With little fanfare, the legendary jazz producer Teo Macero pass away this week. Jazz producers typically do not get recognized for their work and compared to the giants he worked with, Macero was sort of an afterthought when it came to famous jazz records. At least for casual jazz listeners who didn’t pay that much attention.
Perhaps most well known for his work on the late Miles Davis albums like In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, Macero was sort of jazz’s George Martin, bringing an artistic element into jazz production. This might seem common place now, but in many ways the early days of recording jazz was intended to mirror the live gig performance: the band recording live in the studio in single takes and usually countless songs in a day’s work.
Macero changed much of that by incorporating emerging technologies in multitracking, overdubs, splices and so on, most commonly found in pop records and experimental classical and electronic composers of the 50s and 60s. Despite all the studio trickery though, he still maintained the spirit of jazz to allow the musicians to feel free and spontaneous to create and improvise.
Prior to producers taking this approach, recording sessions weren’t much more than just a chance to package a bunch of new songs together while they were still fresh and hope to move some units in sales. Macero helped to make the concept of an album as a complete and purposeful package.
His legacy is still alive in projects today such as Floratone, in which producers Tucker Martine and Lee Townsend reworked improvisations by Bill Frisell and Matt Chamberlain into a completely different entity.
Check out this clip below of Macero discussing his work with Miles:
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Also be sure to check out this great post on the AllMusic blog that showcase’s Macero’s fantastic discography and the year of 1959 when he helped produce some of the best albums of all time: Miles\Gil Evans’ Sketches of Spain, Charles Mingus’ Mingus Ah Um, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out and a few more. Wow.