John Judnich
Sound Engineer. Born 1938. Died May 5th 2005.
Began as a recording engineer during the early 1960s for folk acts such as Tim Hardin. In 1965 he recorded Lenny Bruce's The Berkeley Concert. In 1966 he designed and installed the sound system, and engineered many live sessions, at the Whisky a Go-Go. At this time he was sharing rooms with Lenny Bruce and it was Judnich who found Bruce's body. During 1967 he started producing shows at the Shrine Auditorium and went on to work on Lumpy Gravy. By the late 1960s he had built the mixing board at Larrabee Studios where he engineered several sessions for John Mayall. and developed a travelling PA system which would be hired, with Judnich as engineer, to touring bands such as the The Rolling Stones.
I had seen Lenny Bruce a number of times at Canter's Deli, where he used to sit in a front booth with Phil Spector and eat knockwurst. I didn't really talk with him until we opened for him at the Fillmore West in 1966. I met him in the lobby between sets and asked him to sign my draft card. He said no -- he didn't want to touch it.
At that time, Lenny lived with a guy named John Judnich. John earned his living part-time by renting PA systems to local groups. A state-of-the-art system then consisted of two Altec A-7 cabinets powered by a 200-watt amplifier, and no monitor system (they hadn't been invented yet -- the old-school audio wizards had convinced everyone that it was impossible to put a microphone that close to any speaker). Vocalists had no way to hear what they were singing -- they could only hear their voices bouncing off the back wall, from the main PA. We used Judnich's system to perform in the Shrine Exposition Hall (about five thousand seats). Anyway, John used to visit every once in a while, and it was on one of these occasions that he introduced us to "Crazy Jerry."
Judnich is referred to in the song "Lenny Valentino" by The Auteurs.
