Shed Studios - The Beginning

The Beginning

Initially housed in a converted caravan, the first studio was based on a half inch 8 track Itam 805 tape recorder and series 2 Soundcraft 12:4:2 mixer. Mastering onto a Revox A77. This outfit learned its trade by making a series of live recordings at various music venues, but soon found that the caravan was a restriction and a proper studio essential for progress.

The equipment was set up in one of Blackberry Productions' radio studios, and the company started making advertising jingles, children's story records, and a few private band recordings. As the advertising work increased, the partners lost Neil Thain, who moved to Johannesburg, and in 1979 the business moved into a purpose built professional studio premises on the 4th floor of Park House, Park Street. With 4,000 sq ft (370 m2) available, these were comparatively large studios, comprising 20 x 20 ft (6.1 m) control rooms and 40 x 25-foot (7.6 m) live rooms. Its first recordings were for the folk singer and advertising Creative Director Clem Tholet. Clem's album Songs of Love and War was a chronicle of his early life. Clem Tholet became a good friend of the studios and brought a significant body of advertising work to it in the following years, as well as numerous privately produced singles, albums and film tracks.

The studios by now were called simply Shed Studios. Martin Norris and Steve Roskilly then set about offering free studio production time to deserving artists in return for a percentage of any resultant incomes. A publishing company Shed Music (Pvt) Ltd was created to deal with the music rights. In 1980, as the country became Zimbabwe, success was had with predominantly two artists : David Scobie and The Bhundu Boys, though many others became household names.

Roskilly originally asked David Scobie, a 14 year old with a Neil Diamond sound-alike voice, to sing on an advertising jingle. The jingle, commissioned by Nick Alexander, a copywriter for Matthewman, Banks and Tholet, won an award for best jingle. Martin Norris wrote a song called "Gypsey Girl" for Scobie to record. The released single shot straight up the record sales charts knocking Michael Jackson's "Thriller" off the coveted No 1 position. It was in the charts for 25 weeks, 9 of which were at No 1 position. Subsequently it peaked at No 5 in the South African charts, remaining for 19 weeks. Scobie was offered 2 TV shows on SATV as a result but despite further singles and several albums, his career didn't take off any further. When he left school, however, he joined Shed Studios as a trainee engineer, became a director, and finally left to start his own studio "Eibocs".

Meanwhile The Bhundu Boys were also having some success. Another great friend of the studio was the Zimbabwean guitarist Louis Mhlanga. He was a regular visitor to the studios, adding guitar parts to advertising works, and as session musician on a variety of albums. His last major work under his own name was Mukai and with Jethro Shasha Musik Ye Africa, before he moved to South Africa, where his career blossomed.