CHAPTER TWO

CUCA'S ROOTS --- AND HITTING THE BIG TIME

Cuca Record's foundation paralleled that of many new independent labels created in the 1950's: Its home was far from the centers of the music industry and its owner did not have a professional music background. A combination of good timing, luck, and business creativity helped harness an early hit for the business, which in turn sparked the label's initial growth and expansion. Cuca, as well as other independents, discovered that a successful record did not just lead to fame and fortune. The hit also produced conflicts that helped the company form its future practices and policies, and foreshadowed complications in Cuca's relationship with the industry at large. Cuca's roots, therefore, carved its path through the twists and turns of the complicated music business, beginning with where its owner decided to plant the label's headquarters.

The home of Cuca Records, Sauk City, Wisconsin, was an unlikely location for a new independent label. Located about 25 miles northwest of Madison on the banks of the Wisconsin River, the city had a population that hovered at approximately 2,000 residents, the majority of which were descendants of western European immigrants. The town functioned as a supply center for its outlying residents' main occupation: agriculture. In fact, very few industries in the area were non-farm related and those that were usually provided services like the town's restaurants, grocery stores, and clothing stores.

Like many of the area's residents, Jim Kirchstein, the founder of Cuca, had a historical connection to the community. His great-grandfather, Gustave Kirchstein, emigrated from Prussia in the 1840's and settled in Sauk City as the town's first cobbler.^[1*] The family continued its stay in the community and Jim Kirchstein's parents owned a grocery store there in the 1920's. During the Depression, they lost the business and in 1931 the family moved to Florida. It was there that Kirchstein was born on 31 March 1931. He and his parents lived in a tent and, unable to fare better in Florida, the Kirchsteins returned to their Wisconsin home in 1932. Kirchstein's father slowly revived his grocery business, first by selling produce from the sidewalks of Sauk City and, in 1941, by purchasing an old downtown factory building, converting it into the area's first supermarket.^[2*]

During his youth, the German-Swiss population of Sauk City, as well the Anglo-Celts in neighboring Prairie du Sac, exposed Kirchstein to their musical traditions. In the 1940's, the most common musical form heard in this area was old-time: polkas, waltzes, and schottiches. Kirchstein, who dabbled with the trumpet in high school, and his friends attended Saturday night polka dances at a music hall in nearby Fish Lake, waltzing to the tunes of local ethnic bands like Uncle Julius. As Kirchstein later commented, "I like old-time music. It's in my blood."^[3*]

Kirchstein did not set out to pursue a career in music, however. After graduating from high school during the Korean War, he enlisted in the Navy as a naval cadet. Although he originally planned on a ten-year commitment to the Navy, he instead took a four-year service option and in the final year of his service taught electronics, an emerging field of study, at the San Diego naval base. In 1954 he left the Navy and started an electrical engineering education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison through the G. I. Bill. Within four years, he had his engineering undergraduate degree and had completed a portion of a master's degree in the electronics field.

While attending the university, Kirchstein concluded he needed additional income to support his new family; he had married a Mexican-American woman during his stay with the Navy. Because the G. I. Bill stipend did not supply enough funds, he began selling records from his brother's Toy and Hobby Shop in Sauk City which was adjacent to his parents' grocery business. In the basement of this store, Kirchstein opened the Hi-Fi Record Shop where he sold records and studied for his electrical engineering education. Mirroring the experience of Johnny Vincent of Ace Records, it was in this capacity that Kirchstein began learning the marketing and distribution side of the music business. Here, too, he began to recognize the need for a recording outlet for area musicians to whom he had been exposed during his youth and college years.

Similar to other upstart indies of the era, Kirchstein's early recording equipment was second-hand; he could not afford to purchase state-of-the-art technology, nor did he need it. He found an old Ampex Stat tape recorder for 300 dollars which recorded sound on ten-and-one-half inch reel-to-reel tapes. He also acquired an ancient RCA microphone. Kirchstein was apprehensive about the expenditure for the equipment, but his desire to record musicians outweighed the pain of investment. Evident at this early date of 1959 was Kirchstein's interest in being simply more than a "one-shot" producer, a common practice of the time. During that year a record salesman came to the Hi-Fi Record Shop and informed Kirchstein of an independent label in Milwaukee, Phau Records, whose owner had recently died. Kirchstein located the owner's widow and she agreed to sell all of the label's hardware, including 300 of the original master recordings made for the label (which possessed several old-time musicians who would later record with Cuca) and record-cutting equipment for acetate masters. In this way Kirchstein acquired, for a small price, his own master-making capability - a decision that would decrease his production costs in the years to follow.^[4*]

Kirchstein's foray into the recording business came toward the end of the expansionist era. The number of new entrants into the industry was beginning to stabilize in the late 1950's and early 1960's and eight companies controlled half of the total market. These were the "big four" companies: RCA-Victor, Capitol, Decca, and Columbia, as well as new corporate entries like MGM and Warner Brothers.^[5*] The need for new labels at this time was questionable; the market continued to be bombarded with hundreds of new song releases weekly and thousands of 45's and LP's flooded the market each year. However, this industry proliferation had virtually ignored south-central Wisconsin. In every town existed a band, old-time, country, or rock-and-roll (which had finally caught on in the area in the late 1950's), who perhaps had the talent but did not have the access to recording facilities.

The first artist to take advantage of Kirchstein's new service was Don Chambers of Lodi, Wisconsin. He and his band recorded "Riding Down the Canyon" and "I Overlooked an Orchid" (an old Carl Smith country tune) on Kirchstein's recently purchased second-hand equipment right in the tiny room of the Hi-Fi Record Shop. Kirchstein and Chambers decided to have 300 records pressed and Kirchstein contacted RCA, one of the only large firms which would do "custom work" at the time. Because Kirchstein had the equipment to cut his own master recording, RCA of Chicago would press 300 records for $37.50 or twelve and one-half cents per record on 300 units. (The price decreased to ten cents per record for 1000 units.) If he had not had master capability, an additional $50 to make the 45 rpm master, or $100 for an LP would have been tacked onto the bill.^[6*] Other independent labels during the late 1950's and 1960's also utilized RCA's custom work services, including Tee Pee/Target Records of Appleton, Wisconsin.^[7*] A major like RCA, therefore, profited from the indies' activities even though they were in direct competition for record sales.

Both RCA and Cuca succeeded in the pressing of the Don Chambers single release as it sold well in the Sauk City area. With the profit from the record, Jim Kirchstein purchased his musicians' union license for $200, a necessity because the union local based in Baraboo, Wisconsin strongly enforced such things as union pay scales, work hours, and venues played by artists. Also, Kirchstein had recalled an incident with the union during high school that compelled him to become a licensed recording outlet. As a youth, he played in a band directed by his school's band leader and the group was hired to play a gig at The Chateau, a hall at Devil's Lake, Wisconsin. The band was just completing their second set of selections when pop bottles began sailing across the hall, aimed at them. The cause of violence was that the students in the band were non-union, thus not subject to union pay scales or hourly work rules, and constituted a threat to union musicians' livelihoods. Kirchstein and his high school friends fled the venue, but the incident reminded him years later of the union's power. However, by the mid-1960's the Baraboo local's power had largely dissipated and Kirchstein's contact with the union was minimal throughout his career.^[8*]

The next recording venture taken on by Kirchstein was a rock-a-billy instrumental by Willie Tremain's Thunderbirds. Again, he had RCA press 300 copies of the single. However, after he placed an order for more copies of the release, his RCA contact, Bill Leonards found a problem with the records. The original label name chosen for Kirchstein's releases was Swastika and the records' paper labels included the symbol in their artwork, causing workers and management at the RCA facility to feel uncomfortable with the Nazi association. Kirchstein maintained that he chose the Swastika insignia because the large German population of Sauk City considered it a good luck sign. He had no intention of conjuring up pro-Nazi sentiments through his record business. (In later years, he believed the FBI investigated his activities based solely on this "dumb thing" he did.) Impulsively, Kirchstein decided while on the telephone with Leonards to rename his business Cuca, the nickname of his wife's Mexican-American cousin from Los Cusas, New Mexico.^[9*]

With a new name and therefore a continuing relationship with RCA, Cuca Records could move forward. Within less than one year of business and through several strokes of good luck and timing, Cuca established itself as a regional and, to a certain extent, nationally known company. In December 1959, record salesman Ron Straussburger (or Ronny Conway as he called himself) stopped by Kirchstein's store with a tape of a Madison-based rock duo. He asked Kirchstein to consider releasing it on the Cuca label. Kirchstein set the tape aside for the holiday season and rediscovered it on his shelf January 1, 1960. It contained a song called "Mule Skinner Blues," a rock-a-billy novelty song, originally written by country music legend Jimmie Rodgers in 1930 as "Blue Yodel No. 8." The Fendermen duo, Jim Sundquist and Phil Humphrey, had recorded their version in a friend's basement, though this was the not the first time the Rodgers composition had been re-recorded. In the late 1940's, a West Coast group, Maddox Brothers and Rose, released their version of "Blue Yodel No. 8" which also was a rock-a-billy version, complete with yelps, screams, and howls, characteristics of the Fendermen's adaptation.^[10*] Years later, Kirchstein discovered yet another version of the tune by an artist who had recorded it around 1958. This rendition was almost identical to the Fendermen's; it even included the laughing of the singer.^[11*] Unaware of these recordings at the time, Kirchstein thought the song unique with possible hit-potential. He placed a pressing order with RCA, releasing "Mule Skinner Blues" under Cuca catalog #1003. In order to get the song market exposure, he began "sampling," or sending, the record to radio stations around the country, including with it a note stating, "This is new, we're little. Please give it a listen."^[12*] He sent about twenty copies a day during the spring of 1960, until one day the Fendermen and Cuca got their break.

Kirchstein's timing was fortuitous. He received a call from a deejay in Lincoln, Nebraska, to whom he had sampled the Fendermen's record. The deejay said, "You sent me a record called 'Mule Skinner Blues.' I liked it, I put it on. I got so many requests and I'm so sick of this record. I want you to send me twenty-five free copies. I'm going to give away twenty-five copies and I'm not going to play any song but 'Mule Skinner Blues' for the entire day because I'm so tired, I want to get rid of it."^[13*] This stunt, along with the song's exposure on deejay Lindy Shannon's program on WKBH in La Crosse, Wisconsin, created extensive demands by radio stations, record stores, and distributors for copies of the 45 single. Because Kirchstein had only ordered 300 records and had sampled many of the copies, he was ill-prepared to meet the demand. He had a custom-order account at RCA for record pressing, and the company would fill his order when it had time. This often meant that he would have to wait three to four weeks to receive singles from the pressing plant because hundreds of different singles were being pressed and released on weekly basis, keeping the presses busy at the larger companies. Also, the majors' own pressing needs took priority over custom orders. Having to wait up to one month to receive an adequate supply of copies of "Mule Skinner Blues" would have killed the chances of the song becoming a best-seller. Concluding it would not be fair to the Fendermen, Kirchstein made a decision which both put Cuca on the industry map and made him confront one of the biggest challenges to a small record company.

Having heard about the popular new song from Cuca Records and correctly calculating the distribution problem, Amos Heilicher, owner of Minneapolis-based Soma Records, contacted Kirchstein. He wanted to lease the recording from Cuca and issue it on Soma. He offered Kirchstein 10 cents per record sold, a generous 25 percent royalty agreement at a time when 45's sold for 98 cents retail, 60 cents at the wholesale level, and 40 cents to the distributor. Kirchstein agreed, knowing he would be unable to fully exploit the song's potential himself, and sent the Fendermen's manager to Minneapolis to solidify the contract.

According to Kirchstein, however, Heilicher was unfortunately a less-than-honest businessman. The contract returned with only a 6 cent royalty promise on every record sold. Heilicher also had the Fendermen re-record "Mule Skinner Blues" and released the record with a different song on the b-side of the record. Interestingly, the original b-side on the Cuca release was a song penned by Jim Sundquist and published by Kirchstein through BMI; Heilicher chose a different song to avoid paying publishing royalties to Cuca.^[14*]

Heilicher had a well-established business system at this time, a virtual monopoly on the recording, pressing, distribution, and marketing ventures in Minneapolis.^[15*] Through his radio station connections, Heilicher enabled "Mule Skinner Blues" to receive national exposure and in April of 1960 the song went to the number five position on the Billboard chart. The Fendermen appeared on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" television show during the summer (according to Heilicher, it cost 800 dollars to get the band a performing spot) and then ventured on a national tour. The single sold thousands of records as a result of the tour and TV spot but Kirchstein had not received a penny of the promised royalties. Kirchstein stated that Heilicher admitted that he was holding back payment purposely, investing the profit to gain interest. To pressure Heilicher into fulfilling the contract, Kirchstein hired an attorney and sued Heilicher for the money due. Just two weeks before the scheduled trial, the litigating parties settled for $50,000. In all likelihood, Kirchstein would have won the case had it been presented before a judge. In the 1959 U.S. Court of Appeals case Shapiro, Bernstein, and Co. v. Remington Records, the court ruled it was the reproducer, not the owner, who was responsible for keeping records of royalties due and paying those royalties to the copyright or song owner.^[16*] After paying the attorney fees for the out-of-court legal work, Kirchstein earned $9,000, significantly less than the song was worth but enough to move Cuca into a new stage of development.^[17*]

One of the first steps Kirchstein took to solidify his standing as a bonafide record company owner was to establish a music publishing arm of his business. A music publisher is a firm which owns and controls copyrights of songs and it derives its income from the royalty payments on songs' public performances, recording sales, and, to a lesser extent, sheet music sales. Becoming a publisher is not difficult; all one needs is a musical composition and a small payment to register the copyright. The majority of publishing firms in the U.S. are small, independent operations. Paralleling the recording industry, however, the largest and most prosperous are subsidiaries of conglomerations and are generally concentrated in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville.^[18*] All of the major record companies have a publishing division to handle the copyright licensing of their artists.^[19*] Publishing services have also been means for record companies to gain extra income.^[20*] Kirchstein joined the ranks and set up both Kirchstein Publishing and Seven Sounds as vehicles to register his recording artists' compositions. He did not plan to make much profit from this side of his music business; he became licensed as a convenience for the song writers and never simply published a song without also recording the artist who wrote it.^[21*]

The primary concern for a publishing outfit like Kirchstein's was to secure copyrights and publishing royalties for his artists. A copyright is an author's protection against others copying or stealing his or her music. U.S. copyright law and royalty payment procedures were not established until 1909, after the Victor company had already began distributing royalties to its recording artists; as early as 1904 opera singer Enrico Caruso signed a contract promising him, among other payments, a $10,000 advance on royalties earned per phonograph.^[22*] Royalties on sales promised profit to the artists, which in turn attracted popular musicians to a recording label, thereby increasing the company's overall profits. In order to protect this rich potential (before 1909 record companies could record material without first securing permission from the author or owner of the song or paying the author/owner a portion of the profits made on the material), the record industry agreed to pay the holder of a copyright two cents for each copy of the song recorded. After a record label licensed a song, any other company could also record it without getting permission from the copyright holder as long as the holder was paid the two cent royalty.^[23*] The law also included a provision for royalty payments for publically performed copyright material, the income from which would later provide, mainly through radio, the majority of the profit from the copyright material.^[24*] The passage of the 1909 Copyright Law was even more significant from a general business standpoint; while establishing a specific floor for payments, it brought government regulation between the supplier and manufacturer in price controls for the first time in U.S. history.^[25*]

The Copyright Act also determined the length of time a composition could maintain its profitability to a publisher. The 1909 law stated a copyright could be held for 28 years with a right to renew for another 28, entitling the copyright holder up to 56 years of royalty payments. The government revised the law in 1976, extending the period of protection to the life of the author plus 50 years before the composition passed into public domain. This legislation also increased royalties to 2.75 cents per selection or .5 cents per minute of playing time, whichever sum was greater.^[26*]

Shortly after the first Copyright Act became law, members of the publishing and performing industries recognized the need for an institutional structure to police copyright compliance and distribute the often lucrative royalties earned on reproduced music. Composer Victor Herbert formed the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1914, partly in response to recording companies' habits at the time of lying about sale and performance tallies thus diminishing publishers' and composers' incomes.^[27*] Because ASCAP's members tended to represent the traditional music publishing organizations of Tin Pan Alley in New York, the organization, like the major record companies, ignored the publishing and royalty collection needs of the writers and recorders of "uncommercial" music: country and rhythm and blues. Reacting to this bias and to a membership rate increase, radio broadcasters rebelled in 1940 and formed their own organization, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), to license songs for airplay, collect performance royalties, and distribute monies to its copyright owner members.^[28*]

In contrast to ASCAP's membership limitations, BMI accepted any composer or publishing house, opening the gates to writers of the new musical genres who would soon dominate the musical market. Another result of the musical snobbery practiced by ASCAP in the first half of the century was the refusal by many Nashville publishers to join ASCAP, choosing instead to support BMI and its open-door policy even after ASCAP lifted its membership requirements.^[29*] ASCAP and BMI, along with the Society of European State Authors and Composers (SESAC), represent over 60,000 publishers and composers, collecting performing rights royalties for their licensees and apportioning them based on a determination of how often the music has been performed. Unlike mechanical royalty fees which are paid only to the publisher based on number of records recorded and sold, performance royalties are paid to both the publisher and the songwriter, 85 percent of the monies resulting from radio and television exposure.^[30*] But, as Kirchstein had noted, the income derived from these payments has never been substantial for a small publishing arm of an independent company like Cuca.

Although information concerning the profits and losses of record companies' music publishing is rarely made public, even for research purposes,^[31*] it is generally assumed that a company with a small and obscure copyright catalog will receive only modest earnings at best from performance royalty payments.^[32*] The data retrieved from BMI's royalty statements issued to Kirchstein's firm, as well as from his own assertions, support this supposition. For example, the BMI report for the quarter ending on 30 September 1965 listed eight of Kirchstein's published selections along with the number of credited performances, each receiving a payment of .04 cents. The number of credited performances ranged from 56 for "Sweet Potato Polka," written in a collaborative effort by truck driver Ed Keele and Kirchstein, to 300 for "Strollin'" by Wisconsin polka leader Verne Meisner. "Strollin'" received just 12 dollars in performance royalties and the total for the quarterly report was $36.96.^[33*] A 1966 BMI statement paid Kirchstein $4.54 for the annual foreign credited performances of the Citations' "Moon Race," issued to BMI from a French performing rights society, SACEM.^[34*] International recognition of Cuca's recorded material also failed to generate any significant income from performance royalties. Even one of Kirchstein's most successful published selections, "Big Rig Rolling Man" which became a hit in Nashville in the mid-1960's, brought in just several hundred dollars during the 1960's and has only today reached a profit of about 1,000 dollars.^[35*]

To further compound the financial frustrations of a small sideline indie publishing company, Kirchstein split the royalties between the writers and the company. A 1968 contract for the song "Big Rig Rolling Man" divided the royalty payments into "three equal, thirty-three and one third percent shares; in other words each individual owns one-third of the total written composition." In the case of "Big Rig Rolling Man," Kirchstein by law shared all profits with Charles Fields and Donald Riis, the other two names listed on the copyright license.^[36*]

BMI continued to dominate the publishing of rock-and-roll, soul, and country music and it licensed 99 percent of Cuca's recorded material under the company name Kirchstein Publishing. Kirchstein's Seven Sounds arm of the business was his ASCAP branch. He joined ASCAP for awhile because of its long tradition and "prestige." However, the steep yearly membership fees kept him from continued use of the organization's services.^[37*] Its fees, along with its traditional prejudices, prompted other small independent companies establishing operations in the late 1940's through the early 1960's to be attracted to BMI. For example, rhythm and blues labels like Savoy, King, Imperial, and Aladdin each formed their own publishing company, taking advantage of the services offered by BMI and avoiding mechanical and performance royalty payments to another publishing firm.^[38*] In this way, astute entrepreneurs took a degree of control of their own businesses and reduced the hegemonic influence of the traditional publishing houses of Tin Pan Alley and those owned by the majors while at the same time increasing their own monetary gains, however small.

Some of the indies discovered the value of having their own publishing divisions only after suffering losses at the hands of their competitors. Johnny Vincent, who founded Ace Records in 1955, initially had no publishing arm of his recording business. One of the first songs he recorded was Earl King's "Lonely Lonely Nights," which sold an incredible 80,000 copies. Because Vincent had the song published through his former employer, Specialty Records, he could not lay claim to any mechanical recording rights if the song was released by another artist. Rather, he could only collect performance royalties on the broadcast of the King version. Specialty Records, recognizing the value of the song, employed Johnny "Guitar" Watson to re-record the tune. Being a better established company at this time, Specialty used its capital and promotional resources to make the Watson version into even a bigger hit on the radio and in jukeboxes, overshadowing the original Earl King version. Thus, Vincent of Ace lost the opportunity to collect mechanical royalties from the popular Watson version and was ineligible to glean performance profits on a non-Ace recorded version. He learned he must have a publishing arm and become a copyright owner to reap these profits and in 1959 Vincent created Ace Publishing Company, Inc. as a "paper corporation" to administer the copyrights of his artists' material.^[39*]

The business practice that Specialty employed to usurp Ace's records and profits is known in the industry as a "cover record" and this is legal under mechanical copyright law. The publisher of a song has the right to control the first recording of a musical selection, but after that time any label may also record and release the same piece by a different performer as long as the firm applies for a license and pays mechanical royalties to the copyright owner.^[40*]

In practice, the copyright law provision allowing for covers has favored the major firms or larger independents, like Specialty Records. A small, independent company would release an unknown or regionally popular artist's song and, if the song had hit potential and began to receive some airplay or chart attention, a major label could and frequently did record its own version of the song by a better-known artist. With their larger promotion budgets and better systems of marketing and distribution, the majors' covers of original songs very often became the best-sellers, robbing independents and their artists of profits. For example, New York-based Atlantic Records, a small company during the 1950's, issued rhythm and blues records by artists like the Chords and Joe Turner, who both achieved modest commercial success in 1954. However, larger labels habitually recorded million-selling cover versions of Atlantic releases by bigger name artists than the Chords and Turner, leaving Atlantic and its artists with meager performance and mechanical royalty profits.^[41*] Radio also contributed to the majors' successful covering tactics, especially in the 1950's when radio refused to play black artists who often recorded for indie labels. The majors contracted white artists, like Pat Boone, to record popular r&b songs, confidant that radio programmers would agree to play these versions of the r&b hits, thus giving the white artists and their record labels greater profits.^[42*]

Kirchstein experienced the cutthroat cover record competition on the song "Wooden Heart," although it was not written by a Cuca artist. In 1961 Elvis Presley's movie "G.I. Blues" appeared on the screen and its soundtrack contained "Wooden Heart," a song which Lindy Shannon (the deejay from La Crosse who helped break "Mule Skinner Blues" for Cuca) felt could be the next big hit for the label. He knew La Crosse area rock band Dave Kennedy and the Ambassadors and connected the group with Kirchstein. The band traveled to Sauk City to cut the record and, according to Kirchstein, it was during the recording session that Andy Doll, a country musician from Iowa, came to the studio and heard the master recording of "Wooden Heart." Realizing the potential of this song, he allegedly approached Nashville recording artist Joe Dowell with the prospect of recording the same song. Dowell did just that, releasing it on the Mercury label. Because of Mercury's superior size, promotional connections, location in Nashville, and distribution system, Dowell's version became the hit, just behind Presley's version on the soundtrack LP. At this time Billboard listed a hit song along with all the cover versions by various artists on its Top 100 chart. Dave Kennedy lay side by side with Dowell and Presley at the Number 4 position although the Cuca release had not even sold 500 records. Kirchstein had anticipated a hit, cut between five and six thousand records for distribution, and was left with nearly all the inventory as a result of the undercutting cover on the Mercury label.^[43*]

Proving this story of cover song thievery was difficult because cover versions were legal and therefore attempts at litigation would have been futile; Cuca was not the copyright owner of the composition. According to Shelby Singleton, a record producer for Mercury records from 1957 through 1967, he himself was inspired to have Joe Dowell record a cover of "Wooden Heart" after seeing "G.I. Blues." As an astute and well-connected industry man, Singleton knew that Presley could not release the song as a single because it would compete with Presley's other current chart hits.^[44*] Kirchstein felt burned by the situation, believing that a larger label stole his label's and artists' chance of getting a commercial hit. He could only retaliate by releasing "response" or "answer" records, a practice popular in the era: "You Don't Have a Wooden Heart" by Linda Hall and "I, Too Have No Wooden Heart" by Rhea Renee. Dave Kennedy also covered Joe Dowell's hit "Little Red Rented Rowboat." Although none of these issues became hits, it was one way Cuca and Kirchstein could "get even."^[45*]

Song leasing by other labels and by other publishing interests was another area where a small company like Cuca could be easily cheated. The song "Big Rig Rolling Man" mentioned earlier was an original Cuca release. Kirchstein collaborated on its writing and provided the studio time for its recording in return for a portion of the artists' performance and mechanical royalties. The collaborators, Fields and Rice, were part of the WMAD-Nashville radio station group which had connections to members of the Nashville music industry. Without Kirchstein's knowledge, the group leased the song to the powerful Acuff-Rose publishing firm which generated profits on the song during its stint as a hit record. It was only later that Kirchstein discovered this and by that time he had already missed the main sales, thus robbing Cuca of the lion's share of royalty payments.^[46*] And, of course, the biggest challenge Cuca faced in song leasing came with "Mule Skinner Blues," which resulted in legal action to recover a portion of the proceeds due. Although Kirchstein only received a fraction of the payments from the "Mule Skinner Blues" lease, it was enough money to launch the first of many developments at the Sauk City label location: a recording studio.

Although all it took to record a song was an inexpensive tape recorder, record label owners realized a bigger investment in the recording process would enhance their product and help the chances of increased sales during an era of intense industry competition. Following World War II and the proliferation of independent studios, the general focus of the owners and employees of these new companies was on the acoustic design of the studio to refine the recorded product. Soon, however, improvements in technology would require investments in more sophisticated equipment, larger studios, and professional sound technicians,^[47*] but in the 1950's producers at independent recording studios often were untrained in their craft. According to Dick Weissman, music producers came from one of three backgrounds: trained or untrained musicians skilled in listening for acoustical superiority but who often had little skill with the recording equipment; engineers with very little musical background who could operate the recording technology to get the right sounds from the equipment; or someone not trained in either music or engineering but had a good "feel" for what would record well.^[48*]

Jim Kirchstein was a trained engineer and an unprofessional musician with a knack for innovation in acoustics, making him an ideal independent record producer. During his stay in the Navy, he worked with anti-submarine warfare which required him to focus on underwater sounds and acoustical details, an experience which initially sparked his interest in the science of sound. The electrical engineering education he received prepared him to work with technological equipment and fostered his design skills.^[49*] As an independent with limited financial resources, these skills would serve him well as he developed his studio, employing his own personal acoustical philosophy.

Some producers, like Phil Spector, who had access to more advanced recording technology, began experimenting in the early 1960's with techniques such as tape dubbing and overdubbing, sound board mixing, and drum kits to create layers upon layers of sound. The final record's sound was achieved mainly after the musicians had recorded their compositions. Kirchstein, by contrast, drew upon his own heritage and fascination with the cleaner, more isolated, "Nashville sound" and employed what he called a German acoustical philosophy in his recording technique. Kirchstein believed using good studio acoustics achieved an un-muddied, undistorted product. The "Nashville sound" resulted from isolating musicians and their microphones with baffles, screens, or separated rooms to decrease splashover from instruments. The band members wore headphones in order to hear what their fellow musicians were playing, a process which often took time to learn if they were familiar with visual cues from one another. Kirchstein had to devise his own methods to achieve a sound similar to that of Nashville's because many of his artists belonged to large polka bands and both spacial design and monetary constraints limited his isolation abilities. He also believed in the value of producing on record the excitement and spontaneity of live sound as faithfully as is possible, with all band members playing their instruments simultaneously rather than laying down individual recorded tracks on tape. He therefore utilized some baffling and directional microphones to reduce some splashover effect throughout the label's history.^[50*] However, the most important achievement in Cuca's sound came from the actual construction of the recording studio room itself.

In the early acoustical years of the recording industry, before microphones and tape recorders, musicians were forced to play close to the recording phonograph. Recording engineers hung drapes or materials like burlap on the walls to reduce reverberation and the technicians guessed at musician placement to achieve the best sound balance. Often a dramatic increase in volume or pitch caused the recording needle to jump out of its groove, destroying the master take so that the musicians would have to begin their song again.^[51*] With the introduction of microphones in the 1920's and then the tape recorder in 1947, musicians and producers had far more flexibility in both space and accuracy. Artists no longer had to huddle around a recording machine and mistakes could easily be edited with a razor blade or scissors and adhesive tape.^[52*] Other benefits of early magnetic recording tape were its small and lightweight properties; it could play uninterrupted for one-half hour and record longer than the previous four minute limit; and it did not wear out. By contrast, old phonograph master recordings deteriorated after 30 playings and while damaged tape could be spliced, a broken record was worthless.^[53*]

Post World War II independents, having limited space and finances, often combined old and new recording technologies and creatively mixed and matched their resources to build unique studios. The Sun Records studio in Memphis during the 1950's demonstrated this. Sam Phillips' studio was a 30 by 18 foot room lined with old radio station acoustic tile and he did not use any baffles or screens to prevent sound leakage from one microphone onto another. Phillips recorded musicians like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis with five or six microphones onto an Ampex 350 tape recorder. The sounds were then "mixed" onto a single-track master which did not allow for any overdubbing or editing of the final product. This medley of old and new recording processes, limited space, and poor acoustic technology actually became the secret of the successful hazy Sun recorded sound.^[54*]

Jim Kirchstein had a more scientific approach than Phillips in the construction of his studio. Like Phillips, Kirchstein had limited access to new technology and capital which forced him to manipulate old or custom-built equipment and design a studio to capture the sound of his artists on record. Kirchstein constructed the first studio for Cuca Records in 1961 after receiving the settlement from Soma Records for "Mule Skinner Blues." The ceiling in the recording room was just seven feet high, but he designed it with a flexibility that would allow for future expansion. The walls of the first studio were simply concrete blocks upon which Kirchstein hung acoustic tile to reduce sound reverberation. During this first phase of the Cuca recording studio, Kirchstein used a second-hand tape recorder to duplicate the musicians' selections.^[55*] Kirchstein was also able to employ tape recorder technology to go mobile; he recorded groups such as the country band, the Swing Alongs, live at dances held at the local Dorf House hall.^[56*]

By 1963 Kirchstein had accumulated the knowledge and resources to expand Cuca's recording studio in the basement of a tiny, concrete building painted pink with blue diamonds. He enlarged the studio's capabilities as well as its size to three times that of the original. The recording room itself could hold a 30-piece band, a size necessary for the multi-member groups attracted to Cuca and one which greatly enhanced the results of the recordings acoustically.

According to Kirchstein, old-time recording in the 1960's was a delicate balance between acoustics and electronics. Before the electric age and before most smaller studios could afford the technology, most old-time bands recorded acoustically. Decades later, independent studios recording polka bands employed electronic effects to capture that earlier sound because the studio owners could rarely afford the bigger space demanded for acoustic recording.^[57*] Cuca, by contrast, had a luxury of space expansion and Kirchstein had the foresight to design the room especially as a studio; he did not have to convert the space when he remodeled.

Kirchstein's goal was to approach an open air sound to best enhance Cuca musicians' recordings. He also needed to employ construction techniques to remove bass notes from the room because bass instruments projected a non-directional, sticky sound which muddied a recording. Kirchstein developed a perfect 3-4-5 ratio in the 30,000 cubic feet room: a 30 by 40 foot ceiling and floor and a height of 24 feet to prevent standing sound waves from interfering with the recorded sound. The ceiling, which later Nashville studios would adopt, contained three separate layers of tectum board and acoustical tile to absorb high frequencies and remove some bass notes. Kirchstein then tackled the walls, where he attached a zig-zag covering of alternating strips of transit board and acoustic tile to scatter the sound, further preventing booming standing waves. To complete the studio's effectiveness, he installed mood lights which would not enhance the acoustics per se, but would hopefully inspire the musicians. Bright colorful lights lit the studio during the old-time musicians' sessions, blues artists played in a soft blue illumination, and rock musicians could chose whatever colors their emotions or tunes demanded.^[58*]

Microphone placement also was an important factor in achieving the desired sound. The electric recording process and the use of microphones introduced in the late 1920's increased instruments' frequency ranges and allowed more sound to be captured on record - the sensitivity of the mikes determining what notes were recorded and how they sounded. The problem with this new technology, however, was that the sensitive microphone also caught undesirable sounds and unwanted reverberation. This further forced studio engineers to concentrate on the acoustic properties of their studios. It sparked creativity in microphone and musician placement to highlight the microphone's benefits and delete its negative attributes.^[59*] By the late 1940's, the use of multiple microphones in studios was standard practice. Studio producers placed baffles or screens constructed of sound absorbing material around musicians to prevent notes from leaking on to their fellow musicians' mikes.^[60*]

Taking his cue from Nashville and Motown studio practices as well as his own desire to achieve the cleanest sound possible, Kirchstein experimented with a variety of microphone techniques. He used cheap, 45 dollar microphones, coaxing out an acceptable sound through musician placement, which was crucial to achieve the best sound balance. Kirchstein worked extensively with each Cuca band at every recording session and found placing the microphones very close to each instrument aided sound isolation. Instead of hiding each musician in separate recording booths, the practice used to isolate sound at some larger studios, Kirchstein placed heavy fiberglass roll-around screens and baffles around the artists. Besides the lack of multiple rooms in the studio, this practice allowed local and often inexperienced groups who were unfamiliar with hearing one another on headsets (which would be required with the use of booths) to both see and hear live their fellow bandmates. Kirchstein did, however, record the vocalist in one small, separate booth.

Depending upon the variety of instruments employed by each band, Kirchstein varied his microphone placement techniques. Guitarists tapped their microphones directly to the tape recorder, producing a 100 percent clean sound; absolutely no studio noise could be captured with a direct line. If a band sported a tuba and bass horn, Kirchstein strategically placed just one or two microphones in front of the group to accentuate the live feeling; the bass brass instruments' sounds carried well onto tape. However, a string bass would have to be miked closely, often with a microphone actually hung inside the bass body, to fully reproduce its soft sound.^[61*] Drum sets caused the most difficulty and the most experimentation during a Cuca recording session. Many screens and up to six microphones were needed to produce a clean sound. Kirchstein would wrap a microphone in a towel and set it inside the bass drum to get a muffled thud which would not dominate other rhythmic sounds. Cymbals especially were sources of distortion. They could be loud and tinny, and therefore required laborious microphone set-up. Finally, the microphones had to be a certain distance apart in order to be properly phased.^[62*]

The world of electronics continued to advance during the 1950's and early 1960's, revolutionizing recording as well as musical sound effects. The use of reverberation and echo became very popular in the 1950's, but, as with other aspects of the studio, an independent had to create its own innovations to manipulate these sound gimmicks because the new electronic technology was often too expensive and difficult to purchase.

Major studios had their own echo chambers built especially to create the sound and they also used electronics to produce time delays in the music or vocals to achieve an echo.^[63*] By contrast, independent label owner Leonard Chess of Chess Records achieved his echo effects by hanging a microphone in a studio toilet.^[64*]

Kirchstein explored several different techniques in order to achieve that echo effect as he too was unable to afford the technology to produce special musical effects. On an early recording of the Bek Brothers, a group of priests from Oconomowoc, Kirchstein wanted to enhance the vocals with echo. His parents' home was located only three houses from the Cuca studio and, being an old structure, the home had a cistern in the basement which was once used to retain rain water for washing. Kirchstein ran speaker and microphone lines across the back lawns and dangled a speaker and a microphone in the cistern. He drove the songs of the Bek Brothers through the speaker line to the cistern, picked up the music on the microphone, and brought the cistern sound back to the studio. He then mixed the captured echo effect created by the cavernous cement cistern into the recorded selections, giving the voices of the Beks a spacious quality.^[65*] Other artists which benefitted from this early experimentation with echo included old-time artists Verne Meisner and Roger Bright on each of their first LP recordings with Cuca.^[66*] Kirchstein also tried to get a similar echo effect by suspending a microphone in a 500 gallon metal tank which was buried outside the studio. The only problem with this method was occasionally the sound of dripping water could be heard on an artist's recording.^[67*]

Another sound effect desired by many of the artists who came to Cuca was reverberation. Again, experimentation was necessary because the technology to produce such an effect was either not invented or out of the reach of an independent. The first device tried in the Cuca studios was a Helmholdst resonator, which was basically just a constructed cavity which would resonate. Kirchstein found that it was too difficult to build and maintain and the reverberation sound it achieved simply was not worth the effort. He then crafted a resonator out of four-by-eight inch panels of thin plywood nailed to a frame and stuck it high in the corner of the studio. During a recording session, the wood vibrated and the device had the added feature of removing some of the bass in the room.^[68*]

One of the best investments Kirchstein made to enhance the Cuca sound was the purchase of an EMT reverberation plate for $2,300 dollars from a German manufacturer. After having it floated down the Rhine River and across the Atlantic Ocean, Cuca Records had acquired one of the first EMT plates in the United States. It was a one-by-three meter steel plate with a speaker coil at its center to excite the steel with sound vibrations. Two microphones attached to the plate, capturing up to eight seconds per note of reverberation and creating a stereo-like sound. This effect was then mixed into a recorded selection and it countered the often dry sound effects of the studio.^[69*] Later, Cuca musicians, especially those specializing in old-time music, recalled the EMT being one of the key factors in Cuca's distinctive sound. Steve Meisner, Verne Meisner's son, recalled speaking with Cuca recording artists like Roger Bright. He and other old-time musicians remembered the big, European-sounding reverb created by the EMT, which complemented Cuca's specially designed ceiling. Today, old-time musicians like Steve Meisner try to recreate this sound with electronic equipment but have found it very difficult with the technological and digital emphasis on note separation and dry, isolated recording--an unnatural recording environment.^[70*]

The use of stereophonic recording also involved innovation and experimentation. The film industry actually developed the concept of recording sound in stereo, as opposed to monaural, during the 1930's. However, the Depression hampered its commercialization and diffusion to the recording industry. Stereo was gradually incorporated into studios during the late 1940's when Webcor introduced a kit which converted mono tape recorders to stereo. Then, in 1953, Webcor made pre-recorded stereo tapes available.^[71*] By the late 1950's, the industry giants had rebuilt their studios and began fully incorporating stereophonic sound into their recording sessions. By the late 1960's, music recorded in stereo had obliterated the market demand for mono recordings and few companies continued to use the ancient technology.

Another introduction in 1962 was the four-track tape recorder which enhanced the "new" stereo equipment and made editing of individual musician's output substantially easier.^[72*] Multi-track recorders (four-track later expanded to sixteen, twenty-four, and forty-eight track) allowed those who could afford them the luxury of ignoring efforts like microphone placement and engineers delayed sound production decisions to the final mixing session. The new technology also allowed a single musician to record many different instruments himself or herself, the tracks later mixed together in a process called overdubbing.^[73*] By accident or design, this development was timely as it made the necessity of large bands virtually obsolete in the recording studio just prior to an era when the recording business would require cutbacks in both studio space and artists' salaries.

Like other developments, independent studios were latecomers to the new technology. Kirchstein was one of the first engineers in Wisconsin to purchase stereo equipment. He went to Racine, purchased the stereo recording cartridge, brought it back to the Cuca studios, and began releasing LP's in stereo around 1967. However, he had to develop his own techniques to incorporate stereo sound into his existing equipment. Although hampered with the ability to only record on a four-track recorder at this time (in the early 1970's Cuca graduated to sixteen-tracks), Kirchstein exploited his stereo capability as a gimmick to sell records, to compete in a market which was quickly rejecting mono-aural sound, and to attract artists to the Cuca studio.^[74*]

The artists who came to Sauk City, Wisconsin to record were an integral component in shaping Cuca's output of music. With them they brought their own ethnic backgrounds, artistic tastes, and musical talents and came away with a physical product of their artistic efforts and a knowledge of the services an independent recording label could provide - or not provide.