Howdy,
Thanks for the input Matt!, Jon, Joe and Terry.
Your responses to my post (particularly my personal testimony) bring me to
some new questions.
As I mentioned, I don't know jack about how to make a record. I'm just a
listener.
I suppose I always assumed that production was a more collaborative effort
than what it sounds like. In language I can understand, I'll illustrate the
point that I always carried the idea that it was something like the
relationship between writers and editors.
Most assuredly every writer does not like every editor he/she is ever
assigned to work with, but I've never been in a position where I just handed
my manuscript to an editor and said "Here, change it at will." There's a
give and take there, much like what El Presidente Gracey described.
Yes, young upstart writers don't always get the luxury of choosing their
editor, but a good editor worthy of the job title doesn't take the writer
out of the editing process-- indeed, the writer is the key ingredient in the
editing process.
Even a young writer without a single byline to his credit has the ability
(if not the flat-out responsibility) to stand-up for himself and exercise
some semblance of control over the editing process. The editor (and, in my
perhaps naive assumption, the producer) is part-technician, part-advisor,
part-midwife, and part-security blanket. Since each the editor and the
writer has some stake in the success of the project, it is ideally suited
that they work collaboratively, not independently.
Now, I fully understand, this isn't always the case. Editors can be
power-mad jerks sometimes. And writers can be sniveling primadonnas who
won't remove an extra word (or parentheses <g>) because they don't want to.
I guess I said all that to say this-- it doesn't make sense to me that folks
can single-handedly blame Chet Atkins (or insert name of producer here) for
any perceived faults in the production of Bobby Bare's (or insert name of
artist here) records. Atkins may have acheived a good level of power, but I
find it hard to believe he could force "Countrypolitan" down the throat of
anyone who did not willingly want to collaborate to some degree.
Hey, I'd like to eventually sell a novel, but I won't allow an editor to
change my story about an East Tennessee string band into a slasher thriller
because he thinks it will sell better. Writers and editors of like mind tend
to find each other over time. I just kind of assumed it was the same with
artists and producers (i.e, Bare and Atkins).
Yes, again, I know that the balance of power in the strange world of music
business is not *always* tipped in the favor of the artist, but I just can't
swallow the notion that Chet Atkins was some sort of task master telling his
galley-slave musicians to play "Countrypolitan" or walk the plank.
I am enjoying re-reading this particular thread. I find the relationship
between artist and producer to be increasingly fascinating to me.
Take care,
Shane Rhyne
Knoxville, TN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
NP: John Wesley Harding, Trad. Arr. Jones
