Audiophile Records, Inc. Between 1947 and 1969, when
he sold the label to the Cullums of Happy Jazz Band fame, he produced nearly
100 records, most of them traditional jazz and all of them superbly recorded.
The roster of jazz musicians recorded by
E.D.N., for his own or other labels, is a long one. It includes Don Ewell,
Albert Nicholas, Earl Hines, Doc Evans, Red Nichols, Knocky Parker, Raymond
Burke, and Art Hodes, to name but a few at random.
Though he was probably the finest recording
engineer the field has known, E.D.N. made records chiefly as a hobby. An
amateur in the French meaning of the word, “one who loves,” Ewing delighted in
demonstrating to dullards like the writer what true “high fidelity” really
sounds like – playing records and tapes he had made with microphones and other
equipment which he had either designed or had rebuilt to extract truer sound
quality than the manufacturers realized it was capable of.
Though he would have called mad anyone who
dared label him thus,
To E.D.N., “retirement” simply meant having
more time to devote to what he enjoyed most, recording traditional jazz. In
between recording sessions, he found time to write a memorable article on a
squirrel-proof bird feeder printed in the New York Times, design and market a unique hummingbird
feeder, and photograph fauna ranging from chipmunks to tarantulas.
Who wouldn’t be at least mildly disturbed to
read: “This recording was made in sterno. Only sterno captures the true beauty
of the music as it ricochets around the room. A recording made in sterno
enables the listener to hear with both ears; people have found that listening
with only one ear requires a lot of practice and is, therefore, quite tiring…”
Jazz critic George Kay and I took turns
badgering
A.C.W. 8/12/77
(This article by Fred Reynolds appeared in the November-December
1954 issue of Music At
Home, page 25.)
NUNN BUT THE FINEST
Making Records of Superlative Quality Was Only a Hobby
Until People Offered
Any Price “If You’ll Just Make an Extra Copy for Me” – By
Fred Reynolds
Nothing could
be more music-at-home than Ewing D. Nunn of Milwaukee and
However, let’s set down the facts in some
kind of order. Farmers know Nunn because he is president of the Northern Signal
Company, producers of electric fence controllers, and controls for infra-red
brooding equipment. Audio fans know him because of his superb Audiophile
records, probably the finest of the high-quality recordings made today.
Northern Signal is his bread and butter; Audiophile Records is a hobby, but it
is beginning to grow to the proportions of a serious business.
You meet Ed Nunn and immediately you like
him. He’s cordial, enthusiastic on a variety of subjects, and you know there
are many topics on which this man speaks with authority. He’s a gentleman.
Guessing, I’d say he has recently passed the half-century mark, but right now
he looks ready to step in as half-back for the Green Bay Packers. And if you
happened to meet him walking along the street, you might size him up as, say,
the perfect model for Dean of Men at the
Born in
For years Nunn had been experimenting with
amplifiers of his own design. He is continually improving his equipment, always
moving ahead slowly and patiently, for he is well aware of the truism that
“improvement is made in short jumps.” By 1947, he had advanced the performance
of his equipment to the point that he wanted finer records to use with it than
were commercially available. That was when he determined to make his own
records. The kids had grown up and left home. There was much more time,
therefore, to experiment with a hobby that might and did become expensive, as
so many do, but there was a possibility that it might show a profit eventually,
as so many don’t.
By the time he was ready to make his first
recordings, he had arrived at certain specific decisions. Lacking the kind of
studio facilities at home that he wanted, he made plans to record on location.
For making master tapes, he chose a Magnecord M-80, and had it modified at the
factory of 15 and 30 ips tape speed.1 He rebuilt the amplifier in this recorder
himself. He uses a single microphone – a converted Stevens type – for all
recording sessions. And he determined to cut all his records at 78 rpm, except
in the case of musical selections, primarily classical, which require the
longer playing time available only at 33 rpm. The Nunn opinion: “The best quality
that can be engraved on a disc, regardless of cost, is obtained when a record
is rotated at 78 rpm and is played with a 1-mil diamond stylus. Since top
quality is our objective, Audiophile records are made in this way for use by
those whose facilities enable them to be discriminating.”
Nunn’s 78 rpm records are not limited to the
playing time of commercial pressings, however. The use of a 1-mil stylus makes
it possible to cut the masters at a finer pitch. As a result, 12-in. Audiophile
78’s give up to 191/4 minutes of music.