In 1946, aided by Al Reusch, a musician, big band leader, and one of the first
DJs in
Vancouver, opened one of the first recording studios in the country in Vancouver and christened Aragon Recording Studios. By 1954, Reusch had acquired sole ownership of the company and subsequently built Mushroom Studios in 1966 at 1234 West 6th Avenue, Vancouver. Built from the ground up as a first class audio recording studio, the facility was originally an orchestral recording room for special sessions by the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Author of
The Audio Cyclopedia and award-winning acoustician Dr. Howard Tremaine consulted on the original acoustic design and equipment installation, which led to
Diana Ross and
The Supremes becoming some of the first clients, followed shortly by
Led Zeppelin.
Sale to Herschorn As Reusch apparently did not like the idea of recording post-Beatles rock and roll, he sold the facility within five years to Jack Herschorn, who had previously co-founded Studio 3 on West 12th Avenue with
Tom Northcott. The sale materialized in the spring of 1971. In a sponsorship deal, the studios were named "Can-Base Studios". Herschorn appointed
Mike Flicker as Chief Engineer,
Howard Leese as program manager and Charlie Richmond as Head Technical Advisor. In 1971, Herschorn brought equipment formerly in use at
United Western Recorders to Vancouver and installed in Aragon, including the original
Universal Audio vacuum tube mixing console custom-built by
Bill Putnam. This recording console had been in use in United Studio A at 6050 Sunset Boulevard in
Hollywood since 1957, and had recorded hundreds of hits by such
artists as
Bing Crosby,
Nat "King" Cole,
Frank Sinatra and
Ray Charles. In 1973, the
Incredible Bongo Band recorded their version of "
Apache" at Can-Base Studios, in order to take advantage of
Canadian content laws. Can-Base was later renamed to "Mushroom Studios" after the recording label that was originally housed there. The studio gained prominence when Heart's hit debut album
Dreamboat Annie was recorded at the studio and subsequently released on their in-house label
Mushroom Records. The studio was purchased by Charlie Richmond in 1980 and updated to accommodate over 50 musicians in semi-isolated concert format to do
film scoring for dozens of feature films and movies of the week from
Chuck Norris to a redo of
The Dirty Dozen. The studio was recognized for the film score album of
Top Gun. For the seven years between 1999–2006,
John Wozniak of
Marcy Playground owned and operated the studio.
Hippowest In 2006, Rob Darch, owner of
Hipposonic Studios, bought the building but not the equipment therein and rechristened it to Hippowest. For four years, the original equipment remained at Hippowest for clients' use, but at the end of 2010, the console and all electronic gear were moved cross country to a new location on
Queen Street West in
Toronto, Ontario, custom installed and is currently operated by a team at Mushroom under the guidance of
John Wozniak. In 2013, the original Vancouver location was sold due to increased costs and decreased booking and was no longer used as a studio. Hipposonic relocated to
Great Northern Way Campus. ==References==