Ted Kendall

Ted Kendall is a British musical restorer and a mastering engineer.

Biography

In the 1980s, Kendall was a recording engineer working for the British Broadcasting Corporation. He is credited with having rediscovered lost transcription recordings of several episodes of a BBC Radio science fiction programme, Journey into Space, which he carefully cleaned up and remastered.

In 1988, he left and set up his own mastering studio in Wales, which has been fitted out with modern digital mastering equipment.
The Fred the Oyster sound effect
The sound of an oyster opening which represented the introduction of Fred the Oyster.
From The Goon Show episode, The Sinking of Westminster Pier
(15 February 1955, s05e23)
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Recently, he has been credited with having assembled a unique collection of the highest available quality source material from The Goon Show, which he once again carefully cleaned up and remastered using modern digital equipment and techniques. The sound effects from The Goon Show had to be transcribed from original disc lacquers and shellac. The infamous 'Fred the Oyster' effect required declicking and decrackling as the source was a Columbia shellac 78. Kendall removed large and small clicks, and the crackle from all of The Goon Show sound effects, except those scratches which were part of the gag. Recently he has been responsible for the preparation of the Goon Show Compendium CD box sets, commencing in 2008 with Volume One. These include all of the Goon Shows from Series 5 onward (except twelve episodes for which commercial rights are held by EMI) plus bonus features, with Technical Notes by Kendall. As of 2015 nine volumes have been released, with a further two projected. The special "The Starlings", and the original version of "The Greatest Mountain in the World" (the only episode from Series 4 to survive in the BBC Archive) have not been included, and it is not clear whether they will appear in the final volume. However, "The Greatest Mountain in the World" has already been issued on one of the regular 2-CD Goon Show sets, with The Starlings projected to appear on a later one.

He has used his CEDAR Series 2 rackmount units to restore a number of well-known recordings and performers such as Django Reinhardt and Harry James, and pioneering recordings of the Mahler symphonies.

The Harry James album (Hep Records) was originally recorded onto 16" coarse-grooved vinyl discs, which were extremely noisy due to the medium and its age. Kendall was able to remove unwanted noise, ranging from light ticks to large scratches, with appropriate adjustment of his equipment.

Kendall has also recently restored the first LP recordings of three Mahler symphonies. The performances by Charles Adler were originally recorded in Vienna during the 1950s for the American SPA label, and the recordings have a wide dynamic range. Kendall removed unwanted clicks and crackle and, with the aid of sophisticated equipment, smoothed odd patches of distortion.

Awards

Sources