56 | APRIL 6 • 2023 

R

ecording gear is kind of an 
unusual item on the wish list 
of an average adolescent.
But the Webcor reel-to-reel machine 
Gary Rubin received as gift when he 
was 12 years old set him on the path 
for a history-making career. 
“I just started recording people 
I knew and went from there,
” the 
Detroit-born Rubin, now 76, says from 
Los Angeles, his home since 1996. And 
as chronicled in his new, self-published 
memoir, Big Dreams and the Detroit 
Record Business, Rubin’s recording acu-
men took him a great many places. 
From his basement studio at home, 
the Mumford High School graduate 
— who went on to study architecture 
at Lawrence Technological University 
and broadcasting at Michigan State 
University — built his passion into 
one of the metro area’s most prolific 
studios, Pioneer Recording, on James 

Couzens Highway less than a mile 
south of Northland Mall in Southfield. 
There, he recorded scores of musicians, 
including Eagles’ late Glenn Frey as 
a youth, as well as groups such as the 
Gambrells, the Tomangoes and the 
New Loves, who released music on 
Pioneer’s own record label. 
Rubin and Pioneer also boasted a 
broad array of national and regional 
advertising companies, including the 
Detroit automotive companies and 
auto dealerships, Art Van Furniture, 
banks, beer brands, the Detroit Tigers, 
McDonald’s and the Coleman Young 
mayoral campaign. Pioneer was a 
training ground for recording engi-
neers who went on to win Grammys 
and other awards, and Rubin also 
recorded bar mitzvah services and 
rabbinical sermons — some of which 
were part of the FBI investigation of 
the murder of Shaarey Zedek Rabbi 

Morris Adler during 1966.
And Rubin was happy to be behind 
the scenes rather than making music 
himself. 
“I discovered early on I can’t sing 
a note, as much as I like music, and I 
couldn’t play an instrument,
” Rubin 
acknowledges. He took accordion les-
sons, at his mother’s behest, when he 
was 10; “On Valentine’s Day, the teach-
er gave me a card and asked would 
I please stop taking lessons,
” Rubin 
recalls. He enjoyed writing poetry and 
had some songwriting ambitions, but 
his real talents came from his ears. 
“The end of the business I could 
really get into was being on the pro-
duction side,
” he says. “I had a talent 
for knowing talent and for knowing 
how to record them — sound engi-
neering, acoustics, knowing how to get 
the right mics for the right instrument, 
lots of little techniques. I picked up 
most of the details on my own.
”
Pioneer became part of a robust net-
work of Detroit recording studios from 
its opening during the fall of 1964 into 
the ’80s, when Rubin sold it and went 
into the construction business. 

FAME AND MORE
There were many brushes with famous 

Big Dreams

Pioneer Recording’s Gary Rubin 
looks back at his behind-the-scenes 
role in the Detroit music business.

GARY GRAFF CONTRIBUTING WRITER

ARTS&LIFE
BOOKS

PHOTOS COURTESY GARY RUBIN

Gary in 
Quad 
studio

Gary 
Rubin 

