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1 ​OVERTURE WHAT IS A RECORD PRODUCER? Bob Thiele (produced Buddy Holly, “Rave On”) It was all left up to the A&R [artists and repertoire] guy in those days as to who to record, when to record, how much to spend.Then you worked closely with the sales department. But the A&R guy was the important guy. Everyone relied on the A&R man to have hit records. Producers were in those days actually looking for the talent. They’d bring the artists to the attention of the executives at the company. The producers were pretty much on their own. As long as records were selling , the producer had it his way all the way through. Scott Hendricks (produced Faith Hill, It Matters to Me) A producer in country is different than a producer in other genres of music. A large part of our artists are not necessarily writers. One of the most important roles of producing in this format or genre is finding the songs and developing the direction for the artist that you’re going to be recording.That’s pretty different than other genres.We rely more on the songwriting community in Nashville than probably other communities do. It’s a very time-­ consuming process. Roland Janes (produced Travis Wammack, That Scratchy Guitar from Memphis) If you’re in the studio and you’re participating in sessions, then you gradually go from one type of participation into another. Every musician on the session is really a producer, but they don’t have the final say. They kick in with their ideas. In essence they’re helping produce the record. I went from being a musician to being a recording engineer, working with producers in the booth with me. It’s a matter of educating yourself. You gain experience with every session you do. You learn what works and what doesn’t.The reason for going into production is because you have a better chance to make a little more money in different ways. 2 P r o d u c i n g C o u n t r y Chet Atkins (produced Don Gibson, A Legend in My Time) You just let the musicians play what they want to play, and you use whatever you hear when you run it down. Somebody will do something, and you’ll think, “Goddamn, we could expand on that. That might be good for this record.” That’s the way I did it. I don’t know how other people did it. If you hear a mistake, you correct it. Later on in my career, we could do that, but at first we recorded in mono and, then, eventually went to stereo two-­ track. Then we went to three-­ track. Then we went to four, eight and sixteen and twenty-­ four and so forth. I used to record a lot of artists, about twenty-­ five people. Les [Paul] came up with that eight-­ track machine and, then, with the sixteen and so on. Ampex did. I told Les I was going to kick his ass for that. It caused me to have to do a lot more work and hire a lot more people. Bob Ferguson (produced Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors) It reached the point where the company meant the artist. There were production people and vice-­ presidents and everything else, but somebody had to work directly with the artists. That is the role of the producer , to represent the company to the artist, and, conversely, to represent the artist back to the company. I don’t know how many I produced (one of the guys told me he counted fifty-­ one), but each artist comes with a different set of needs. My role, the role I assumed, was to find out the needs of each artist and try to fill them. In your autobiography you mention three producers—Leonard Chess, John Hammond, and Phil Spector—who represent different modes of production. Spector is the auteur or producer-­ as-­ star. . . . Jerry Wexler (produced Willie Nelson, Phases and Stages) And Leonard Chess was a documentarian. A documentarian is somebody who goes out, hears or sees a performance, and takes that into the studio and replicates it. He saw Muddy Waters at a bar and recorded what he’d heard. John Hammond was the same kind of producer that I believe myself to be. He served the project. He tried to perceive the essence of the artist and then provided him with the most comfortable and...

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