A&R Studios was located on the fourth floor of Mogull's Film & TV building, sandwiched between Manny’s, the legendary musical instrument store where a 14-year-old Paul Simon bought his first guitar, and Jim and Andy’s Bar, a popular hangout for New York's session musicians.
The studio was small, but with its state-of-the-art equipment - the first in the city to have a 4-track recorder, and owner/engineer Phil Ramone’s experimental production techniques, it quickly gained a reputation for producing a great sound.
“I quickly learned that much of what you do in the studio is a mixture of echoes, reverbs, and slaps,” said Ramone. “The more imaginative you were with those effects, the more successful your studio was.”
“The music that came out of that little shitbox was incredible,” recalls Quincy Jones, “Hits by the dozen.”
On March 18th, 1963, Brazilian guitarist João Gilberto arrived at A&R Studios to record the album Getz/Gilberto with saxophonist Stan Getz and pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim. Notoriously shy, Gilberto brought his 22-year-old wife Astrud along as an interpreter.
Verve Records producer Creed Taylor thought Gilberto’s “Garota de Ipanema” could be a pop hit and wanted to record a demo in English to persuade Sarah Vaughn to record it.
Gilberto didn't speak a word of English, so his wife volunteered.
Taylor claims he knew “The Girl from Ipanema” would be an absolute smash “from the moment Astrud came in with her little voice and sang with that accent.”
At the end of the session, Stan Getz said, “Astrud, you’re going to be famous."
João Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim, and Stan Getz in session at A&R Recording Studios, March 18-19th, 1963.
The recording sat on a shelf for months waiting for Vaughn’s response. She declined, and the album Getz/Gilberto was released in March 1964 with Astrud’s demo as the opening track.
A shortened version of “The Girl From Ipanema” was released the following month and became an international hit. It sold more than five million copies, introduced Bossa Nova to a global audience, and made Astrud a superstar.
Getz/Gilberto stayed on the Billboard album charts for 96 weeks, selling more than five million copies worldwide. It won four Grammys, including Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best Engineered Recording.
Getz got the lion’s share of money from album sales, estimated to be nearly a million dollars.
Astrud Gilberto was paid the union rate for a night of session work: $120.
Owner/Engineer Phil Ramone at A&R Studios. © Unknown.
In 1967, Rockefeller Center announced the construction of The X, Y, and Z buildings—one skyscraper on each block of 6th Avenue between 47th and 50th Streets.
Unlike Rockefeller Center’s original Art Deco aesthetic, the new designs were for three modernist slab-like towers rising straight up without setbacks. One critic described them as "the sinister Stonehenge of economic man."
The Z building, with the address 1211 Avenue of the Americas, sits on the former site of A&R Studios. It was completed in 1973 and has over 2 million square feet of office space over 45 floors.
Today the building is the headquarters of News Corp and contains the offices of Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and studios for Fox News.
A bi-level studio on the southeast corner houses Studio F, where Fox and Friends broadcast every weekday morning, giving a glimpse of the corner of 48th Street and 6th Avenue from behind the couch.
