Jim Beck Recording Studio

Jim Beck's studio was set up in the main street of Dallas, Texas.

After Jim was discharged from the US Army, as a Radio Engineer, (he broke both legs in an accident in California) in 1945, he set up shop in Dallas, offering recording service to whomever needed them. He gained Radio Broadcasting experience in the Army, where he set up a radio network, based at Wichita Falls. Before that time in the Army, he worked as a Radio Announcer in his late teens and by the time he was twenty five, he had worked at stations in Weslaco and Paris, Texas.

After being discharged, he then returned to Dallas and set up a Recording Studio on the main street. He did work for the army, recording public service pieces/announcements for them, then that stopped and he was forced to close shop. He would still record at his home. To further supplement his income, he worked as an announcer at local Dallas radio stations, including Big D Jamboree.

Whilst working at KRLD, he developed a taste for Country Music, and soon borrowed money to open a new studio in Ross Avenue, Dallas, and specialised in radio work, advertisements, and demo recordings

By 1950, the quality of his demo recordings began to attract interest from big name major record labels. Columbia exec Don Law would eventually bring artists in from as far away as Shreveport, Nashville, and Los Angeles to record at Jim's studio.

Country music historian Charles K. Wolfe wrote that Beck’s facility, though smaller than studios in New York and Los Angeles, was “the studio that produced the most distinctive sound of all, the one that produced the most influential recordings, and the one that came within a hairbreadth of changing the whole direction of the music’s development.”

Incidentally, Norman Petty was employed with Jim as a part time recording engineer. This is where Norman learnt to record and hone his audio engineering skills before setting up his own recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico.

Jim was adept with technology, he even built his own equipment and used it in his studio. He took regular trips to New York to review the latest developments in sound recording technology and often improved upon them back in Dallas. He also assembled a first rate collection of studio musicians, including fiddler Johnny Gimble, pianists Madge Suttee and Harold Cormack, and guitarists Jimmy Rollins and Joe Knight.

In 1953 Beck built a new studio on Forrest Avenue. He worked with/recorded Lefty Frizzell, Jim Reeves, Leon McAuliffe, Roy Orbison, The Light Crust Doughboys, Marty Robbins, Billy Walker, Floyd Tillman, Carl Smith, and Sonny James, and with artists from other genres, including Fats Domino, Buddy Holly (Buddy & Bob era), and even classical pianist Gregor Sandor

In a bizarre twist of fate, he died in 1956, after being hospitalised, due to the result of cleaning the recording heads on his tape machine, using carbon tetrachloride and forgetting to open a window or ventilator, which would have allowed fumes to escape and air flow in. He spent a few weeks in hospital then passed away.

Jim Beck shared the same birthday 11th August as David Box (and myself, Pete).

The "undubbed" tracks below were recorded by Jim at his studio.