Top Producers of Music
There can be no music without the musical expertise of producers. The music producers takes on many roles such as controlling the recording sessions, coaching and guiding the musicians, organizing and scheduling production budget and resources, supervising the recording, mixing and mastering processes. A producer’s job is to create, shape and mold a piece of music in accordance with their vision for the album. Which record producers are at the top of their game?
The Produce of a Producer
Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones, Jr., also known as Q, is an American music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer and trumpeter. Jones was born into an African American family in Chicago, Illinois. He is the eldest son of Sarah Frances Wells and Delight Jones, Sr., a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter.
Jones discovered music in grade school and took up the trumpet. When he was 10, his family moved to Seattle, Washington; there he attended Garfield High School. In 1951, Jones won a scholarship to the Schillinger House in Boston. However, he abandoned his studies when he received an offer to tour as a trumpeter with the bandleader Lionel Hampton.
While Jones was on the road with Hampton, he displayed a gift for arranging songs. Jones relocated to New York City, where he received a number of freelance commissions arranging songs for artists like Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and his old friend Ray Charles.
In 1956, Jones toured again as a trumpeter and musical director of the Dizzy Gillespie Band on a tour of the Middle East and South America sponsored by the United States State Department. Upon his return to the United States, Jones got a contract from ABC-Paramount Records and commenced his recording career as the leader of his own band. Jones moved to Paris, France in 1957.
He studied music composition and theory with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. He also performed at the Paris Olympia. Irving Green, head of Mercury Records, gave Jones a new job as the musical director of the company’s New York division. In 1964, Jones was promoted to vice-president of the company, thus becoming the first African American to hold such a position.
In 1964 Jones broke down another barrier: at the invitation of film director Sidney Lumet he began composing the first of the 33 major motion picture scores he would eventually write. The result was the score for The Pawnbroker. With Hollywood beckoning, Jones resigned from Mercury Records and moved to Los Angeles to compose film scores full time. Some of his most celebrated compositions were for the films Walk, Don’t Run, In Cold Blood, The Slender Thread, In the Heat of the Night, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which featured Merrilee Rush performing a cover of the Burt Bacharach classic “What The World Needs Now”, Cactus Flower, The Getaway, The Italian Job, and The Color Purple.
He also scored for television, including the shows Roots, Ironside, Sanford and Son, and The Bill Cosby Show, as well as the theme music for The New Bill Cosby Show titled “Chump Change,” which would later serve as the theme for the game show Now You See It.
In the 1960s, Jones worked as an arranger for some of the most important artists of the era, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, and Dinah Washington. Jones’ solo recordings also garnered acclaim, including Walking in Space, Gula Matari, Smackwater Jack and Ndeda, You’ve Got It Bad, Girl, Body Heat, Mellow Madness, I Heard That, and The Dude.
In 1968, Quincy Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African-Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Song category. That same year, he became the first African-American to be nominated twice within the same year when he was nominated for Best Original Score for his work on the music of In Cold Blood.
In 1971 Jones would receive the honor of becoming the first African American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. Jones was also the first (and so far, the only) African-American to be nominated as a producer in the category of Best Picture (in 1986, for The Color Purple).
While working on the film The Wiz, Jones met Michael Jackson, who asked him to produce his upcoming solo record. The result, ‘Off The Wall’ has sold a staggering 20 million copies and made Jones the most powerful record producer in the industry. Jones’ and Jackson’s next collaboration ‘Thriller’ has sold 104 million copies and became the highest-selling album of all time. Jones also worked on Michael Jackson’s third solo album Bad, which has sold 32 million copies.
In 1985, Jones scored the Steven Spielberg film adaptation of The Color Purple. He and Jerry Goldsmith (from Twilight Zone: The Movie) are the only composers besides John Williams to have scored a theatrical Spielberg film. After the 1985 American Music Awards ceremony, Jones used his influence to draw most major American recording artists of the day into a studio to lay down the track “We Are the World” to raise money for the victims of Ethiopia’s famine. When people marvelled at his ability to make the collaboration work, Jones explained that he’d taped a simple sign on the entrance: “Check Your Ego At The Door”.
In 1994, Salzman and Jones decided to form the company Quincy Jones/David Salzman Entertainment (QDE) with Time/Warner Inc.. QDE is a diverse company which produces media technology, motion pictures, television programs (In the House, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and MADtv), and literary publications (Vibe and Spin). He was also the first African-American to win the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1995.
In 1996, Jones collaborated with David Salzman to produce the concert extravaganza An American Reunion, a celebration of Bill Clinton’s inauguration as president of the United States.
During five decades in the entertainment industry, Jones has earned a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 199. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African-American, each of them having seven nominations. At the 2008 BET Awards Quincy Jones was presented with the Humanitarian Award, this award was presented to him for all the work and service he has given to the world throughout his life.
David Foster
David Walter Foster, O.C., O.B.C., LL.D. (born November 1, 1949 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada) is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer-songwriter, arranger and a fourteen-time Grammy Award winner with 42 nominations. Foster was a keyboardist for the pop group Skylark whose song “Wildflower” was a top ten hit in 1972. He has produced debut albums for The Corrs, Michael Bublé, Renee Olstead, and Josh Groban, which were released under his own record label, 143 Records, and distributed through Warner Music. He also was one of the executive producers of John Stevens’ debut CD, Red.
Foster also composed the score for the film St. Elmo’s Fire, including “Love Theme from St. Elmo’s Fire” which hit #15 in US pop charts. Another song from the film, “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)”, recorded by John Parr hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 7, 1985. He collaborated with then-wife Linda Thompson on the song “I Have Nothing” sung by Whitney Houston in the 1992 film, The Bodyguard. The couple was nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award for Best Song for the song. Foster, along with Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, composed “The Power of the Dream” as the official song of the 1996 Summer Olympics, with Thompson providing the lyrics (sung by Céline Dion). He also composed “Winter Games”, the theme song for 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta.
In 2001, he produced an album of his own arrangement of Canada’s national anthem, O Canada, with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Lara Fabian. In 2003, Foster won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music and Lyrics for The Concert for World Children’s Day. His song “I Will Be There With You” (sung with Katharine McPhee ) is being used by Japan Airlines to promote the introduction of new aircraft to its US flights.
He has worked as a producer with Whitney Houston, Céline Dion, Barbra Streisand, Kenny Rogers, Michael Bolton, Deniece Williams, Donna Summer, Faith Hill, The Corrs, Brandy, Luis Miguel, Peter Allen, Richard Marx, Mariah Carey, Destiny’s Child, Red Army Choir, Vanessa Williams, Anne Murray, Olivia Newton-John, Andrea Bocelli, Deborah Blando, Lisa Marie Presley, Lara Fabian, Dolly Parton, Julio Iglesias, Gordon Lightfoot, Michael Jackson, Madonna, All-4-One, Ricardo Montaner, Al Jarreau, Kenny Loggins, Az Yet, Natalie Cole, Yolanda Adams, The Tubes, Michael Bublé, Chicago, Peter Cetera, Katharine McPhee, Air Supply, Josh Groban, Heidi Montag and many others.