Interesting Beginnings June 12, 2003
By VALERIE HYATT of the Journal Star
Next week is Golden Voice week at the Peoria Civic Center.
Well, not really. But Peoria native Dan Fogelberg is performing at the Civic Center Theater Sunday. And two nights later, the arena hosts Journey, REO Speedwagon and Styx in a classic-rock triple-bill.
Besides having sold tens of millions of albums in the '70s and '80s, all four of those acts have something else in common: When they were young, struggling and nowhere near famous, they made some of their first recordings at Golden Voice Recording Co., a small studio surrounded by cornfields in South Pekin.
"It was an exciting time," recalls 64-year-old Jerry Milam, who built the studio in 1966 (it was gutted by fire in 1978). "They've had such tremendous success. It's incredible to be so close to these people. I would have kept more records and keepsakes had I known."
It's not so surprising that he didn't. In the '60s and early '70s, Milam and his wife Mary Ann were too busy trying to build a business and raise a family to be star-struck by a bunch of teenage boys, strapped for cash, who had dreams of becoming rock stars.
The now-retired couple does have one doozy of a keepsake, though: a gold record for "Souvenirs," Fogelberg's 1974 album. It reads, in part, "Presented to Golden Voice Recorders to commemorate the sale of more than 500,000 copies of the Epic Records long-playing album 'Souvenirs.'"
"Today, when they remaster an older product, they usually don't pass along credits to the people who originally engineered and/or recorded them," Milam said.
Fogelberg still remembered Golden Voice years later. "Loved every minute of it," he recalled in a 1988 article that Mary Ann Milam wrote for the Journal Star.
"The studios I work in are among the best in the world," Fogelberg said then. "Golden Voice was convenient and adequate for my needs. Golden Voice, for a 16-year-old musician, was the big time. I learned a great deal about the basic recording process."
Looking back, it's easy to see why up-and-coming young rockers in Illinois would be eager to use a small recording studio whose hourly rate was usually around $25 an hour.
"We never kept a close watch on the clock. I'd say they'd pay anywhere from $300 to $400 for a two to three day stint," Milam said. "It got more sophisticated as we went on, but the low budget was crude in the beginning."
Besides being affordable, Milam's studio was accessible for bands like Styx, who did most of their recording in Chicago.
"(Styx engineer) Gary (Loizzo) was one of my customers, and Styx was doing a lot of recording in Chicago, and it was hectic so they wanted a change of pace," Milam said. "Gary brought them to us . . .
"They were ready for something different, and they could rent our studio by the day and not be pressured into time schedules with us," Milam said. "They could cut an album fairly fast. They were happy working in South Pekin away from the pressures of the city."
They showed their gratitude by thanking Milam and "all the Golden Voice people" on the back of their album "Man of Miracles."
None of REO Speedwagon's actual albums were recorded at Golden Voice, but the band made a lot of demos there.
"They'd come in at two in the morning and say, 'We've got a great idea," Mary Ann Milam recalls. "And Jerry would say, 'Mary, I've got to go to the studio,' and then he'd be gone and I wouldn't see him until the next day. It did run like that sometimes."
Journey never recorded at Golden Voice - they were a San Francisco Bay band - but keyboardist and songwriter Jonathan Cain, who joined the band around 1980, used to come down to Golden Voice with his brother Tommy when they were Chicago teenagers.
"Tommy played drums and Johhny played everything, sang and had a tremendous amount of talent," Jerry Milam remembers. "His real name is Johnathon Friga, but he went by Johnny Lee. Of all the talent that came through our studio, Johnny was one of the most talented." The name-change to Cain came later.
Those were good times to be in the business, Milam said; the industry was young and the doors were wide open. Other acts Golden Voice worked with were Head East, country singer and Peoria native Christy Lane ("One Day at a Time") and the Christian rock band Petra. (After leaving the recording business, Milam went on to sell recording equipment; Chet Atkins, Curtis Mayfield and Leon Russell were among his customers.)
"I can't say that I ever remember that we had problems," he said of working with Fogelberg, Styx and REO. "It was mostly a joyous time, a lot of hard hours of grinding away. Nobody seemed uptight. There was little controversy. Everyone had a good work spirit."
"We'd all be sitting around the table, telling jokes and eating hamburgers just like part of the family," remembers Mary Ann Milam. "It was commonplace to our kids, because nobody was famous at that time. They were all beginners just trying to make it. Back then, they were just trying to find their way."
