Producers, Recording Engineers and Studio Wizards: POLL RESULTS

can't post a URL with an @ symbol in it (it also happens to be a malformed URL)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3488/5793488536_41d8460276.jpg

he is definitely a sonic architect/editor type of producer! see: Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, Maggot Brain, Flashlight, Atomic Dog etc

27. Jimmy Page (139 points, 5 votes, 1 #1 vote)
http://recordingdope.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/18/jimmypage.jpg
Credits: Led Zeppelin

Wow, never even considered either of these guys since they're so connected to their own music.

If Page had had much of a producer discog outside Zeppelin, he would have made my ballot, but I couldn't quite go there.

I don't know from P-Funk, but RHCP's Freaky Styley is such a fun record, and sounds great.

Wow, never even considered either of these guys since they're so connected to their own music.

personally I think the Page placement is kind of ridiculous for this reason - but Clinton is another story, not really being a musician. apart from the occasional lead vocal Clinton was more of an orchestrator, and a coordinator of a HUGE stable of musicians with a vast catalog of wildly different material. He would take hours and hours of material and edit it and shape it into a coherent form, often into very sharp, clever and groundbreaking concept albums. He was an idea guy.

and then once you get into how much Clinton's sound was copied over the years - jesus he's got one of the most influential catalogs ever

26. Willie Mitchell (140 points, 6 votes)
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_U2DIQZo8uVs/S0UcBld0IVI/AAAAAAAABz8/RoMRgdGosjw/s320/up-Willie_Mitchell.jpg
Credits: Hi Records house producer (Al Green, solo, Syl Johnson, Ann Peebles, many others)

Willie Mitchell's sound is about as perfect as sounds get. music from heaven (those 70's Al Green records)

25. Tom Dowd (141 points, 6 votes)
http://www.swampland.com/img/Image/articles/tomdowd/tomdowdb&w70s2.jpg
Credits: Atlantic Records house producer (Ray Charles, The Drifters, The Coasters, Bobby Darin, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Otis Redding, many others)

GC also produced a handful of random sub-Motown singles for Detroit groups that show up on "Northern Soul" comps now and again. He was still getting his shit together then, but it's interesting to hear.

Shakey said pretty much all of this while my attention wandered in the 20 minute gap between writing and posting, but here's my take on Clinton as producer:

In Re gospodin - I'd argue "producer" is the most accurate title to describe what Clinton did with P-Funk. Of course he writes most of the lyrics too. But he doesn't play an instrument and he's not even the seventh best singer in his band - he molds other people's talents to his own creative ends. Producer as mediator/synthesist, dig?

xp that's the most impressive list of artists ever! only Darin isn't godlike.

I was only trying to rationalize Clinton's absence from my ballot.

did you just diss Bobby Darin

cuz if so wtf man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVHAQX5sSaU

OK, Dowd's where I scream "too low"! How many in the top 24 are going to have a whole freaking documentary made about how important they were as a producer?

Tom Dowd got my vote. "Many others" indeed - early Eric Clapton and Derek & the Dominos, early-'70s Rod Stewart, and too many great jazz and R&B acts. (and yes, Bobby Darin made some great records in many styles; underrated.)

Pagey really was a great producer who understood things like miking Bonzo's drum both near and far to capture the ambience of a large room and such.

Thom Bell didn't get my vote but obviously did some great work

George Clinton one of the obvious greats I felt bad not voting for; so wildly influencial as both producer and artist. I'm not really into funk, but I can still appreciate when it's done well. And has anyone else been sampled more?

Tom Wilson got a vote from me. One of many great stories involving him: the first Simon & Garfunkel album stiffed upon initial release, and the duo broke up. Wilson listened to his now-departed act's record and thought "The Sound of Silence" was a great song, but it needed to be a *rock* song, not the acoustic-guitar-only track that was on the album. So he had Bob Dylan's backup band overdub electric guitar, bass, and drums, and rereleased "The Sounds of Silence" (now pluralized to denote the additions) as a single. A few months later, it topped the charts.

And Les Paul, besides singlehandedly turning the world on to the sound of the electric guitar, invented multitracking and overdubs, for which record production as we've known it for the last half century is indebted

Dowd produced mid-'70s Rod Stewart.

Probably shoulda voted for Tom Dowd, whose portfolio is unrivaled by pretty much anyone. Instead I suspended judgement on most of the technician/engineer types. My bad.

Also, James Brown has been sampled more than all of GC's productions combined. And he damn well better place here.

recap:

50. Mutt Lange (82 points, 3 votes)
49. DJ Quik (83 points, 3 votes, 1 #1 vote)
48. Carl Craig (85 points, 3 votes, 1 #1 vote)
47. Prince Paul (86 points, 4 votes)
46. Glyn Johns (87 points, 3 votes, 1 #1 vote)
45. The Dust Brothers (88 points, 5 votes)
44. Swizz Beats (89 points, 5 votes)
43. David Briggs (91 points, 4 votes, 1 #1 vote)
42. TIE Xenomania (94 points, 4 votes) AND Gary Katz (94 points, 4 votes)
41. TIE Jimmy Miller (95 points, 4 votes, 1 #1 vote) AND Norman Whitfield (95 points, 5 votes)
40. Marley Marl (96 points, 5 votes)
39. Joe Boyd (98 points, 4 votes)
38. Todd Rundgren (101 points, 5 votes)
37. Geoff Emerick (109 points, 4 votes, 1 #1 vote)
36. John Leckie (110 points, 6 votes)
35. Prince (115 points, 5 votes)
34. Chris Thomas (117 points, 7 votes)
33. Pete Rock (118 points, 5 votes)
32. Les Paul (122 points, 4 votes, 2 #1 votes)
31. Tom Wilson (124 points, 6 votes)
30. Thom Bell (131 points, 5 votes)
29. Martin Rushent (134 points, 7 votes)
28. George Clinton (136 points, 4 votes, 1 #1 vote)
27. Jimmy Page (139 points, 5 votes, 1 #1 vote)
26. Willie Mitchell (140 points, 6 votes)
25. Tom Dowd (141 points, 6 votes)

JB probably has been sampled more often, but still seems to me that Clinton has a wider breadth of recordings that have been sampled, even if the total number isn't as high. But I have no official stats on this, I'm just basing it on what I've heard, which obviously can't be everything that's out there.

why did you do the ties like that

good range of genres represented, major exception probably reggae/ dub. I would expect both King Tubby and Lee Perry to place, though.

xp yeah, looking at it, there are 28 people in that 26!

not that it matters really...

I don't understand, how would you guys prefer the ties to be listed

Xenomania and Gary Katz should jointly occupy the 41st position.

and Jimmy Miller and Norman Whitfield the 39th, ensuring you stick to 50 people in the top 50.

Like I say, it doesn't actually matter.

normally ties take up two spots; on would be #41 and the other would be #43

also the #41 tie isn't really a tie since there are different numbers of votes and one has a #1 vote; either of those could be used as a tiebreaker (and have in previous polls)

this is not criticism really, more curiosity

JB probably has been sampled more often, but still seems to me that Clinton has a wider breadth of recordings that have been sampled, even if the total number isn't as high. But I have no official stats on this, I'm just basing it on what I've heard, which obviously can't be everything that's out there.

this is maybe a bit of semantics, but JB's statistical superiority here is due, I'm sure, in large part to the preponderance of Funky Drummer drumbreak samples. Clinton's influence goes a bit wider than that tho - it's not just that everyone sampled Atomic Dog, it's that his basic sonic template has been copied over and over again throughout hip hop. I'm talking about synth-bass lines, stacked synthesized handclaps, Bernie Worrell and Junie Morrison's squiggly analog synth lines, the basic 96bpm funk rhythms, etc. this stuff is still being used. and then there's all the imagery/conceptual stuff - pimps from outer space etc.

xxp

Will there be even a single female producer?

I dunno I just allotted slots on the list to number of points. If an entry has the same number of points as another entry, then it seemed natural to list them both together rather than place one ahead of the other.

anyway

24. Holland/Dozier/Holland (165 points, 7 votes)
http://www.songwriteruniverse.com/images/hdh2.jpg
Credits: Mary Wells, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Supremes basically everyone on Motown in the 60s

above is apparently the only photo of all three of them, for some reason

I think we'll be boys-only unless Kate shows up. No female voters either, if I read the list right.

Didn't you vote?

Are you asking me out?

I dunno everybody's genders I can't say if any women voted or not

23. Rick Rubin (168 points, 9 votes)
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DEwpYSD3wN4/SiiwcG_Hg2I/AAAAAAAACi4/D8UConVrTv8/s400/RickRubinLoisAyres1986%C2%A9GEF.jpg
Credits: LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Slayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, others

Awesome photo.

I like a lot of Rubin's stuff and can appreciate his whole "invention" rap-metal as influential even when most of what resulted was utter shit... his latter-day productions do him no favors tho, placing him this high seems like a gross injustice in my opinion. I mean sure those Slayer albums are great but come on now, this guy is a one-trick pony.

"invention" OF rap metal that should say

He's amazingly prolific though, and has produced a lot of great records (as well as a lot of crap): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rubin_production_discography

He got my vote for being such a ubiquitous shaper of large amounts of interesting pop music over the last 30yrs...

wtf at clinton being so low

Rick Rubin was amongst those I was sure I would vote for until the time came to whittle down my list of contenders down to 20, and he didn't quite make the cut.

Are you asking me out?

That wasn't my intent, but hey, now that you've piqued my interest......

He's amazingly prolific though

shit doesn't improve with the addition of more shit

pretty much everything he's done post-1990 has been egregiously bad, with a couple exceptions

22. The Neptunes (172 points, 7 votes)
http://live.drjays.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Neptunes-producer-of-the-year-drjays-com.jpg
Credits: Clipse