I just loved this book from start to finish. I even read it twice. It has been a goal of mine since i was 14 to record the music of Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett in their prime
and in living color and transfer them to newer mediums, much like the great Martin Scorcese has worked with updating great movies for future generations to enjoy. Phil Ramone has worked in the trenches of the music business all of his life. His family put a violin in his precocious hands at age 3 and by the age of 10, this child prodigy played a command performance for the Queen. If we had you tube back then, he would have been featured like the young prodigy's of today on various You tube videos. Phil went on to study at Juillard, the premier music school in the US, and then he decided that he enjoyed being on the other side of the recording console. He Started A&R records I think in around 1959. He tells a great story of recording Ms. Marilyn Monroe's infamous breathy "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to John F. Kennedy in1962. He was also on the console for my favorite song of all time, 'the Girl from Ipanema' with Stan Getz, and Joao and Astrud Gilberto. He has recorded 5 albums with Mr. Billy Joel, and at least 62 different gold or platinum records for various stars from Anne Murray, through big brassy Chicago Transit Authority, to Sinatra Duets I and II and he is currently recording mr. Tony Bennett's Duets II for Tony's 85th birthday. Phil tells his story in simple conversational tones. It doesn't even sound like name dropping when he speaks of many, if not most of the great recording artists of the past 50 years. Phil tells great little vignettes of how he and Quincy Jones were working with Mr. Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas in the early 1960's and Mr. Sinatra invited Phil and Quincy to a big party that was happening after their recording was done for the day. Phil and Quincy were young and upcoming producers and engineers at the time and they shared ONE tuxedo between them, since usually only one or the other would be wearing it on any given night. They flipped a coin and Quincy won, so Phil had to wear just a dark suit that night. This book is fun for any person who wants to follow the history of great popular music of the past 50 years. Mr. Phil Ramone, was NOT called "the Pope of Pop" for no reason!
If you dream of someday being an engineer, or a producer of great music, you could surely use this excellent book as a primer on how to treat people, how to LISTEN for what an artist wants, needs and feels, and how to use both skill, personality, intuition and drive to get the most out of the artist in the studio with you at the time. When people ask me if their is a Phil Ramone "sound", i say that each artist still sounds like themselves.......only better! Phil brings out the best in the records of the best artists of the past 50 years. And he has more than 60 gold or platinum records, dozens of Grammy Nominations and more than 15 Grammy's to show for it. This review doesn't even discuss his various movie productions, broadway plays, and concerts in Central Park for singers like Barbra Streisand and Simon and Garfunkel. he tells of venturing to Bahia in South America, and by mid afternoon, he has rigged up some recording gear to record Paul Simon with some great young Brazilian Drummers and coming up with another Classic Paul Simon hit. or other times, he will tape up a microphone to the exhaust pipe of a motorcycle to get the right sound for a Billy Joel song. Phil is also a technical wizard. he recorded the first commercial CD with Mr. Billy Joel. Other nights he had to deal with a backhoe accidentally slicing through a large group of speaker cable in Central Park that took a week to lay, just 30 minutes before a major concert was to start. Phil is always the calm one in the eye of the storm that every great album or movie entails. You can go to [...] for a list of the truly best recording artists of the past half century. Most of them will tell you that that some of their best work was done with Mr. Phil Ramone at the controls! So, for all who love Popular American music for the past 50 years, you just might enjoy this incredible little book. Ciao!
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McCool
Un pezzo importante della storia della musica moderna
Reviewed in Italy on August 25, 2023