June 27 - July 4, 1 9 9 6

They make the songs

Twenty-five record producers who helped change the music world

by the Phoenix music writers

George Martin's been called a hero, one the greatest silent partners in the history of music. Without his contributions, the Beatles might never have become, well, the Beatles. Leonard Chess has been called a motherfucker, one of the toughest bastards in the history of music. But without his contributions, Muddy Waters might have ended his life as a factory worker, and Howlin' Wolf could have spent his days shucking steel. And who would have inspired the Rolling Stones?

What Martin and Chess have in common, of course, is that they produced records. They were artists behind the artists, people whose contributions are indelible, influential, and yet so easy to overlook. Especially when locked in the sheer aural rhapsody of an album like Revolver or Folksinger. No, Mr. Manilow, they didn't write the songs -- but they certainly helped make them. And not just make them, but make them great.

Record producers as we know them today began blooming at least a decade before the arrival of the album era, when singles were the hits medium. In the subsequent four decades they've been elevated into the public's eye by sonic signatures, a visionary ability to identify talent or trends, a knack for arranging and other textural flourishes, or simply for being at the right place at the right time -- like Sam Phillips when he recorded Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm and discovered Elvis Presley, then had the good sense to get the hell out of the way and let them do their thing in defiance of what were then the accepted rules of the studio.

Most music fans have their favorite producers -- names that are the equivalent of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval when they appear in a CD's credits. What follows is a rundown of 25 of ours -- producers who have contributed something tangible and important to the history of music, or are in the process of making their contributions even today.

Steve Albini

His big accomplishment has been to bring the naked immediacy and blunt aggression of punk up to the level of a state-of-the-art 24-track studio. Even the big albums he's engineered -- PJ Harvey's Rid of Me (Island, 1993), Nirvana's In Utero (Geffen, 1993) -- bristle with grainy, black-and-white distortion, rumbling, uncompressed bass, and snares that rattle like broken glass. So while guys like Butch Vig are out there proving that even a punk band like Nirvana can sound pop enough for the radio, Albini has been on a crusade to prove that even a pop band like Nirvana can sound punk again -- and get on the radio. Now how punk is that?

-- Matt Ashare

Owen Bradley

The king of country-music producers, Owen Bradley is best known today for his work with Patsy Cline. But Bradley was the man who made Nashville "Music City USA." He moved his recording operation there in the early '50s to make records by Red Foley, Webb Pierce, Ernest Tubb, and the Wilburn Brothers, among others. His productions are simple, keeping the focus on the singer, making sure the instrumental soloists hew close to the vocal melody line. When Bradley built his own studio at 16th Avenue South, others followed. Now it's the center of the country-music industry: the fabled music row.

-- Ted Drozdowski

Leonard Chess

Leonard Chess could be mean as hell, firing off strings of four-letter invective at artists whom he felt weren't performing up to snuff or cooperating with his notions of how a song should be recorded. Some, like Buddy Guy, still harbor resentment toward Chess for trying to deny him work and not letting him be himself (that is, play loud and raw) in the studio. Chess has been accused of ripping off artists' royalties, and of the cruel old trick of silently billing artists for "gifts" like guitars and cars. But he captured the definitive sound of Chicago electric blues when he began recording a Mississippi migrant named Muddy Waters. To some ears, the blues have never sounded better than Chess's studio-vérité recordings of Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, and the other gods of the early electric-blues canon.

-- Ted Drozdowski

Dr. Dre

Straight Outta Compton (Ruthless/Priority), the 1988 debut by the group Dr. Dre founded with Eazy-E and Ice Cube, N.W.A, was a claustrophobic assault of cut-and-paste beats and samples, much like the work of their predecessors, Public Enemy. But check Dre's The Chronic (Interscope, 1992), Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggstyle (Death Row, 1994), or even the negligible disc he produced for the then 19-year-old femme rapper Michel'le back in 1989. The beats are still hard and phatt, but the grooves are smooth and sexy, the backdrops spacious and almost soothing in a eerie, even threatening kind of way. That's the sound of rap reconnecting to the center of black pop, forging a link to Sly and the Family Stone, P-Funk, Marvin Gaye, '70s soul and disco, and bringing something new and subversive along for the ride.

-- Matt Ashare

Bernard Edwards & Nile Rogers

Rodgers and Edwards not only built Chic into a formidable pop hit machine, they also recast Sister Sledge -- previously a mediocre Philadelphia act -- in the Chic image. Even better, with Diana (Motown, 1980), they awoke Diana Ross from her long show-tune slumber till she seemed a Supreme again, a star and happy to say so. But deft, staccato rhythms and singsongy melodies were only the surface of Chic's magic. What really counted were their story lines, savoring the good times and crying, "C'est chic," but most of all doubting themselves -- a long morning after for people drunk on looking good and making it. Disco had always featured breathy flirty sopranos, but Edwards and Rodgers took a joyful sound and painted it sad.

-- Michael Freedberg

Manfred Eicher

Easily the most controversial producer in jazz, Eicher is also one of the most influential. His ECM albums established new standards of clarity and sonic depth in the stereo age. Matching the work of European improvisers with a distinctive reverb "room" sound, Eicher gained a reputation for recording chamber jazz. The icy cool sound of his work matched the Norwegian setting of his studio, and he as much as anyone presaged New Age music. But it would be oversimplifying to call him a minimalist. Eicher also recorded some of the strongest work of such warm-blooded American jazz men as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sam Rivers, and the Ornette Coleman-alumni Old and New Dreams band. He also recorded the best-selling jazz album of all time: Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert.

-- Jon Garelick

Brian Eno

Eno coined the term "ambient," but no one sound defines an Eno production. At its best, his organic approach makes him an equal collaborator with the artist he's producing. And it's Eno's ability to play the studio as if it were just another instrument that's made his best efforts so satisfying. You can credit Eno protégé Flood with the industrial overtones of U2's Achtung Baby and Zooropa (Island, 1991 and 1993, respectively). But you have to hand it to Eno for infiltrating the ranks of a band like U2 and steering them in a brave, new direction -- one that was so cool, you didn't have to be a U2 fan to appreciate it. Or for getting so inside the Talking Heads that he could take them from the art-school new wave of "Psycho Killer" to the deep, fluid, rhythmic brilliance of Remain in Light (Sire, 1980) in just three years.

-- Matt Ashare

Flood

Flood brought the clang and hiss of industrial into the mainstream via Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine (TVT, 1989), U2's Achtung Baby (Island, 1991), and PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love (Island, 1995). His remixes, uh, flood the alternative-house 12-inch bins. Like all the best producers, Flood adapts to the artists he works with. The churn of NIN is all grinding alienation. U2 turned a corner working with Flood and Brian Eno, embracing the glittering noise of the modern world. And Polly Jean Harvey created her strongest recorded work to date with Flood's assistance, blips and fuzztones floating to the surface of her songs like emanations from the subconscious.

-- Jon Garelick

Berry Gordy

Gordy's '60s Motown was the home of a staff that cranked out one hit after another. Holland-Dozier-Holland, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Norman Whitfield, and, later, Ashford and Simpson, all competed in the Motown pressure cooker, working with groups like Martha and the Vandellas, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Supremes, and the Jackson Five. But it was Gordy himself who, in the words of writers Jim Miller and Joe McEwen, conceived of the Motown songwriting/production formula: "a clean R&B record that sounded as white as it did black." It was a formula that would incite the crossover phenomenon Gordy called "The Sound of Young America."

-- Jon Garelick

Norman Granz

Jazz aficionado Norman Granz represents the producer as impresario. He anticipated the modern age of jazz festivals with his touring Jazz at the Philharmonic in the '40s and the resulting recordings; he produced the classic jazz film short Jammin' the Blues, by Gjon Mili. He managed Ella Fitzgerald for much of her career and persuaded her to record the "Songbook" albums. His early labels, Clef and Norgran, became Verve, with its massive catalogue of jazz greats, from Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, and Bud Powell to Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie. In the '70s, his Pablo label released work by Ellington, Ella, and Coltrane, plus the monumental solo piano series of Art Tatum.

-- Jon Garelick

Jam & Lewis

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who began as members of Prince's band the Time, were the first producers to build a black pop-hit style based on '70s funk and show-tune innovations. Michael Jackson's vocal style, Prince's keyboard buzz, Earth Wind & Fire's double drumming, and Slave's soul vocals atop polyrhythmic progressions had proved themselves, but now, in arrangements by Jam and Lewis, they were used as what constant radio repetition had already made them: a backdrop, not to mention an ongoing sideshow in support of a center ring of a teen-oriented, star-worshipping musical circus. Into which stepped (among others) Alexander O'Neal, Cherrelle, and finally Janet Jackson. It was she whose furious dancing and Michael Jacksonish voice best expressed the dazzle-spectacle celebrity structure of Jam and Lewis's music and gave kids like Brandy a ready role to play and a script full of well-choreographed beats to dance to.

-- Michael Freedberg

Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones's long, wide-ranging career can be summed up in one word: Thriller. On that Michael Jackson megahit, producer/arranger Jones perfected a sound that defined black pop in the early '80s: equal parts street funk and high-gloss soul, catching the moment when traditional R&B was giving way to hip-hop. He also made Michael Jackson come off as smooth and sexy, which is looking more like a major feat with each passing year. Jones was always a master homogenizer; during the '60s he led a traditional big band around the same time he was producing Lesley Gore's "It's My Party." And one can only imagine the ego-managing skills that allowed him to work with Jackson, Frank Sinatra, and the roomful of hotshots that sang on "We Are the World." Jones has since turned into a professional jet-setter, his two recent solo albums being all-star valentines to his own career.

-- Brett Milano

Daniel Lanois

The New Orleans sound and the Brian Eno sound met beautifully on Lanois's production masterpiece, the Neville Brothers' 1988 Yellow Moon (A&M, 1989). Originally an Eno protégé and part-time member of Martha & the Muffins, Lanois was Eno's co-producer on U2's Joshua Tree (Island, 1987) and Peter Gabriel's co-producer on Gabriel's commercial breakthrough So (Geffen, 1986); he's reported to be working on the next U2 album as well. Lanois took a similarly daring approach to Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy (Columbia, 1989). And his recent work with Emmylou Harris suggests that he may have a niche as the producer who pulls experimental works out of vital veterans. Call him the thinking artist's Don Was. Lanois's solo albums are also rewarding as long as it doesn't bother you that he can't sing.

-- Brett Milano

Steve Lillywhite

During 1979-'80, Steve Lillywhite oversaw three landmark albums within a 12-month period: Peter Gabriel (Mercury), XTC's Black Sea (Geffen), and U2's Boy (Island). All three challenged the punk-rock mentality that an album had to sound like a live band. Lillywhite manipulated sound as aggressively as any old-school producer, but he did so in a way that enhanced the songs -- which, on these albums, were as deep and complex as anything being written at the time. With Gabriel he echoed and doctored the drum kit (played by Phil Collins) to create a claustrophobic pound that became the standard '80s drum sound. On U2's album, Bono's vocal climaxes and the Edge's guitar slicings reflected the youthful delusions of grandeur that the lyrics were about. And XTC's sound matches the band's early creative hyperactivity. Yet Lillywhite went on to produce the Rolling Stones' all-time worst album, 1986's Dirty Work (Virgin).

-- Brett Milano

Teo Macero

Jazz recording is traditionally done "live," but Teo Macero, in his work with Miles Davis, carried jazz production into the rock-and-roll era in more ways than one. After producing Miles's acoustic bands (including 1959's Kind of Blue), he worked on the bandleader's pivotal electric albums -- and the birth of jazz-rock fusion: In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew (both 1969) and A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1970, all on Columbia). Aside from helping Miles capture electric instruments, Macero -- a composer and saxophonist himself -- also helped him use the studio as another tool of composition. Through the use of editing, loops, and even in the special echo trumpet effects on Bitches Brew, Macero and Miles turned long studio jams into finished compositions.

-- Jon Garelick

George Martin

All right, so Martin's career didn't exactly remain white-hot after his main clients, the Beatles, broke up. He did produce an influential pair of fusion albums for Jeff Beck and Cheap Trick's All Shook Up (Epic, 1980). But it's the Beatles' catalogue that cements Martin's reputation as one of the greats. Under his tutelage, a wet-behind-the-ears beat combo was transformed into . . . well, into the Beatles. "Strawberry Fields Forever" alone was a bid for immortality, with the master version spliced together from two separate recordings of the song (one sped up, one slowed down); the result is more sonically profound than either of the versions it was built from. And he did it all with a more primitive version of the four-track equipment that marks a band as "low-fi" nowadays.

-- Brett Milano

Jimmy Miller

The Rolling Stones made four great albums, discs on which they finally equaled the blues they'd been worshipping since their early London club days: Beggars Banquet (London/Abkco, 1968), Let It Bleed (London/Abkco, 1969), Sticky Fingers (Rolling Stones/Virgin, 1971), and Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones/Virgin, 1972). Never mind that producer Jimmy Miller spent his final days producing lame metal bands in the Boston area. Even if you were to credit him only with facilitating those Stones sessions, you'd still have to rank him as one of the all-time greats. Aside from producing, that's Miller playing drums on Keith's "Happy," percussion on the haunting "Black Angel" and the rockin' "Loving Cup" and "Bitch."

-- Matt Ashare

Lee "Scratch" Perry

No producer in reggae history has been as musically influential as Lee "Scratch" Perry. Despite (or because of?) decades of assuming the identities of madman, prophet, and clown, he has managed to produce timeless recordings of numerous key figures in Jamaican and UK reggae, from Bob Marley and the Wailers at their most transcendentally chilling ("Duppy Conqueror") to obscure Junior Byles at his most lyrical ("Curly Locks"). Perry was quick to bring engineer King Tubby into his studio and so deserves part of the credit for dub's invention during the '70s. He crafted such sugary Top 40 fare as Susan Cadogen's "Hurt So Good," but he also did the majestically ritualistic "Heart of the Congos" by the Congos, a number full of hazy harmonies and spooky Rasta atmospherics.

-- Norman Weinstein

Sam Phillips

Sam Phillips is the spiritual father of modern Memphis music. Maybe even rock and roll. Not only was he responsible for recording what's acknowledged to be the first rock-and-roll tune, the Ike Turner-penned "Rocket 88" (sung by Jackie Brenston), but -- after years of having little success recording the black blues artists of the region -- he discovered what he'd been looking for (a young white man who sang like a black man) in Elvis Presley and signed him to his Sun Records. Turns out the rest of the world had been looking for Presley too. And for rock, as Sun's success with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash proved.

-- Ted Drozdowski

Rick Rubin

Plenty of other people made the connection between hard rap and heavy metal back in the early '80s -- Run D.M.C., for example. But Rubin brought a key third ingredient -- punk irreverence -- to the mix and put the Beastie Boys over the top with Licensed to Ill (Def Jam, 1986). He also convinced the Red Hot Chili Peppers that they weren't funky enough to be a funk band, and that a healthy injection of Zeppelin acid boogie, Beatlesque pop, and, well, songwriting was their ticket. The result, BloodSugarSexMagik (Warner Bros., 1991), actually got the Peppers airplay on adult-contemporary stations. And then there's Johnny Cash, whom Rubin delivered to a new generation. American Recordings (American, 1994) is maybe the best example of Rubin's particular talent as a producer in the larger sense of the word -- that is, as a guy who makes more than music happen.

-- Matt Ashare

Adrian Sherwood

Reggae purists object to someone whose production credits include the Fall and Depeche Mode. But Sherwood's productions on his "On-U-Sound" label have contributed mightily to the careers of giants like the late Prince Far I and the still vibrant Bim Sherman. Whatever his flirtations with progressive rock, punk, or hip-hop, he's done his best production work with killer bassists and percussionists in a solid reggae groove. Any of his Pay It All Back compilations -- Volume 2 is a favorite -- reward headphone listening immensely. Not as funny or willfully eccentric as Lee Perry, Sherwood triumphs through his huge illusory soundstage and his attentiveness to small coloristic threads that run through bright, multi-textured spaces and create the musical equivalent of luminous kente cloth.

-- Norman Weinstein

Phil Spector

Spector set out to make records that sounded the way teenage emotions felt: all big and nervous and heavenly. It took a few rooms full of musicians, unheard-of studio effort, and no shortage of temper tantrums to create the "wall of sound" he was after, but he got it. The cosmic come-hither of the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and the pre-break-up cataclysms on the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" remain definitive rock statements. One of his last major productions, Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High," was as blatantly sexual as rock production ever got. Spector's career didn't really outlast the '60s. After screwing up the Beatles' Let It Be (Capitol, 1970), he went into an eccentric semi-retirement that continues to this day, with just one last masterpiece in the Ramones' 1980 "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio."

-- Brett Milano

Allen Toussaint

New Orleans pianist Allen Toussaint birthed an entire school of groove-oriented '60s Southern soul pop in the hits ("Mother in Law," "Fortune Teller") he wrote and recorded with Lee Dorsey, Ernie K-Doe, Chris Kenner, Wilson Pickett, and his ace session crew the Meters. He produced LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade" and Dr. John's In the Right Place (Atco, 1973). His hallmarks are clever, erudite wordplay; a gentle but strong rhythmic rush; and a knack for melody-rich structures that hew to the lessons he learned coming up with other great New Orleans artists like his inspirations Professor Longhair and Huey Smith, and his peers Art Neville and Irma Thomas. Having conquered his on-stage shyness, Toussaint is now touring vigorously (he'll play the Newport R&B festival in July); he's also started a new record label (NYNO) and has released a new album full of the songs he continues to write on a weekly basis.

-- Ted Drozdowski

Butch Vig

There are all sorts of rumors about what it took to get that impeccable sound of Nirvana's 1991 Geffen debut, Nevermind. But Vig's ability to recognize a great hook played a major part. Much has rightly been said about Nevermind's guitar sound; never before has an amp cried so clearly for mercy. But Vig also recognized Cobain's singing ability, which was hardly explored on Bleach (Sub Pop, 1989). Among his other productions, Sonic Youth's much-underrated Dirty (DGC, 1992) was the first SY album with proper vocals and a flesh-and-blood tube-amp sound that delivers the warm-but-scary ambiance they were after. Freedy Johnston's This Perfect World (Elektra, 1994) has an acoustic sound no less detailed than Vig's more celebrated work on the first two Smashing Pumpkins discs. In recent years Vig has returned to his mediocre pop roots with Garbage.

-- Brett Milano

Jerry Wexler

As an A&R man and producer, Jerry Wexler's contributions to soul music are inestimable. By supporting and signing artists like Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, and the Stax Records roster, the Atlantic Records executive helped soul evolve from a black-marketed, regional style into something that not only yielded international hits but has become a vital part of the fabric of American culture. He took Memphis music to the masses, gave songwriters and producers like Muscle Shoals' Dan Penn opportunities to make hit records, and cut best-selling singles himself with the likes of Solomon Burke and Franklin. When his business interests later turned to rock and roll, he was instrumental in bringing blues-rooted artists like Cream, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin to Atlantic.

-- Ted Drozdowski