Faces in the Crowd: Tom Wilson (Producer)

Today’s blog post is about Tom Wilson, one of the all-time great record producers. I'm sure many of the readers of this blog are thinking to themselves, "Who the heck was Tom Wilson?!" Tom Wilson initially became known as a jazz producer and as time went on, he eventually established himself as an A-List record producer in the mid-to-late 60’s, producing records for artists from the folk-rock and psychedelic genres. Within a five-year period, he produced albums by The Velvet Underground, The Mothers of Invention, Bob Dylan, The Blues Project, Nico, Simon & Garfunkel and the Soft Machine. It’s ironic that when journalists write about the great record producers of the sixties, his name is rarely mentioned.

From the Jive Time Records website: "Ask your friendly neighborhood music nerd about the great producers of the ‘60s and you’ll hear some familiar names: Phil Spector. George Martin. Perhaps Barry Gordy. But Tom Wilson? Probably not. True, the output of this Zelig-like figure, though prolific, has very few distinguishing characteristics. There’s no “Wall of Sound”. No Abbey Road studio wizardry. No Funk Brothers. Yet despite this lack of an authorial stamp, Tom Wilson’s legacy is perhaps even more significant and far-reaching than those of any of his contemporaries."

In 1950, Wilson was a student at Harvard where he studied political science and economics. While a student at Harvard, he presided over the Harvard New Jazz Committee. After graduating cum laude from Harvard, Wilson’s career as a record producer began in 1954 when he started his own record label, Transition Records; working with Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Donald Byrd and other renowned jazz artists. In 1957, due to his experience in the jazz field, he began working at the United Artists record label. By 1963, he had secured a position as a staff producer at Columbia Records.

It was in 1963, that Wilson's career took off like a rocket. After Bob Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, complained to Columbia Records about continuing to use John Hammond as Dylan’s producer, Wilson was chosen to produce Bob Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Excerpt from a Bob Dylan interview by journalist Bill Flannagan: "Bill Flanagan: Tom Wilson is kind of a mysterious figure, not much is known about him. What did he bring to the party as a producer? Bob Dylan: Tom was a jazz guy, produced a lot of jazz records, mostly Sun Ra. I just turned around one day and he was there. Nowadays they’d call him a producer, but back then they didn’t call him that; he was a typical A&R man, responsible for your repertoire. I didn’t exactly need a repertoire because I had songs of my own, so I didn’t know what an A&R man did. Somebody had to be there from the record company to communicate with the engineer. Back then I don’t think I was ever allowed to talk to an engineer. […] Tom was Harvard-educated but he was street-wise too. When I met him he was mostly into offbeat jazz, but he had a sincere enthusiasm for anything I wanted to do, and he brought in musicians like Bobby Gregg and Paul Griffin to play with me. Those guys were first class, they had insight into what I was about. Most studio musicians had no idea, they hadn’t listened to folk music or blues or anything like that. I think working with me opened up Tom’s world too, because after working with me he started recording groups like The Velvet Underground and The Mothers of Invention. Tom was a genuinely good guy and he was very supportive."

Excerpt from an article by Michael Watts The Man Who Put Electricity Into Dylan, Melody Maker 1976: "It was during his two years at Columbia that his career was really made. To begin with, there was Bob Dylan. “I didn’t even particularly like folk music,” said Wilson. “I’d been recording Sun Ra and Coltrane, and I thought folk music was for the dumb guys. This guy played like the dumb guys. But then these words came out. I was flabbergasted. I said to Albert Grossman, who was in the studio, ‘If you put some background to this you might have a white Ray Charles with a message.’”

“Wilson would be Dylan's producer through mid-1965 and would be an important figure in Dylan's transition to folk-rock by the time 1965 dawned. In December 1964, Wilson took the unusual step of overdubbing electric instruments on three songs that Dylan had recorded in 1961 or 1962, including House of the Rising Sun. It's not known for sure what Wilson had in mind, but it's likely he was trying to demonstrate, to Dylan and possibly others, what kind of results could be achieved by Dylan recording in a rock style. These were never intended for release. Wilson produced Dylan's first official rock sessions on 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home (discounting his 1962 rock single Mixed Up Confusion). Wilson was also responsible for choosing most of the musicians who accompanied Dylan on Bringing It All Back Home; he would use some of the same musicians on other important early folk-rock records by Simon & Garfunkel and Dion. Wilson was also at the helm of Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone single. The spontaneous, almost accidental, contributions of Al Kooper on organ for this track would never have happened but for the fact that he was a good friend of Wilson's, who invited Kooper to the session to watch. Wilson had learned a lot about folk-rock along the way and applied a similar strategy to electrifying Simon & Garfunkel, who in 1965 had all but broken up after a flop acoustic LP on Columbia. Wilson took a track from that album, Sounds of Silence, and overdubbed electric guitars and drums, just as he had done to old Dylan tracks on those experimental recordings of late 1964. The result was a number one hit and brought instant stardom to Simon & Garfunkel, who may not even had continued as a duo if not for Wilson's Sounds of Silence treatment.” (Richie Unterberger, Tom Wilson biography All Music Site)

It should be noted that Tom Wilson produced some of Dylan’s most memorable albums; The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin’, Another Side of Bob Dylan and Bringing It All Back Home.

Wilson also produced the aforementioned track, Like A Rolling Stone, which appeared on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. Despite the huge commercial success of the Like A Rolling Stone single, Dylan chose to work with Bob Johnston, a Nashville based Columbia staff producer.

Tom Wilson and Nico (of the Velvet Underground)

In late 1965, after the breakup with Dylan, Wilson was hired as the A&R director for Verve/MGM records on the East Coast. I think that during this period, Wilson’s past experience with eclectic jazz artists held him in good stead as he signed Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention and the Velvet Underground to the Verve label.

After Nico's departure from the Velvet Underground, Wilson helmed Nico’s first solo album, Chelsea Girl, writing flute arrangements* and bringing in guests like Lou Reed and Jackson Browne.

"In early 1966 Wilson left Columbia and took a job as head of A&R at Verve/MGM records. One of the first groups he signed was the Mothers of Invention, a gang of weirdos led by Frank Zappa who were fusing blues and psychedelia, jazz and noise, rock and the absurd into something altogether new. Wilson liked their sound so much that he demanded $21,000 from the label to make Freak Out!, the band’s first album (which was actually two LPs), a staggering sum in the mid-sixties. 'Tom Wilson was a great guy,' Zappa later said. 'He had vision, you know? And he really stood by us.' Wilson wound up producing their second album too. " (Richie Unterberger, Tom Wilson biography, All Music)

"Wilson later talked about recording Zappa: “Zappa is a conscientious artisan, and somehow it’s a shame that the art of recording has not yet developed to the point where you can really fully hear everything he’s doing. Because sometimes a guitar part just goes under, and it may have three different-sounding guitars on top of each other that all play the same thing. On those albums he rarely worked with more than six to eight people. On Freak Out he used a lot of chorus, which was actually always Frank, who played himself over again. Much of that took a full three weeks to complete.

Zappa related a telling story about his first visit to the label’s corporate office: “When I went to New York for the first time and was taken to the MGM / Verve office, they had a cafeteria in the building for the employees. They wouldn’t even let me in, ’cause I had long hair. That’s the kind of a world it was, it was just bizarre. And I went in there with Wilson, they threw us both out. He was black and I had long hair.”

To summarize that experience with the first album and Tom Wilson’s critical role in it, here is Zappa’s insight into the record industry:

'In the old days, they had these guys with cigars sticking out of the side of their mouths – this was before they had nonsmoking areas in the office buildings. A new act would come in, and these guys with the cigars would shrug their shoulders and go, ‘I don’t know!’ And because the signing fee was so cheap . . . I mean, our fee with MGM to make Freak Out! was $2500 – yeah, split between four guys. And we were lucky to get it. And the reason we did was because somebody went, ‘I don’t know! Who knows what these kids are listening to?’ Apparently, Tom Wilson, the young staff producer who signed the Mothers to MGM, did know. Tom Wilson was a great guy. He had vision, you know? And he really stood by us. When we did that first album, he was definitely in a state of ‘I don’t know!’ by the time we did the second song. I saw him through the glass and he was on the phone immediately to New York going, ‘I don’t know!’

Tom Wilson continued as producer for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s next album, Absolutely Free. While he is 'also listed as producer on the group’s third album We’re Only In It For The Money, Zappa started assuming that role: “At the point where we recorded We’re Only In It For The Money, although he was still technically the producer according to MGM, I was the one who did most of the work on the thing.'

We're Only In It For The Money photo shoot

But Zappa paid a nice tribute to Tom Wilson on that third album. He immortalized Wilson in the flesh on one of the most iconic album covers in history. Along with the band and a very select group of real people, Tom Wilson can be seen on the far left side of We’re Only In It For The Money. Along with about 80 cut outs of folks based on a list Zappa provided to artist Cal Schenkel, this was a mockery of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.' (Music Aficionado, Tom Wilson Producer)

We conclude the Frank Zappa chapter in Tom Wilson’s career with another quote by Frank Zappa, this time about the producer’s work with Bob Dylan. 'Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues was a monster record. I heard that thing and I was jumping all over the car. And then when I heard the one after that, Like a Rolling Stone, I wanted to quit the music business, because I felt: 'If this wins and it does what it’s supposed to do, I don’t need to do anything else,' but it didn’t do anything. It sold; but nobody responded to it the way that they should have. They should have listened to that and said, ‘Hey, that record got on the radio. Now, wait a minute, we’ve got a chance to say something, you know? The radio is for us to use as a weapon.’ It didn’t happen right away, and I was a little disappointed. I figured, ‘Well, shit, maybe it needs a little reinforcing.'

Another band that benefited from Tom Wilson’s services as a producer was The Animals. Seeking more artistic freedom than they had with producer Mickie Most, at the end of 1965 they signed with MGM. With Wilson as producer they released in 1966 the singles Inside-Looking Out, Don’t Bring Me Down and See See Rider. Perhaps Wilson’s biggest impact on their music was not as producer, but the fact that he introduced Eric Burdon and Co. to Frank Zappa. Their music took a sharp turn towards psychedelia after that encounter with Zappa.

The real change in the Eric Burdon’s direction came in 1967 when he formed a new band called Eric Burdon & the Animals and released the album Winds of Change. In a year that saw so many wonderful psychedelic albums on both sides of the Atlantic this album is usually omitted in lists of top albums of 1967, but nonetheless it is a great artifact of that time. Again, Zappa had a story to tell: 'After Eric went to a party at my place, I don’t know what happened in his head – I believe he was a little bit psychedelically jacked-up that evening. It must have been something, because now there’s this album that they recorded about a month or two ago with Tom Wilson in Los Angeles; their new group is psychedelic. One of their songs is seven minutes long.'

"Around this time, Wilson was also trying to figure out how to sign the Velvet Underground. He’d seen them play in a New York club and liked their provocative mix of melody and noise. He had even talked with band members Lou Reed and John Cale about recording for Columbia a year before. Wilson convinced the band to sign to Verve, because, in guitarist Sterling Morrison’s words, he said that 'at Verve we could do anything we wanted. And he was right.' The band had already recorded most of its debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, and after signing with Wilson, MGM gave band members money to re-record three songs, including Waiting for the Man, Heroin, and Venus in Furs. In addition, Wilson took them into the studio and recorded the album’s sublime opener, Sunday Morning. Wilson was in the studio for the entirety of the band’s second album, the chaotic masterpiece White Light/White Heat, in 1967, where he sat back and let the band do what it did best. John Cale later said to the authors of Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story, 'The band never again had as good a producer as Tom Wilson.'" (texasmonthly.com)

"Wilson’s role in the Velvet Underground's career was more avuncular. He produced only one track on their classic first album, Sunday Morning. The rest of the production was credited to Andy Warhol, although as Wilson supervised the remixing and editing, one might deduce that he had a more significant musical role in the proceedings than Warhol did. Some of the musicians he worked with have recalled that Wilson was not terribly involved in the sessions themselves. Kevin Ayers of the Soft Machine, for instance, remembered that Wilson was on the phone to girlfriends most of the time when the Softs' debut LP was cut, and John Cale of the Velvet Underground recalled that Wilson "had this parade of beautiful girls coming through all the time" in the liner notes to the Velvets' Peel Slowly and See box set. But Wilson did know enough to let the artists play and release controversial, brilliant material their way without unduly interfering -- which is just as important a contribution on a producer's part as the more widely hailed methods of shaping and arranging a performer's material.” (Richie Unterberger, Tom Wilson biography, All Music)

From the forcesofgeek.com site: "There was still times when Tom Wilson would use Sun Ra and his Arkestra members (in this case John Gilmore, Marshall Allen and Pat Patrick) for session work. One such session was for the 1966 cash-in album entitled Batman and Robin. Attempting to somehow rope in the many fans of the Adam West’s Batman series, this album was credited to the non-existent Sensational Guitars of Dan and Dale, and would also include famous Dylan sideman Al Kooper’s rock/blues group The Blues Project..."

The Blues Project

"In 1966 Wilson continued his work with Al Kooper, a relationship that started a little before the historical recording session for Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone that Wilson produced.

Wilson called on Kooper for studio work on a number of albums he was producing. These included Freda Payne’s How Do You Say I Don’t Love You Anymore and Jim and Jean’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Wilson was also responsible for Kooper’s next major career move: 'Tom Wilson rang me up one day and requested my services on yet another session. I always gave Tom top priority because of the tremendous debt I owed him, and I gladly assented. I arrived for this date in my typical out-there fashion, earring and all, and was introduced to a roomful of my contemporaries known as The Blues Project.' The band, which Kooper dubbed ‘a New York Jews for Electric Blues crusade’, was formed in Greenwich Village in 1965 by guitarist Danny Kalb. As Wilson moved from Columbia to MGM Records, he brought The Blues Project with him to his new label. They were signed to Verve-Folkways, MGM’s answer to Elektra Records. The band released a live album recorded at Greenwich Village’s Cafe Au Go Go during Thanksgiving weekend in 1965. In the fall of 1966, with Tom Wilson producing, the band recorded their fantastic album Projections.

Velvet Underground's debut album

By the time the demo recordings that the Velvet Underground made in mid-1966 reached Tom Wilson’s ears, the band had already been rejected by Columbia Records, Atlantic Records and Elektra Records...After listening to their material Wilson booked the band to TTG Studios in Los Angeles, were they re-recorded the songs I’m Waiting for the Man, Venus in Furs and Heroin...The Velvet Underground’s album took a long time to release, almost a year since the band made the early demo recordings in mid-1966. A month after its release in March 1967 Tom Wilson got his wish to have more songs by Nico. He was in the studio recording Nico’s solo debut Chelsea Girl. Nico later criticized the string and flute arrangements that Tom Wilson wanted on the album. The orchestrations were written by Larry Fallon on that album, a year before he wrote the arrangements for Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks (including playing the harpsichord arrangement on Cyprus Avenue).

This was the twilight of an extremely productive period for Tom Wilson. Other projects he worked in 1966 and 1967 included albums by South African trumpeter and bandleader Hugh Masekela, and Fraternity of Man who sang Don’t Bogart Me, now a cult classic due to its inclusion on the Easy Rider film soundtrack." (Music Aficionado Tom Wilson Producer Part 1 and 2)

"By1968 Wilson had eight albums in the Top 100 but was active outside the studio too. Wilson also helped found the Record Plant, a modern 12-track recording studio in Manhattan. At the start of 1968 Wilson left MGM and started his own Brooklyn-based production company and talent agency, the Tom Wilson Organization. By then he was one of the most successful producers in America, making $100,000 a year. He had two publishing companies, Terrible Tunes and Maudlin Melodies. He was producing two acts a month, young bands like the Bagatelle (soul rock from Boston) and the Central Nervous System (psychedelic rock from Nova Scotia)." (texasmonthly.com)

"In 1967 and ’68 Tom Wilson hosted a free-form radio program called The Music Factory, sponsored by MGM-Verve. It premiered on WABC-FM (New York) in June 1967, before going national via 12″ vinyl discs distributed to interested radio stations. Wilson hosted 25 hour-long syndicated episodes, each of which featured interviews with musicians, producers, and engineers, as well as tracks from MGM, Verve, and affiliated label releases...The episodes are interesting time capsules from a period when superior audio fidelity was helping FM radio harvest music seekers from static-plagued AM. Despite the dominance of rock, psychedelia, and folk-rock, Wilson offers a bit of genre-surfing in Music Factory content, occasionally mixing in R&B, jazz, Latin, and the token classical number. He throws down hippie parlance (“groovy”—a lot) with the conviction of a trendspotter with a master plan...The episodes contain commercials for then-new MGM-Verve releases. They are the same commercials, episode after episode, and they become maddening in their repetition. You will be endlessly reminded that “Nico is beautiful,” that Women hate war, and that buying a Tim Hardin album is like owning a work of art...In 1968 Wilson left the show, and comedians Bob & Ray were hired to host the series, which moved to WNEW-FM."

Note: When you visit producertomwilson.com, you can stream or download each episode as mp3 audio HERE.

In a 1968 Interview, Wilson stated "You know why I went independent? Because I got tired of making money for a millionaire who didn’t even bother to send me a Christmas card. I discovered if you are honest, you get a lot further. A guy’s not going to respect you if you don’t fight for what you think you are worth.”

Wilson remained active as a producer through the end of the 60’s and into the mid-70’s; working with a wide variety of artists such as John Mayall, Country Joe & The Fish, Tony Bird and Gil Scott Heron. Wilson’s last project was Live On The Queen Mary by the renowned New Orleans musician, Professor Longhair. By the end of the 70’s, Wilson’s style of music production was no longer in demand by the current artists of the day.

"Wilson was far removed from the music industry of the 1970s; with the swinging ‘60s in the rear view and disco and punk on the horizon, the sounds of Tom Wilson seemed to come from a long-ago age. Wilson rarely gave interviews and wasn’t in the public eye very much in his final years. He died in 1978 of a heart attack." (The Daily Beast, The Black Man Behind Bob Dylan)

At the time of Wilson's death, he was working on a project titled The Mindfinders of Gondwanda; a double album of which he had finished three of the four album sides. This concept album incorporated many different music genres including funk, jazz, country, new wave and disco. In the course of researching this blog post, I learned that Tom Wilson's daughter, Darien, has the master recording reels for this project so perhaps The Mindfinders of Gondwanda may be released sometime in the future.

From the Jive Time Records website: "At the heart of Wilson’s genius was the gift of recognizing the talent of different people and then bringing them together under the right circumstances. The performers whom he worked with couldn’t have been more diverse, but he always understood and respected their artistic visions; rather than tinker with them, he stayed out of the way. Moreover, knowing how to work the system ensured that these visions could be realized. He sweet-talked execs and label bosses, procuring then unheard of sums of money for extremely risky projects while somehow still shielding those in his stable from artistic compromise. There were low points and failures, for sure, but when the magic Wilson formula worked, it produced some of the most groundbreaking, adventurous, and enduring material in the history of popular (and unpopular) music."

Here's a select discography of Wilson's productions in the 60's & 70's

1963

Bob Dylan: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

1964

Bob Dylan: The Times They Are a-Changin’

Bob Dylan: Another Side of Bob Dylan

Simon & Garfunkel: Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.

Pete Seeger: In Concert – I Can See a New Day

1965

Bob Dylan: Bringing It All Back Home

Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited

Note: Wilson produced only the track “Like a Rolling Stone”

Bob Dylan (single): Like A Rolling Stone

Dion: Kickin’ Child: The Lost Album 1965

1966

The Animals: Animalization

Sun Ra & members of the Blues Project: Batman and Robin

Blues Project: Projections

The Animals: Animalism

ERic Burdon & The Animals: Eric is Here

1967

Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground and Nico

Frank Zappa / Mothers of Invention: Absolutely Free

Eric Burdon & The Animals: Winds of Change

Nico: Chelsea Girl

1968

The Velvet Underground: White Light/White Heat

Dion: Wonder Where I’m Bound

Frank Zappa / Mothers of Invention: We’re Only in It for the Money

The Soft Machine

The Fraternity of Man

Eric Burdon & The Animals: The Twain Shall Meet

1969

Fraternity of Man: Get It On!

1970

Country Joe & The Fish: C.J. Fish

1972

Road (with Noel Redding): Road

1974

John Mayall: The Latest Edition

1976

Tony Bird: Tony BIrd

1977

Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson: Bridges

1978

Professor Longhair: Live on the Queen Mary

Further Investigation

Tom Wilson Official Website

Music Aficionado blog: Tom Wilson Producer Part 1

Music Aficionado blog: Tom Wilson Producer Part 2

While primarily a blues band, The Hideaways channel elements of old R&B, country, rockabilly, instrumental surf and jazz which infiltrates their sound; all the while delivering a rapid-fire performance that has the energy and drive of a live show by the Ramones and The Clash.