This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 09/03/16
A Most Productive Life
George Henry Martin
Record producer, composer, arranger
b. 3 January 1926, d. 8 March 2016
Ye Gods! We're really losing some big names aren't we?
Forget Mad Meek and Spooky Spector; this man was the most important producer in popular music history. What he did for - and with - The Beatles took music production forward a generation or more. But he'd had a grounding in the slightly off-beat prior to his association with them, as a producer of comedy records for Parlophone.
Like this little gem from Bernard Cribbins, for example:
It wasn't just his production which took the lovable mop-topped scallies to the peak, though. There was his skill at arrangement, epitomised by his scoring of the string quartet backing on Eleanor Rigby:
(I would have liked to have included his production on I Am The Walrus at this point, but the suits who own The Beatles' recordings have sedulously ensured that virtually none of it appears on YouTube).
Update: Ooh, look, here it is!
And finally, as a composer and conductor, he made history in another way by composing and recording the music which first introduced the programmes of BBC Radio 1 in 1967:
Thank you, sir; your legacy will live on.
