In any artistic community, besides the artists and their audiences, there is always a group of people who play integral but less noticed roles in the production and presentation of the artworks. Country music producers, described in Michael Jarrett’s Producing Country: The Inside Story of the Great Recordings are just such a group, long overdue for a critical ethnography. Rather than framing a larger argument for how readers might view these behind-the-scenes music industry figures, Jarrett amasses a pile of anecdotal evidence, delivered in the producers’ own voices. What emerges are not pat truisms but a series of issues these people face in their relationships to the music, the artists, and other colleagues in the community. The commentary is compiled from two decades of interviews with over fifty central figures in country music, an outgrowth of Jarrett’s work as a writer for Tower Records’ magazine Pulse! and The Fretboard Journal. Each relatively short excerpt focuses on the production of one of 184 significant recordings, which are chronologically arranged and divided into four distinct eras/paradigms of recording as defined by emergent technologies: acetate discs (1929-49), magnetic tapes (1950-66), multi-tracking (1967-91), and digital compositing (1992-present).
Although most of the selected producers are closely, if not primarily, identified with country music, many of the recording artists—ranging from country bluesman Robert Johnson to Buddy Holly, Glen Campbell, Otis Redding, the Eagles, Anne Murray, Cowboy Junkies, Eddy Arnold, Norah Jones, and others—do not file so easily into the “country” bin. Jarrett’s argument for their inclusion is that the producers themselves are less concerned with genre distinctions than in producing “good” music, whether that’s determined by its artistic merit, commercial viability, or both. The studios where these recordings were made are located in a half-dozen places: Nashville, Hollywood, Austin, Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and Chicago—with Nashville getting a lion’s share of the attention. This centralization of people and places helps readers understand the local, face-to-face nature of studio music-making.
One of Jarrett’s central metaphors compares music producers to movie directors, apt in the sense that both jobs allow for artistic input such as selecting and altering songs/scripts and/or creating a signature environment or mise-en-scene. Furthermore, producers, like directors, may vary greatly in their approach to their work, from craftsmen who skillfully execute a script, to auteurs who radically interpret it. Some commentators liken producers to general contractors or architects. Jarrett makes a general distinction between producers who got their start on the musician/performer side of the studio glass, versus engineers who initially sat in the booth, learning recording technology. He also calls attention to differences in the amount of control producers exercise, some taking a more hands-off, documentarian approach, others weighing in heavily on important decisions, their personalities (musical and otherwise) prominent in the final results. Whether or not one subscribes to the auteur theory of film criticism that posits that a great director’s thumbprint is always visible in his or her work, Jarrett’s contributors suggest that the producer’s personality and aesthetics are central and vital to the recording process.
Another important emergent theme in the book concerns the importance of social relationships, particularly between the producer and the featured artists or bands, but also between him (all of the producers interviewed were male) and the studio musicians and other music professionals such as record label executives. A producer’s personal agenda and ego, for instance, must be balanced against those of the artist, and some of the most interesting anecdotes contain insights (from the producer’s point of view) of how potentially disruptive differences of opinion have (or haven’t) been handled, demonstrating that, in addition to their other skills, producers have to be adept psychologists. One of the book’s most interesting threads, indirectly referred to, is how changing technology has influenced the scope of a producer’s influence. While early producers were often preoccupied with the fidelity of a record, those who followed had more choices to make, and thus more potential power to change the emergent sound. Ultimately, however, all producers are part of a collaborative team which includes the featured artists, studio musicians, engineers, and others, and while some may enjoy the privilege of “final cut,” their efforts arise through communal enterprise.
Jarrett’s ethnography is to be praised for the wealth and breadth of its coverage, raising the volume of voices seldom heard. His voice, however, is faint; he weighs in only briefly for a few introductory or transitional remarks. Readers seeking more analysis or evaluation may not be satisfied with this relatively hands-off presentation (others may prefer it), yet there is much to be gleaned here from the sheer tonnage of commentary, which provides many points of departure for critical discussion. For example, it would be interesting to investigate the changing roles and relevance of country record producers in an era of drastically reduced record sales and the corresponding growth of self-produced music and bottom-up business models that bypass the historically prominent studio scene.
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[Review length: 818 words • Review posted on April 22, 2015]