Miami sound machine

MIAMI -- On any given night, as the fabled moon rises over Miami, the densest concentration of pop stars per square foot is likely to be found not in some South Beach nightclub, but in a quiet warehouse section 15 miles to the north. Rolls-Royces and Ferraris fill spaces reserved for Justin Timberlake or Jennifer Lopez. Assorted rock stars stop to chat in a parking lot next to the studio that many music aficionados consider hallowed ground.

"It's like an auto show," says Iggy Pop, who recorded most of 2003's "Skull Ring album" at the studio founded 50 years ago as Criteria. "All these rappers have these cool cars. And then Michael Stipe leaves a note on your window."

In these days of cheap digital home recording programs, professional studios seem like endangered species -- Hit Factory's original New York studio closed its doors in 2005 and Sony Studios in Manhattan shuttered a year ago. But in Miami, the Hit Factory has brought a second life to one of the hardest-working spaces in the recording business, a place where the technical, creative heavy lifting of making hits has been innovated, defined and refined for five decades.

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'Creative magic'

A who's who of artists -- from James Brown to Bob Marley to the Rolling Stones to Michael Jackson to Madonna -- have worked at the studio now known as the Hit Factory Criteria. A recent check of the Billboard Hot 100 found that virtually every other song -- including Lil Wayne's "Lollipop," Madonna's "4 Minutes," and Usher's "Love in This Club" -- was cut, tracked, mixed or remixed in one of Hit Factory Criteria's renowned high-ceilinged rooms.

"I used to see 'recorded at the Hit Factory Miami' written in the back of some of my favorite CDs," says Nelly Furtado, who recorded her 2006 album "Loose" there. "When I finally cut an album there, I understood why. The whole building has this creative magic."

If the Hit Factory walls could talk, what stories they could tell stories about rock-star decadence, the birth of disco and teen-pop titans. When Mack Emerman, a jazz fan, founded Criteria in 1958, the Rat Pack was playing Miami Beach hotel clubs and Miami's Overtown neighborhood had a jumping late-night blues scene.

Local singer Steve Alaimo, who had a '63 hit with "Every Day I Have to Cry Some" and was a founding figure of what became known as the Miami sound, says he was the first to record at Criteria, back when it was one room.