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