Disparition de Ken Nelson

A treize jours de son 97ème anniversaire, disparaît une figure de légende.

LE producteur type qui, par ses choix, fit connaître et enregistrer (Capitol Records) de multiples artistes talentueux dont celui qui nous préoccupe ici...

On en reparlera plus longuement, bien sûr !

RIP.

Merci d'avoir ouvert la nouvelle tonton, j'arrive toujours decalée

justement je travaille sur plein de photos de 56 avec lui depuis une semaine, et posté celle de 56 sur le site hier


Like writting earlier by our friend Dickie Harrell,Ken Nelson, the
Capitol Records executive who produced classic hits for Gene Vincent,
Wanda Jackson, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Hank Thompson, Jean
Shepard, The Louvin Brothers and numerous others, died Sunday at his
home in Los Angeles. He was 96 years old, and was revered for
edgy, "Bakersfield Sound" productions on Merle Haggard and Buck
Owens' hits and for sophisticated country-pop crossover hits such as
Sonny James' "Young Love."

Mr. Nelson's work with Sonny James, Ferlin Husky and others was
integral to the development of the "Nashville Sound" of the 1960s.
That sound favored strings and heavy vocal choruses over the honky-
tonk twang of the 1950s, as it was palatable to listeners who had
previously hadn't tuned in to country.

Artist & Repertoire men like Ken Nelson have been called slave
drivers - and worse - evere since the first a & r man supervised
record session. But it is his a job to bring out the very best in an
artist and he surely does with Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps or
Wanda Jackson.

Ken Nelson was born in Caledonia, Minn, on Jan. 1911 but was taken to
Chicago as a six-month old and spent his childhood in an orphanage.
He played banjo and guitar with Lee Gilette on dances and radio. He
started to work for "Capitol" records around 1948, to handle the
radio transcription library. Later he will work as a & r man, being
closely associate with Cliffie Stone, and signed novelty funnyman
Stan Freberg. Later came Hank Thompson, Jimmy Lee Fautheree, Faron
Young, Tommy Collins, Merrill Moore, Merle Travis, Chester Smith.
When R'n'R came along, he signed Gene Vincent, Wanda Jackson, Tommy
Sands, Jerry Reed or made move to a more rockin' sound country
performers like Rose Maddox, Jean Shepard or Skeets Mc Donald.

Twice, Mr. Nelson served as President of the Country Music
Association, and in 2001 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall
of Fame. He had recently published his own biography and probably
thinked he could hit one hundred.

After Hank Thompson, a couple of months ago, another great Man of
Country Music had left the building


Jimmy si tu peux nous traduire, je pense qu'il y en aura d'autres
merci

Si je ne me trompe pas, ces photos ont du etre prises chez lui en 56 avec Gene et les Blue Caps

Monday, 7 January 2008

Country Music Producer Ken Nelson Dies at 96

From Daily Herald news services

(ATTN: National editors) //Country Music Producer Ken Nelson Dies at 96// By Randy Lewis(c) 2008, Los Angeles Times Longtime Capitol Records talent scout and producer Ken Nelson, whose work with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard took them to the top rank of country music stardom in the 1960s and helped define the genre's twangy "Bakersfield sound," has died. He was 96. Nelson died Sunday of natural causes at his home in Somis, Calif., said his daughter, Claudia Nelson. A co-founder of the Nashville-based Country Music Association, Nelson produced dozens of No. 1 country hits -- more than 100 by some counts -- during more than two decades in charge of Capitol's country music division. But unlike many producers with an identifiable sound, Nelson prided himself on showcasing the musicians. "If I'm going to put my 2 cents into every record, it'll be a Ken Nelson record," he told an interviewer in 1997. "I didn't want that. I wanted Merle Haggard. I wanted Buck Owens. I wanted Hank Thompson." In fact, Nelson produced Thompson's landmark 1952 hit "The Wild Side of Life," which spent 15 weeks at No. 1, sent Thompson's popularity into the stratosphere and inspired Kitty Wells' career-defining response, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels." While mining the wealth of country singers working in and around Bakersfield in the 1950s, Nelson recorded early hits for Thompson, Ferlin Husky, Jean Shepard, Tommy Collins, Wynn Stewart and others. Nelson had hired Owens for many of those recording sessions strictly as a guitarist -- "Buck had a great style on the guitar," Nelson once said -- and recalled Owens pestering him for an audition of his own music. "One day after a session I said 'OK, go ahead and sing.' I heard about 16 bars and said, 'That's enough!' ... I heard it right away. He had it." Owens, who became one of the music industry's savviest businessmen, once called Nelson "one of the smartest men in the music business. He found artists who wrote their own songs, had their own bands, and knew what they wanted to do. Then he sat back ... and let them do it." Nelson discovered Haggard while he was playing guitar in a band backing Bakersfield DJ-comedian Herbert "Cousin Herb" Henson. Impressed, Nelson offered him a deal with Capitol, but Haggard turned him down because of his allegiance to the owner of the small independent label Tally Records, for which he'd begun recording. "I respected him for that," Nelson said decades later. Tally label owner Lou Tally agreed to sell the recordings Haggard had made for him to Capitol, which launched the long association among Haggard, Nelson and Capitol that led to more than three dozen No. 1 country hits for Haggard. Nelson was lauded for not only signing talented stars but allowing them to use their own bands in recording sessions, staving off criticisms of sonic similarity often leveled at Nashville recordings typically made with the same batch of studio musicians. While groups played in the studio, Nelson was often in the recording booth sketching on a notepad. "He sat there and doodled on a piece of paper while I recorded," Haggard recalled in an interview seven years ago. "He made me feel like I had some wisdom, some information to give." His trust in the music of the artists he signed meant there was no dichotomy for Nelson between working in Nashville or in Hollywood. At the same time he was recording California country singers who were enthusiastically adopting Leo Fender's then-new electric guitars to get a vibrant and twangy rock-influenced sound, Nelson produced Husky's 1957 hit "Gone," an echo-laden ethereal track that featured a choir of background singers and heavenly ambience that became a template for the smoother Nashville sound of the late '50s and early '60s. Kenneth F. Nelson was born Jan. 19, 1911, in Caledonia, Minn., but spent his early years in a Chicago orphanage, where his divorced mother had placed him as an infant. "Mother took me out of there (when I) was 8," he once told an interviewer. "I think she paid $6 a week for me to be there." Growing up in Chicago, Nelson got his first taste of the music business at 13 with an impromptu performance for an amusement park music vendor who handed him a megaphone and let him sing a lyrically revamped version the vendor had written of "The Sheik of Araby." Nelson got a job working in a music store, delivering sheet music to jazz titans then working in Chicago, including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. In his early 20s, Nelson landed work announcing stock reports on a Chicago radio station. He moved to another station and announced broadcasts by the Chicago Symphony. He also arranged the music for a live country music show called "Suppertime Frolic," which featured performers such as Bob Atcher, Uncle Henry's Kentucky Mountaineers and, he noted, "a guy named Rhubarb Red -- who was really (guitar innovator) Les Paul." During World War II, Nelson served in the Army. Shortly afterward he got a job with Capitol thanks to an old friend, Lee Gillette, with whom he'd sung in the Campus Kids vocal trio in the early 1930s. Gillette had become a producer for Capitol and got Nelson work producing for the label. When Gillette was put in charge of Capitol's pop department, Nelson took over its country division. "I appreciate all kinds of music," Nelson said in 1997. "I wasn't necessarily a country fan. I'm still not what you call a country fan." Nevertheless, he demonstrated a canny ear for country talent, as well as signing acts such as Roy Clark, Jerry Reed, Rose Maddox and Wynn Stewart. In the mid-'50s, when every record label was in search of its own Elvis Presley, he signed Gene Vincent to Capitol. Once on a trip through Louisiana, he heard a voice he liked on a local radio program, tracked down the singer and quickly signed Faron Young to the label. "I used to take buses through the South and listen to the jukeboxes to see what people were listening to," Nelson said in 2001. "I knew I could get a good feel for things by stopping in the bus stops and the restaurants." An early supporter of rock music, he once urged Capitol talent executive Nik Venet to take a call from a struggling songwriter who'd called Nelson asking him to take a chance on the band his sons had formed. It took Nelson several times before Venet followed up on the tip and made contact with the Beach Boys, who ultimately signed to Capitol and became the label's biggest-selling American group of the 1960s. Nelson spent $40,000 to self-publish his memoir, "My First 90 Years Plus Three," which came out early last year. He said he put it out himself to make sure it was printed "before I kick the bucket." Nelson, who had lived in Somis since 1972, retired from the music business in 1976 and remained active, traveling extensively with his daughter. His wife, June, died in 1984. In addition to his daughter, Nelson's survivors include three grandchildren.

http://www.heraldextra.com/component/option,com_contentwire/task,view/id,4437/

merci pour les traducs

capitol tower en 57