Veteran record producer Teo Macero died Tuesday in Riverhead, N.Y. after a long illness. He was 82.
As a staff producer at Columbia Records in the 1950s, Macero produced jazz albums by Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk, among others. He also produced Dave Brubeck's landmark LP Time Out.
But it was his work with trumpeter Miles Davis — especially in the late '60s — that earned him the most recognition. Davis recorded hours of audio tape with a collection of musicians. Then Macero heavily cut and edited the tapes into some of the most influential records of their time. Among them were the albums Bitches Brew and In A Silent Way.
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Dave Brubeck
In 1959, the same year he produced Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Teo Macero produced this collection of Dave Brubeck's experiments in odd-meter jazz. It was an immediate hit, and went on to become one of the all-time best-selling albums in jazz history.
Thelonious Monk
As a staff producer at Columbia Records, Macero was responsible for signing pianist Thelonious Monk to the label. Monk would make most of his recorded output after 1961 for Macero, including the music from this 1967 session.
Miles Davis
For more than a decade, Macero oversaw Miles Davis' tremendous artistic growth at Columbia Records. But for the 1969 recording of Bitches Brew, Macero had a larger hand in the proceedings: He heavily edited the musicians' in-studio jams to create powerful, spacey grooves. [This recording is an excerpt.]
