MICHAEL TIMMINS (1959)
A songwriter and guitarist, Timmins has produced albums by the Cowboy Junkies, the band he helped found in the mid-1980s.
JERRY WEXLER (1917–2008)
Legendary as an R&B producer, Wexler made few forays into country music, but he did notable work with Willie Nelson.
PAUL WORLEY (1950)
The Dixie Chicks, Lady Antebellum, and Big & Rich earned hits with the production assistance of Worley.
REGGIE YOUNG (1936)
In the 1960s, as house guitarist at Chips Moman’s American Studio, Young contributed his signature sound to chart-topping pop and R&B singles. After he moved to Nashville in the 1970s, he continued to play as he always had, but on chart-topping country hits.
PRODUCING COUNTRY
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.
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 fruitful setting to elicit what that essence might be. That has to do not only with attitude in the control room and the talk-back, it has to do with—once you’ve established the parameters—letting the musicians and the singer, if there is one, bring out the best in themselves. What you do is try to find the studio, the players, the arranger, the time, and the venue that will be most comfortable for them. And if they’re interested in your view of their material, to see whatever they may have self-written and to try to agree with them, reach an agreement about what will be the most appropriate for a particular session. If they don’t have material, then part of my job is to bring them a smorgasbord of songs for them to select from.
TOMPALL GLASER (produced Waylon Jennings, Honky Tonk Heroes)
I’ve pretty much made all the mistakes that there ever was. If a producer gets too involved in someone else’s work, he winds up overproducing it, and it ruins the soul in it. What really works the best, as far as drawing the artist out, is to just suck them dry, get every piece of input they’ve got, and then enhance it, make sure the music’s right. That’s what Owen Bradley always used to say, “If you get the music right, let the singer sing the song.” I think that’s probably the best.
But then, there’re other types of music to do. If a singer wants to get a certain type of a situation, and he doesn’t know how to get it and you do, then you kind of take the reins and lead him down the road a way until he gets the feel of it. You watch the [session] musicians that they don’t shuck him or you, either one. They get pretty slick in that studio. They’ll use the same licks over and over again. You think you’re getting the original ’cause you didn’t see them when they did it just yesterday.
STEVE CROPPER (produced Otis Redding, “Dock of the Bay”)
There are different types of producers. I refer to myself as a hands-on producer. I get involved with the music, with the songs, with the direction, with the musicians who are going to be on the session, and I’m usually on the session myself. I decide on the studio and the engineer. I call that a hands-on thing. I’m doing more than talking on the telephone, trying to make a deal and talking to the record executives. I talk to them very little, as little possible. I like to make the artist happy, and I like to make the manager of the artist happy. Unless you really know what you’re doing, it’s not worth making them unhappy. You can get a hit on them and say, “Well, I told you so,” but where does that get you? It gets you one hit record, and that’s all you get. If you make them happy and get a hit record, then you get them again and again and again, until you run out.
JERRY KENNEDY (produced Jerry Lee Lewis, Killer Country)
The approach I took was one I’ve seen the most or one any producer who’s been a musician usually takes: the approach that that’s a real team effort going on in there [in the studio]. If you’ve ever been on