Producing Country: The Inside Story of the Great Recordings

Introduction

xix INTRODUCTION Cowboy Jack Clement knew a thing or two about record production. He made the first recordings of Jerry Lee Lewis, while his boss, Sun Records’ Sam Phillips, was away at a music-­industry event. Here’s something Clement told me: I was the guy in there running the board, but I was also in charge of the session, telling the musicians what to do. That made me a producer , but the word “producer” wasn’t even extant at that time, as I recall. Sam would be doing the same things. But they didn’t put producer credits on records at that time. I think RCA is the first one that did that with Chet Atkins. That’s the first I ever heard of putting “produced by” on a record. That wasn’t going on in 1956. I think that started happening in 1957 or ’8, something like that. We won’t get a better clue for understanding early record production. Clement makes two points: first, there was record production before there were “record producers”; second, the term “record producer” refers to an awareness, a recognition of record production. On the one hand, there are the duties of production (the tasks). They’ve been around for a long time, ever since recordings were first marketed in the 1890s. On the other hand, there is the designation “producer” (the term). Chet Atkins clarified the designation for me. He said his boss, Steve Sholes, head of RCA Victor’s country-­ and-­ western division, was the one who “started listing personnel.” He added, “That was his [Sholes’s] doing. He wanted to put the producer. He wanted to list the engineer, too, on each single, but they wouldn’t do it. The record company claimed there wasn’t enough room on the record [label] to print all that stuff,” but soon enough, most of “that stuff”—the recording credits—appeared on record sleeves and jackets.Who had brokered the 1955 deal that brought Elvis Presley to RCA Victor? Who was performing the tasks of production , even if he didn’t hold the title of “producer”? Why, it was Steve Sholes. Atkins, again: xx I n t r o d u c t i o n Steve used me on most everything he did. He’d call me and tell me to record a certain song with a certain artist. I just did it like he did it. I’d already been hiring the musicians for him. I was kind of his assistant for quite a while. So I’d imitate Steve. I owe everything to Steve. To this comment add a series of events that answers why and, perhaps , how the title “producer”—and not “director”—came into general use. In August 1956, Presley headed out to Hollywood to work on his first movie, Love Me Tender. He’d already released his first album, Elvis Presley (March 1956). Its jacket listed no personnel, though anyone who cared to know would’ve understood Sholes’s role in its making. He was the all-­ important head of A&R (artists and repertoire). Working with recording engineer Bob Ferris, Chet Atkins might have fulfilled duties that now look like production (e.g., he assembled the band), but Sholes was the executive tasked with making all of the big decisions. For example , at his first session for RCA (January 10, 1956), Presley recorded three songs he had routinely performed: “I Got a Woman,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “Money Honey.” Sholes allowed Presley to record this familiar material, but he’d already planned a follow-­ up session for the very next night. At that session Presley sang two songs—“I’m Counting on You” and “I Was the One”—from a list created by Sholes. Significantly, both of these numbers were published by a subsidiary of Hill & Range, the firm that had helped underwrite the deal that brought Presley to RCA. From the five songs recorded during these two sessions, Sholes selected “Heartbreak Hotel” backed with “I Was the One” as the first single. To calculate the revenue the single generated, one has to enter the morass of RIAA certification. Suffice it to say, it vindicated Sholes’s high-­ stakes wager. Immediately, the $35,000 RCA had paid for Presley ’s Sun contract—at that time the most money ever spent on a pop singer—seemed like a bargain. Notice, then, Sholes’s tasks make him resemble a “producer” more than a “director” in the Hollywood sense of those titles. Getting...