A music producer whose death revealed so much, after-the-jump ….
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At the time I read about the Covid-19 related death of the music producer Hal Willner, I recognized his name: as the music coordinator for all of the sketches on Saturday Night Live you always saw his name on the screen, plus seeing him listed as producing albums by noted performers. Yet it was when they mentioned his work on one other TV show that I sat-up straight and said “Wow”… and went on to read what else he had accomplished and wondered: why he wasn’t a household name?
It had to do with his pursuing neither (a) the next big breakout star, nor (b) competing for the big-name performers at the height of their popularity. Instead, he pursued eclectic projects with veteran stars who relished the chance to stretch beyond their normal work and reach new audiences. The weekly obituary in The Economist (entitled “Mr. Music Man”) cited the LA Times:“He never became an industry giant yet gained a cult following: revered by a small but passionate confederacy of aficionados, critics and musicians”.
Maybe his story will surprise you, too.
His Polish-born father Carl fled the Holocaust (and most improbably survives his son), settling in Philadelphia as a deli owner. It was one of his customers that gave eight year-old Hal a ticket to see the Beatles, which set his life course. He went to New York to attend college yet fatefully found a part-time job as an assistant to the music producer who was quite eclectic in his own right, Joel Dorn— who produced Lou Rawls, Bette Midler, Roberta Flack, Mink DeVille and Rahsaan Roland Kirk among many others — and Hal eventually was promoted to be an assistant producer for Dorn with the Neville Brothers and Leon Redbone.
At age twenty-four he was hired at Saturday Night Live, a post he held for nearly forty years. It was this gig that gave him a steady paycheck in order to pursue his high-concept projects … and meeting all of the musical stars who appeared on the show enabled him to rapidly develop contacts (as Lucinda Williams noted):
“Hal had this black book of contact information for everyone—musicians, actors, comedians. He could call up these people any time of day or night. And if they were available, they’d say, ‘Sure, no problem.’ People were drawn to him. He had that brilliance combined with an almost child-like quality. He wasn’t about the business or success or making money. It was about the joy he found in what he did.”
After joining SNL, he embarked upon his first far-afield project: to reinterpret the music that Nino Rota had composed for the films of Federico Fellini. Willner flew to Rome to seek the rights from Fellini and — aided by their mutual love of Laurel & Hardy — obtained them. He recruited jazz musicians (Carla Bley and a twenty year-old Wynton Marsalis) as well as Debbie Harry of Blondie. It was critically well-received (which future recordings of his regularly enjoyed) and was modestly successful commercially.
As noted earlier: what really set-off my attention was reading that he was the music director for the 1988-1990 TV show Night Music— my absolute favorite music show of all time, hosted by Jools Holland and David Sanborn. There were plenty of big-name guests, then Willner put-on end-of-the-show collaborations that took my breath away: one was Leonard Cohen with the jazz saxophone legend Sonny Rollins. And that, David Sanborn felt, was the reason the show ended: the sponsors were upset at some of the non-mainstream pairings (such as Conway Twitty with the experimental San Francisco band The Residents!).
Here are some of Hal Willner’s other projects:
→ Tribute albums to jazz/theater legends that also had pop/rock performers on it: Thelonious Monk (Joe Jackson, Todd Rundgren, Peter Frampton and NRBQ), Kurt Weill (Sting, Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull) and Charles Mingus (Leonard Cohen, Elvis Costello).
→ Albums with literary figures who set their words to music (such as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs) and also readings of the works of Edgar Allen Poe (with Iggy Pop, Christopher Walken and Jeff Buckley).
→ On TV: he oversaw the music for 30 Rock and The Spoils of Babylon (on AMC).
→ Film: assembling the scores for Robert Altman’s Kansas City, plus more recently Gangs of New York and even ….. Anchorman (yes, Ron Burgundy!).
→ He did compilations of the music of long-ago film composers (such as Warner Brother’s Carl Stallings from 1936-1958) and Raymond Scott (whose song “Powerhouse” is used by cartoons to simulate an assembly line). And he also did a Disney movie tribute album that assembled the likes of Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Sun Ra, the Replacements, and James Taylor.
Hal Willner is considered to be someone who helped launch the career of Jeff Buckley, and became good friends to both Marianne Faithfull and especially Lou Reed. Willner said about Reed, “He did not accept that he was going to die. Bowie did. Leonard [Cohen] did. Lou just ranted. He just loved being alive.”
In this new century, two factors reduced Hal Willner’s sphere of influence: declining record company budgets (especially for non hit-making projects) and computerization (as artists did much more of their own production work). So he turned to live performances (every bit as eclectic) in recent years. And before his death, he was working to complete a tribute album to Marc Boland and T-Rex.
Hal Willner died earlier this month, a few days after turning age sixty-four (The Economist considered that symbolic, going back to the Beatles). Among those who expressed condolences (not previously mentioned) include Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Van Dyke Parks, Michael Stipe, Joan Jett, Ben Stiller, Sean Ono Lennon, Cat Power, Vernon Reid of Living Colour and Aaron Neville.
On its recent experimental remote show, past-and-present members of Saturday Night Live paid tribute to their former colleague, with personal salutes and a group singing performance of Perfect Day, a song by Lou Reed. John Mulaney added, “I don’t know why someone who was already friends with Miles Davis had a big enough heart to include me in their life ... but he did.”
He also recorded famous musicians on two albums of sea shanties and other pirate songs last decade — and here is one featuring Marianne Faithfull (along with Kate & Anna McGarrigle) — as Marianne has just been released from the hospital, from a case of pneumonia from her exposure to Covid-19.
I went unto my love's chamber window Where I often had been before Just to let her know unto Flandyke Shore Never to return to England no more
I went unto my love's chamber door Where I never had been before There I saw a light springing from her clothes Just as the morning sun when first arose As I was walking on the Flandyke Shore
Her own dear father I did meet "My daughter she is dead," he cried "And she's broken her heart all for the love of thee" So I hove a bullet on to fair England's shore Just where I thought that my own true love did lay
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From Holgar:
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TOP PHOTOSApril 22nd, 2020 Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. (NOTE: Any missing images in the Quilt were removed because (a) they were from an unapproved source that somehow snuck through in the comments, or (b) it was an image from the DailyKos Image Library which didn't have permissions set to allow others to use it.) And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
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