Mix magazine mourns the loss of one of the most influential producers of the past 50-plus years: Sir George Martin. As reported by the New York Times on March 9, 2016: “George Martin, the urbane English record producer who signed the Beatles to a recording contract on the small Parlophone label after every other British record company had turned them down, and who guided them in their transformation from a regional dance band into the most inventive, influential and studio-savvy rock group of the 1960s, died on Tuesday at his home in Wiltshire, England. He was 90.
“His death was confirmed by Adam Sharp, a founder of CA Management, a British company that represented Mr. Martin…
“Mr. Martin helped redefine a record producer’s role in pop music. He was one of a handful of pop producers—Phil Spector and Quincy Jones among them—to become almost as famous as the musicians they recorded. And when he left Parlophone, a subsidiary of EMI Records, to start his own production company in 1965, his reputation as the producer of the Beatles helped raise the stature of record production as an independent career, rather than as simply a record label function.”
