Alan Stocker
Alan Stoker is the Curator of Recorded Sound and Preservation Engineer at The Country Music Hall of Fame. He also freelances as a musician in the greater Nashville area. Being the son of Gordon Stoker, from the popular singing group The Jordanaires... who backed up Elvis Presley on numerous recordings, Alan was always surrounded by great music in his youth. In his high school years, he became a proficient drummer but he played guitar, piano and bass as well.
In 1976 Alan took an entry level job at The Country Music Hall of Fame. From there, he gradually worked his way up through the ranks and began running the tours of Studio B... a famous former recording studio on Music Row. When a position opened up for a new project to preserve the acquired music and video archives at CMHOF, Alan was chosen for this important department. Through the years, he has worked on the preservation of one-of-a-kind original sources from Elvis, Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and many more. Alan was part of the team that received a Grammy for the documentary "Night Train to Nashville - Music City Rhythm & Blues 1945 to 1970."
Today, Alan continues his tasks at CMHOF and performs with the groups McKendree Spring, The Long Players and others. I recently spoke with Alan about his career in music.
R.V.B. - Hey Alan... Rob von Bernewitz from New York, how are you
A.S. - I'm good Rob.
R.V.B. Thank you for taking this time with me. Congratulations on your career in music. You've made quite a mark. I guess where I want to start is... I know you came from a musical family but what was the first thing that you came aware of as far as the music world?
A.S. - I would imagine church music. My parents took me to church once or twice a week here in Nashville. My dad played piano so I probably heard that early as well. He came to Nashville as a piano player. He was a teenager and one of the younger members of the Grand Ole' Opry.
R.V.B. - Where was he originally from?
A.S. - He was originally from a town in west Tennessee called Gleason. By the time he was nine, he was playing in revivals at churches, down in that area. The John Daniel Quartet - who were on WSM radio in the '40s - came through there and heard him play at a picnic and they said "How old are you?" He told them and they said "When you get out of high school we're gonna bring you to Nashville and we'regonna make you a star. Sure enough, when he turned 16, my dad got a call from John Daniel who said he wanted him to come to Nashville and play piano on the radio with him. That's what he did.
R.V.B. - I guess he had natural inborn talent.
A.S. - It was for him.
R.V.B. - Do you have any brothers and sisters?
A.S. - I have a younger brother and a younger sister.
R.V.B. - Were they involved in music as well?
A.S. - My brother is. Just like me, he plays a couple of instruments and works for a guy in town here called Les Kerr and the Bayou Band. He work with them four or five times a year. He plays guitar.
R.V.B. - I understand you're a drummer. When did you begin playing?
A.S. - I started around 1967. I wanted a drum set because I'd seen Ringo play one and I wanted one. My brother and I both did. About 69/70, I started playing with groups... in junior high. I've been playing in groups ever since. I also play guitar, piano and bass. In high school I played tuba for one year... when they needed a tuba player.
R.V.B. - Did you form a band in high school?
A.S. - Yeah. I had a couple of bands in high school. A few seniors had asked me to play when I was a junior. I have been playing ever since.
R.V.B. - Did you do Beatle covers, like the rest of the country?
A.S. - We did a lot of Beatle covers. We were doing a lot of '60s and '70s covers at that time. We were doing Neil Young, Deep Purple, Mountain and things like that... hard rock stuff. I wasn't into country at all back then. I got into country a little bit later.
R.V.B. - Even though you were in a country town.
A.S. - That's true. My dad was a major country studio musician at that time. I had heard country but I didn't really accept it. Probably because my friends in school didn't like it. I remember when I heard Tammy Wynette sing Stand By Your Man live at a Columbia Records convention back in 1971. My dad performed at that in California and he took the family. I heard all the Columbia recording artist's... Ray Price... Marty Robbins. When I heard Tammy sing that it brought Goosebumps on my arms. When she sings that little thing at the end. I thought "I do like this music." If it can bring out this kind of emotional reaction in me... I do like it.
R.V.B. - Did your dad ever bring his music buddies to the house?
A.S. - We would see all the members of The Jordanaires. I grew up with them. He didn't really bring a lot of session musicians other than a handful. We did have a houseboat in the late '60s, early '70s. He would bring folks out there on weekends. I would see Bob Moore, Lloyd Green and sometimes Owen Bradley. He had a boat and would come up to our house boat and say hello. They were my dad's friends and I didn't really appreciate who I was seeing at that time. Looking back, I appreciate it now.
R.V.B. - What college did you go to?
A.S. - I went to Peabody College... George Peabody. It was just becoming a part of Vanderbilt University. The campus's are right next door to each other. It is a part of Vanderbilt now. I was a music major at Peabody. I was a percussion major and as such, had to march in the Vanderbilt band. I did take a class at Vanderbilt. I didn't graduate from Peabody. I started working here at the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum full time in 1976. I've been here ever since.
R.V.B. - How did the gig come about?
A.S. - It was a summer job. I had been working in maintenance at apartment houses. My aunt and uncle were managers at an apartment house here in town. My dad had a business partner who owned another apartment house. In the summer I would mow the grass and make sure the pool met all the regulations. I did some painting and caulking. In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I decided I wanted to do something different so I asked my dad if he knew anything. He said "I'll call Jo Walker down at the CMA and see if they have anything." They didn't but at that time the CMA and the Country Music Foundation - which runs the hall of fame - were in the same building. She said the CMF needs a driver. They needed somebody to drive around and deliver brochures to the hotels and the welcome centers. I started doing that in the summer of 74. I was playing drums at this time and I thought I'm just gonna mess around until the band hits it big. It never happened. (Haha)
R.V.B. - They're few and far between that hit it big. Everyone has big dreams.
A.S. - I guess I wasn't that good. I couldn't put the time into it that I needed to.
R.V.B. - So you worked your way up at the museum and became the manager at Studio B.
A.S. - I started full time in operations at the front desk in the store. Setting the schedule for other people. That was in 76. In 77, the hall of fame acquired Studio B. Owen Bradley had purchased it from RCA. He thought, "What am I going to do with this little studio? I don't need it." He leased it to the hall of fame. We ran tours through there, starting in 1977. I created the first tours over there. I was down there until 1980.
R.V.B. - The interior of that building has a special aura. There's a handful of music places that have that aura, like maybe the Woodstock site... the Ryman Theater... tell me about the inside of Studio B.
A.S. - It's smaller than you think, when you go in. It's hard to believe that back in the day you would get eight piece string section with a four piece group... a vocal group... a rhythm section and a lead singer all recording at the same time. Back then they didn't play as loud as they do now. Nobody wore headphones. They set up baffles and everybody was in the same room. It was like that everywhere. The place does have a kind of an aura when you walk in. Tour groups from overseas go down there and they get very emotional when they go inside.
R.V.B. - The output of music that came out of that was unbelievable.
A.S. - Just tremendous. Then in 1980 the hall decided to build an audio restoration lab. Through Brad McCuen - who was on our board - found a guy from New York who was doing the similar kind of transfer work named Art Shifrin. They hired him and he built and installed an audio lab for them in 1980. Talking with him, it sounded like something I'd like to do. He suggested to the hall of fame that they should hire me. So I moved from Studio B back up to the old building on Music Row, in the basement. I started doing transfer work.
R.V.B. - Now when you say transfer work, I gather that you transfer tapes Do you transfer 78 records also?
A.S. - What I was doing back then Rob was transferring acetate discs. Radio transcription discs and home recorded discs. People had demo recordings... radio shows that had been committed to discs... media before tape was even invented. You're talking about late 1930's, early 1940's material.
R.V.B. - What is an example of something you may have transferred.
A.S. - I did some work on a series called "The Mothers Best Flour" radio show that Hank Williams did. It was about 100 discs. He recorded live in 1950/51 for later broadcast. They were on 16" acetate discs.
R.V.B. - Were you able to improve the quality?
A.S. - When you do preservation work, you're not really doing restoration work for consumption. I'm not trying to re-paint the Mona Lisa... as they say. I'm trying to clean the grime off and doing more physical cleaning of the material. I'm also concerned about choosing the right stylus and playback level. I do have clean up equipment, which I've used quite a bit, but not on these discs. I'm just trying to get the best transfer off of that medium on to digital medium... it used to be onto analog audio tape.
R.V.B. - Did you ever run into any problems where tape medium is not up to par?
A.S. - Yeah. Tape crinkle... tape shredding. You can have sticky shredding where you have to bake the tape. Acetate discs flake and crack. Some of them are metal based but a lot of them are glass based. During World War II they made professional disc for radio out of glass. You take them out of the sleeve and they're in pieces. You literally have to piece them back together on the turntables. I've had to tape them back together to get them to play. I've also worked on really important smaller recordings. I've done the first recording that Elvis Presley did at the Memphis recording service.
R.V.B. - I saw a little video clip of that with Jack White.
A.C. - I've also done Jerry Lee Lewis's first recordings. He went down to New Orleans with his cousin Cecil Harrelson. They did a recording at CosimoMatassa's studio. It was a two sided recording. I transferred that. I transferred The Wink Westerners, which was Roy Orbison's first work with his high school band. I've also done what I think is the first recording of Johnny Cash. He made a disc when he was overseas in the Air Force. He recorded a message to his wife at the time, Vivian. She had it in her possession all this time. If I could just get Carl Perkins's first recording then I could have a pretty good resume.
R.V.B. - You'd have the "Million Dollar Quartet."
A.C. - No kidding!!! I've also held in my hand and transferred a lot of Hank Williams's demo recordings... little 6/7" discs with just Hank and his guitar. It's a very small disc and it's got his writing on them. When I thought about it, I've held something that very few people have held. I'm transferring and preserving it for all time. It's very gratifying.
R.V.B. - How do you store these items. Is there an environmental chamber of some sort, where you store the source material?
A.S. - We have a climate controlled archive. The museum also has three dimensional items on the 5th floor archive room.
R.V.B. - Some of the items that you preserve will eventually be for the public.
A.S. - Yes I do get involved with that. I was pretty much the only engineer from when we started from 1980 to the last project which was probably 2007. We did the "Night Train to Nashville" rhythm & blues project, which I did a lot of 45,78 and album transfers. I did a lot of tape transfers. That won a Grammy in 2005 for the best historical recording.
R.V.B. - I'm sure you were very proud of that.
A.S. - I am very proud of that.
R.V.B. - Do you ever get involved with mastering at all?
A.S. - No. I used to get involved with overseeing mastering for CMF Record projects. I would bring the master tapes that I’d created to mastering houses here in town. I would spend a lot of time doing that.
R.V.B. - Hove you ever met Elvis?
A.S. - I met Elvis one time. It was 1960 and I was five years old. It was on a train down in Union Station here. The Jordanaires and the band were getting on the train with him to ride with him down to Miami Florida, to do the Frank Sinatra Timex TV special. My dad took me on the train and I met him. I don't remember much of it because I was so young. I remember a guy with really tall hair that looked kind of odd. Everybody was making a big deal over him.
R.V.B. - In your college years - I know you were into some of the rock and roll stuff - who were some of the acts that you've seen live in the day?
A.S. - I went to the Opry a lot with my dad. I would be back stage at the Ryman. I sat in Minnie Pearl's lap while the Jordanaires went on stage to perform. She gave me some chewing gum. My brother and I went to see the Beverly Hillbillies when they had Flatt and Scruggs, and Loretta Lynn open for them. Back in the day I've seen Paul Revere and the Raiders, Herman's Hermit's, The Dave Clark Five and other '60s groups. Later on I'd seen Little Feat, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, Todd Rundgren, Paul McCartney, The Who... with Keith Moon. I'm a rock and roller from the '60s and '70s. I saw The Meters with Aaron Neville one time and it blew my mind. It was over at Vanderbilt on the lawn. It was a free show. It was the best free concert I have ever seen.
R.V.B. - What are you proud about in your place in music?
A.S. - I'm proud that I've been able to preserve very important recordings. I'm very proud to work on that Elvis recording. That's when your heartaches begin and My Happiness...that Jack White brought in. I had also transferred it 15 years earlier for the guy who Elvis had given it to. That landed in my lap two different times. That's on the 50's masters that RCA put out. It's a 4 CD box set. I worked on the Hank Williams albums of rare demos and radio takes that the CMF
Records released. I love Hank Williams. "Just me and my Guitar" is a very important set. I'm very proud of the Grammy that I won for Night Train to Nashville - Music City Rhythm & Blues Vol. 1. I'm obviously proud of my dad's work. I get to see him and hear every day at work. There's a video clip that plays on a big screen. He passed away in 2013. I can go on the internet and see interviews done with him... see him laugh, talk and smile. I'm very fortunate. Most people can't do that.
R.V.B. - Tell me about the band. Do you have any gigs coming up?"
A.S. - I have a cover band called Teachers Pet that plays mostly private parties. We do R&B and some Motown stuff... mostly Stax Records stuff out of Memphis. Some '60s and '70s rock. I played with McKendree Spring for five to six years. They were on MCA records back in the late '60s, early '70s. They reformed back in 2008. I played drums and sang with them. I'm on a studio album, live album and live DVD with them.
R.V.B. - I do have a McKendree Spring album.
A.S. - Really? Fran McKendree and Marty Slutsky and Michael Dreyfuss. Unfortunately Michael passed away last year, but I talked to Marty last week. I started playing with them when they got together again. On line you can see McKendree Spring live at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland.
I also work with "The Long Players" here - which is an album cover group that's fronted by a guy named Bill Lloyd - who was with a group called Foster and Lloyd. They performed an Elvis album live and I worked with them on that. My brother and I also sang on a song on the E Street Band’s Garry Tallent’s solo album “Break Time”.
R.V.B. - Sounds like you're keeping busy and having a lot of fun.
A.S. - I'm keeping busy and having a lot of fun... yes.
R.V.B. - I congratulate you on your career. You've done some important preservation work for everyone to enjoy. Thank you for that and thank you for taking this time with me.
R.S. - Rob, I appreciate your comments and I appreciate you interest in me and my career.
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
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