American music producer who worked with many pop greats including Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand and Frank Sinatra
Once nicknamed "The Pope of Pop", Phil Ramone, who has died aged 79, worked as a sound engineer and producer with an unparalleled list of popular musicians including Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Ray Charles and Barbra Streisand. In 1993, he produced Frank Sinatra's comeback album Duets, which paired the crooner with a host of stars such as Aretha Franklin, Bono and Tony Bennett. Its success prompted a follow-up, Duets II, which was Sinatra's final studio album. Ramone used the celebrity guests concept again for Charles's album Genius Loves Company (2004) and duets albums for Bennett.
Ramone won 14 Grammys during his career and was in demand for television, film and stage projects. He collaborated with Streisand on soundtracks for A Star Is Born and Yentl, worked on stage productions of Chicago, The Wiz and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and produced the soundtrack for the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. He won an Emmy for a television special about Duke Ellington, Grammys for his work on the soundtracks to Flashdance (the movie) and Promises, Promises (the Broadway musical), and produced Luciano Pavarotti's charity galas in Modena, Italy.
A regular visitor to the White House, where numerous incumbents sought his advice on staging musical gala events, Ramone was part of the recording team for President John F Kennedy's party at Madison Square Garden in 1962 at which Marilyn Monroe delivered her seductive performance of Happy Birthday, Mr President.
Born in South Africa, Ramone began playing the violin at the age of three. He recalled how his early interest in the instrument had been piqued by hearing jazz players such as Joe Venuti and Stuff Smith. His family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he had ample opportunity to indulge his jazz leanings. He was a particular fan of Count Basie. "By the time I was in my early teens," he said, "I regularly begged my parents to take me to Birdland to hear him and his band."
In the late 1940s he attended the Juilliard School in New York to study classical violin, but it was popular music that exerted the greatest attraction for him. He began to focus on songwriting and production, and spent some time working at the songwriting factory of the Brill Building, meeting the likes of Quincy Jones, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, before being recruited as an engineer at JAC Recording studios.
In 1958 he teamed up with Jack Arnold to open a new studio, A&R Recording (standing for "Arnold and Ramone"), above Manny's Music store on Manhattan's West 48th Street. The aim was to specialise in recording pop and jazz artists. During the 1960s Ramone engineered jazz records including John Coltrane's Olé Coltrane and Gerry Mulligan's Spring Is Sprung, and in 1965 won his first Grammy for his work on Stan Getz and João Gilberto's hit album Getz/Gilberto, which contained The Girl from Ipanema and became an all-time jazz bestseller. He then began to move more into pop, working with Peter, Paul and Mary, Dionne Warwick and Bacharach, whose 1969 album Make It Easy on Yourself earned Ramone his first production credit.
In his 2007 book Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music, Ramone wrote that his career "coincided with one of the most profound periods in pop music history: that of the contemporary singer-songwriter". Ramone was in the vanguard, producing or co-producing such milestones as Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon and the Grammy-winning Still Crazy After All These Years.
In 1977 his work on Joel's The Stranger began a lengthy partnership, earning Ramone Grammys for 52nd Street (album of the year) and Just the Way You Are (record of the year). Some of his recent credits included Rod Stewart's It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook and its follow-up As Time Goes By, Rufus Wainwright's Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall, and recording George Michael's Symphonica concert tour for future release.
A founding member of the Music Engineering and Technology Alliance, Ramone was always keen on technological innovation. Joel's 52nd Street is considered the first major release on compact disc, and for the Sinatra duets albums Ramone pioneered a technique of recording contributors remotely via fibre-optic telephone lines. One of the Grammys won by Genius Loves Company was for best surround-sound album. However, as he wrote in Making Records: "Great records are all about feel, and if it comes down to making a choice, I'll go for the take that makes me dance over a bland one with better sound any day."
Ramone is survived by his wife, Karen, and his sons Matt, BJ and Simon.
• Philip Ramone, music producer and engineer, born 5 January 1934; died 30 March 2013
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/apr/01/phil-ramone
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