Legendary Producer Phil Ramone Dead at 79

31 Mar, 2013

Phil Ramone — an oft-honored visionary in the field of audio recording and the presentation of music; who helmed classic albums by Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Paul Simon, Billy Joel and many others over a career that stretched back to the early 1960s — died this morning in New York. He was 79.

A prolific producer who spent 50 years in the industry, Ramone died Saturday morning at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Ramone’s son Matt told the media. Ramone had been hospitalized in late February with an aortic aneurysm.

His 14 Grammy Awards reflect the breadth of his work and the landmark nature of the recordings he was associated with: His first Grammy win came in 1964 for engineering the breakthrough bossa nova album “Getz/Gilberto”; Billy Joel’s “52nd Street” won album of the year for 1979 and in 1982 became the first pop CD ever released; and in the year for which he won producer of the year, 1980, his productions included Chicago, Paul Simon and Joel.

Ramone also pioneered the use of a fiber optics system to record from different studios, using the system to record Frank Sinatra’s last albums, “Duets” and “Duets II.” The first Grammy for surround sound went to Ramone to Ray Charles’s “Genius Loves Company.” That album of duets also won album of the year trophy for Ramone.

As an engineer, he was behind the desk for some of the classic albums of the early 1970s: Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” the Band’s “Rock of Ages,” Donny Hathaway’s “Extension of a Man” and Paul Simon’s first two solo albums. The end of the decade found Ramone producing significant commercial hits by Columbia Records artists Chicago, Joel, Kenny Loggins, Barbra Streisand and Phoebe Snow.

“My career as an engineer and producer coincided with one of the most profound periods in pop music history: that of the contemporary singer-songwriter,” he wrote in his 2007 book “Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music.”

A founding member of META (the Music & Engineering Technology Alliance), Ramone was also active in music and service related organizations. The chairman emeritus of the board of trustees of the Recording Academy, he was co-chairman of the Producers and Engineers Wing, a former trustee of the MusiCares Foundation, and a board member of the National Mentoring Partnership and the Berklee College of Music. He was also a trustee of the National Academy of Popular Music and the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress.

He also produced the annual pre-Grammy MusiCares “Person of the Year” tributes for James Taylor, Brian Wilson, Sting, Bono, Paul Simon, Joel, Elton John and Pavarotti.

Along with his son Matt, Ramone is survived by wife Karen and sons BJ and Simon.

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