Wed 2/20 @ 7PM
Producer Tom Wilson’s name is well known to the type of music geeks who read ALL the credits on an album jacket. He worked with such artists as Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, the Velvet Underground, the Mothers of Invention, the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, the Blues Project, Sun Ra and many more.
As staff producer at Columbia Records in the 1960s, he helmed three of Dylan’s most important albums, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Another Side of Bob Dylan, and Bringing It All Back Home, as well as Simon & Garfunkel’s Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. which included their career-making single “The Sound of Silence.” He signed the Mothers of Invention to Verve, and he was the real producer of the Velvet Underground’s debut album, with credited producer Andy Warhol the producer in name only.
Wilson died fairly young in 1978 at the age of 47, with most of his seminal work behind him in the 60s. So he’s not a name that’s bandied about today, and most people who have heard of him probably don’t know he was black.
That’s why the Rock Hall is presenting an evening dedicated to his work as part of its Black History Month programming. It features a talk with Grammy-winning producer Craig, who has worked with artists such as Norah Jones, John Legend, Cassandra Wilson and the late Cleveland-born vocalist Jimmy Scott, among many others, and writer/musician Greg Tate, who wrote for the Village Voice for 16 years, have published several books about culture, politics, race and music, and for 20 years has led “conducted improv” big band Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber.
It takes place in the Foster Theater and it’s free with registration. Go here.
rockhall.com/black-history-month-2019