Tom Wilson was a young, black Harvard graduate who founded a tiny jazz label that issued the visionary debut recordings of Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Donald Byrd, and crucial early works by John Coltrane. He would ultimately move to the Big Apple, join Columbia Records, and produce the milestone early classics of Bob Dylan (“Like a Rolling Stone”) and Simon & Garfunkel (“Sounds of Silence”) before joining MGM Records to sign and produce Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, the Velvet Underground, and Nico.
The Animals, the Blues Project, Soft Machine, and the mega-selling Irish folk group the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem are a few of the other acts whose creativity and careers were fostered by a man who has rightly been called “the greatest record producer you never heard of”. Now, thanks to Éditions 1989, a Paris-based non-profit dedicated to publishing “biographical books of overlooked figures”, we have a long overdue dive into the remarkable but brief life of Tom Wilson, a man who did as much as anyone to shape the sound of jazz and rock in the later part of the 20th Century.
Everybody’s Head Is Open to Sound: Writings of Tom Wilson is the first-ever collection of writings about Wilson, edited by Anaïs Ngbanzo, founder of Éditions 1989.Through newly commissioned essays by music historians Wolfram Knauer and Richie Unterberger, journalist Ignacio Juliá, and essayist Pacôme Thiellement, this book explores Wilson’s crucial role in documenting avant-garde jazz and producing some of the key folk-rock recordings of the 1960s, before his premature death from a heart attack at the age of 47. It also features “A Record Producer Is a Psychoanalyst with Rhythm”, a rare, full-length, circa 1968 interview with Wilson from The New York Times Magazine, along with a selection of previously unpublished photographs.
The five-page introduction by Anaïs Ngbanzo is an excellent thumbnail sketch of Tom Wilson’s life, beginning with his youth in Waco, Texas, and his early musical training on saxophone, cello, and trombone, the latter of which he would continue to play for pleasure during his high-velocity days as a record producer. He would briefly attend Fisk University before a bout with tuberculosis sidelined his studies for two years. In 1951, he headed to Harvard, where he studied economics and became very active in the university’s radio station, WHRB, its Young Republicans Club, and as founder of the Harvard New Jazz Society.
In 1955, shortly after graduating, Tom Wilson secured a $940 loan from a friend to found Transition Records. It was a label inspired by Moses Asch’s Folkways Records, jazz impresario Norman Granz, and Columbia’s legendary A&R man John Hammond, which aimed to chronicle new sounds in jazz, as well as folk, mood, and classical music.
Tom Wilson’s time in jazz, his brief two-year stint running Transition, and his immediate follow-up positions at Savoy and United Artists are covered in two fine essays by Wolfram Knauer.All totaled, Transition would release 15 albums, including the revolutionary 1956 debuts of Sun Ra (Jazz by Sun Ra Vol 1), Cecil Taylor (Jazz Advance), and Detroit trumpeter Donald Byrd (Byrd’s Eye View).
The latter disc was part of Wilson’s unfulfilled vision to produce a series of records chronicling the jazz scenes in cities like Detroit, Boston, and Memphis. Within the 15 releases preceding the label’s shuttering in 1957, Wilson’s other stylistic visions briefly flourished, with titles like Fran Thorne’s peaceful Piano Reflections and Russell Woolen’s Quartet for Flute and Strings serving the “mood” and classical niches, respectively.
Jazz would still be on his mind when Wilson took positions at United Artists, Savoy, and Dauntless Record labels. He would produce Sun Ra’s The Futurist Sounds of Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor’s Love for Sale, flautist Herbie Mann’s African Suite, Hugh Masekela’s The Americanization of the Ooga Booga, along with discs by Curtis Fuller, Thad Jones, Booker Little, and Benny Golson. A fun fact from this essayist: Wilson hired Sun Ra and his band to play on Roz Chaney – The Queen of Limbo’s 1962 long-player, How Low Can You Go?
Music for “Dumb Guys”
Tom Wilson’s glory days at Columbia Records are chronicled in an excellent 75-page chapter penned by Richie Unterberger, the top-notch rock scribe of more than a dozen books, including Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll (1998), Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers (2000), and Turn! Turn! Turn: the ‘60s Folk-Rock Revolution (2002). According to Unterberger, Wilson would be hired by Columbia after Gordon Lieberson, its legendary President, was impressed by a speech he gave at a conference.He would inherit the role of Bob Dylan’s producer due to clashes between his manager, the feisty Albert Grossman, and the man who “discovered” him, John Hammond.
At first, the jazz-loving Tom Wilson didn’t take to folk, calling it “music for dumb guys”. He would be the uncredited producer of four tracks cut in April 1963, for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, including the classics, “Masters of War” and “The Girl from the North Country”. He would go on to be the producer of the three following albums: The Times They Are a-Changin’, Another Side of Bob Dylan, and Bringing It All Back Home, and a 1964 live album which finally saw the light of day in 2004.
Wilson’s approach with Dylan was similar to his jazz work: record it live, do multiple takes, and select the best for release. His biggest problem with the wandering Bob was “to get him to sing in front of the mic”. Wilson’s approach was casual: set the vibe and don’t get in the way of the artist and his vision. A testament to this can be found on “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”, where Wilson’s laughter can be heard on a breakdown at the beginning of the track. As in other sessions, Wilson could often be supervising the recording while chatting on the phone, flirting with women, and hosting friends. One person said his control room “looked like a busy commuter train.”
As Bob Dylan transitioned from acoustic to electric, it was Tom Wilson’s job to select the engineer and the session musicians —a combination of young contemporaries like John Sebastian and Kenny Rankin, and studio pros like bassist Bill Lee and drummer Bobby Gregg.As usual, Dylan tended to lay things down without rehearsal.
Wilson’s last work with Dylan would be on his big commercial breakthrough, “Like a Rolling Stone”. They would record 20 takes over two days in June 1965. Famously, the casual Wilson was unawares when Al Kooper slipped into the studio and played the famous organ riff that Dylan fell in love with, much to the consternation of Wilson.
The producer would painstakingly create 21 mixes before arriving at the final one.The tune would reach #2 on the Billboard charts and #1 on the Cashbox chart.Some credited Wilson’s surprising dismissal as Dylan’s producer to his repeatedly admonishing Bob on his microphone position; Al Kooper claims it was Columbia’s doing. Either way, in a 1978 Playboy Magazine interview, Dylan said: “I haven’t felt comfortable in a studio since I worked with Wilson.”
Seeing the success of The Byrds’ cover of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”, Wilson headed into the studio with Dylan’s session musicians in July 1965 to overdub electric instruments and drums onto Simon & Garfunkel’s year-old acoustic version of “Sounds of Silence”. While Paul Simon “hated it”, according to his friend and fellow musician Al Stewart, the remix would become a Billboard #1 hit.
Tom Wilson would also improve the fortunes of the Blues Project when he put them together with Al Kooper. The keyboardist called Wilson “a spectator sport producer, someone who puts you in the studio and lets you get the job done.”
Tom Wilson’s time at Columbia would end because he felt exploited, financially and emotionally. He would tell The New York Times Magazine: “I got tired of making money for a millionaire who didn’t even send me a Christmas card.” He would next head to MGM as recording director.
Tom Wilson for President
Tom Wilson’s intriguing work at MGM with a psychedelicized version of Eric Burdon and the New Animals on albums like Winds of Change and singles like “Monterey” and “Sky Pilot” is captured in a transcription of a 1967 radio interview for “Pop Chronicles”. Wilson had a different relationship with Burdon than Dylan. First off, they are great friends. Secondly, Wilson was part of the creative process from the jump, helping this artist shape his newly poetic lyrics and the baroque psych production.
In this interview, Tom Wilson also claims that he was the person who convinced Simon & Garfunkel to use their real names. He added of his life dreams: “If I can make enough money and learn how to play the trombone, I’ll be happy.”
Pacôme Thiellement’s essay profiles Wilson’s collaboration with Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention, most notably his production and championing of their double-disc debut, Freak Out! (1966).
Wilson states that he got along with Zappa because they had mutual interests outside of music.The producer went with the flow when he discovered they were not the “blues band with a great protest song” he had signed after seeing them at the Whiskey A-Go-Go playing their Watts Riot song, “More Trouble Every Day”, but something much more ambitious, serious, and subversive. This became apparent when he heard the second song they were recording for their debut, “Who Are the Brain Police?”
Tom Wilson secured them an unlimited recording budget and complete creative control. He was reportedly on acid when Frank Zappa brought in a crowd of “freaks” and $500 worth of rented percussion to record the album’s cacophonous final track, the side-long freak out, “The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet”.
“Wilson would be reading the Wall Street Journal with a blonde on his lap, making a telephone call, and then stop and tell the engineer to add compression to the vocal,” said Zappa. Though he was less directly involved in a hands-on way, Wilson would also produce the Mothers’ of Invention following two albums, 1967’s Absolutely Free and 1968’s We’re Only in It for the Money.He would also be featured on the cover of the latter, a parody of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, along with Jimi Hendrix. Zappa was so impressed with Wilson’s intelligence, character, and cool that he urged him to run for President in 1972.
Ignacio Juliá chronicles Tom Wilson’s time with the Velvet Underground and Nico. The label agreed to sign the whole group just to have Nico, the Teutonic model, actress, and singer. Wilson’s handiwork is most present on “Sunday Morning”, which receives his baroque folk touches, his only proper producer credit on their debut album. Per John Cale, it was Wilson’s idea to add the bell-like celesta to the arrangement.
He would also supervise re-recordings of four classic tracks, including “Heroin” and “Venus in Furs”, in Los Angeles, replacing earlier versions made in New York. Wilson was credited as producer of their noisy follow-up album, White Light, White Heat (1968). Of the raging 17-minute-plus “Sister Ray”, Reed says he just left us alone to do it our way. Sterling Morrison lamented that he had “intended for it to be cleaner, but it didn’t happen.”
Reed called him “a swinger par excellence,” while Cale said, “the band never had a producer as good as Tom Wilson.” When Wilson got around to producing Nico’s 1967 debut album, Chelsea Girls, he dressed the tunes in lush, baroque arrangements with flutes and strings, which the singer “hated”.
Wilson would go independent in 1968 with the formation of the Tom Wilson Organization, a talent and recording company that worked closely with Motown. In 1974, he would form the forward-thinking Angel City Entertainment to support minority record producers.
The final entry in the book, the 1968 New York Times feature, captures Wilson at work in the studio and a reflective state about his life and career.It recounts his many recent successes as he labors to record and launch nine new groups.
“What’s good usually happens in the first 10 – 12 takes,” he states. The writer notes his casual yet perfectionist tendencies, saying he will spend days editing a four-minute single. The story goes on to discuss his legendary gift of gab, his designer clothes from DeVoss of Hollywood, his Brooklyn home, and his 1960 Aston Martin. The article concludes with Wilson stopping his car to admonish a cab driver, whom he witnesses not picking up a black man who is attempting to hail a ride.
With his taste and track record, Tom Wilson certainly deserves the kind of fame afforded to his contemporaries, such as Phil Spector and George Martin. Perhaps this fine book will do what its publisher intends: shine a deserving light on a sadly overlooked giant of 20th-century music who passed way too young.
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