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Sound 80
Sound 80 was the main professional recording facility of Minneapolis, founded in the suburb of Edina by recording engineer Tom Jung and musician Herb Pilhofer in 1969. In early 1971, the studio moved into its newly completed premises at 2709 East 25th Street in south Minneapolis and comprised of three recording suites. It was quickly established as the go-to place for the top musicians of Minneapolis; Bob Dylan recorded Blood On The Tracks at Sound 80 in 1974, as did Cat Stevens for Izitso in 1977, and was where Lipps Inc laid down its breakthrough track Funkytown in 1979 – Cynthia Johnson Lipps’ lead vocalist was formally of Flyte Time the band which was the recruiting ground for member of The Time. Yet Sound 80 is best known as the studio where Prince cut his demo reel which wowed Warner Bros and launched his career.
Prince had been a full time musician since December 1975, laying down instrumentals for Pepe Wille’s funk band 94 East at rival Cookhouse Studio, 2541 Nicollet Avenue South, Minneapolis. Spending the following summer at Moon Sound Studio, a former hair salon at 4937 South 28th Avenue, having been given free reign of the facility by its owner, lyricist and record producer Chris Moon, he and Prince collaborated on writing songs – Prince the music and Moon the lyrics – that would be later rerecorded at Sound 80 for Prince’s demo tape.
So impressed was Moon by Prince’s talent, he introduced Prince to local talent manager Owen Husney, who would become his first manager. Husney booked Prince studio time at Sound 80 as well as a renowned local sound technician David Rivkin (Bobby Z’s brother), to lay down Prince’s all important demo tape, to shop him to the major labels on the west coast. Between the winter of 1976 through to the spring of 1977, Prince and Rivkin recorded six tracks in Sound 80’s Studio 2 to create the demo reel which Husney would take with him to LA for rounds of meetings with the major labels, that on 25 June 1977 secured Prince the contract with Warner Brothers Records.
All the tracks chosen for the demo tape originated from the Moon Sound sessions. Prince and Rivkin rerecorded these at Sound 80 on the studio’s 16-track console, which captured: My Love Is Forever, Baby, Just As Long As We’re Together, Soft And Wet, Jelly Jam and Make It Through The Storm. These were pared-down to three songs which Husney packaged with a simple press kit and submitted to Warner: Just As Long As We’re Together, My Love Is Forever and the funky instrumental Jelly Jam. That autumn, four of these tracks were again re-recorded during the sessions at Record Plant at Sausalito for Prince’s debut album For You. That very tape, owned by Russ Thyret, the Warner executive who signed Prince to the label in 1977, sold at auction for $67,259 on 22 June 2023. The demo’s three tracks would be later rerecorded for Prince’s debut album – Jelly Jam incorporated as the outro for Just As Long As We’re Together lengthening the original 3:25 song to 6:29.
Prince returned to Sound 80 in the summer of 1978 to continue recording with Pepe Wille, who was a mentor to Prince, and laid down the tracks Just Another Sucker, Dance To The Music Of The World and Lovin’ Cup for 94 East. Pepe would release these recordings in 1986 under an independent label, as a collection named Minneapolis Genius.
Sound 80’s building at East 25th Street was sold in 1990 and became an audio research facility for Orfield Laboratories. The studio gained later recognition when entered into the National Register of Historic Places, in 2020.
