this episode is no longer availablePlaylist
Bob Dylan and Tom Wilson in the studio. Source: Wikipedia.
Black History Month special: Tonight Sing Out salutes
TOM WILSON, the first African-American producer at a major record company (Columbia Records). The Harvard grad’s role in the recording studio in the 1960s changed all of our lives and pushed musicians to change the sound of music itself, from producing the first Sun Ra album in 1957 (on Wilson’s short-lived label Transition), the only collaboration between Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane, electrifying Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” helping Bob Dylan go electric with “Like a Rolling Stone,” and that was just the start. Wilson produced the debut albums by Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, Velvet Underground, Soft Machine, solo Nico, many of the Animals’ albums, as well as Dion, Pete Seeger, Country Joe & the Fish, the Blues Project and dozens more.