Robert Musso

Last updated

Robert Musso is a New York City-based guitarist, [1] composer, [2] engineer, [3] and producer. He is the founder of the independent record label MuWorks as well as the record label - MussoMusic.com. Over the course of a 40 - year career, Musso has produced, mixed, remixed, [4] played on, written, or contributed to over 2000 records, CDs, movie soundtracks, [5] on every continent in the world except Antarctica. [6]

Contents

Biography

After graduating from Rutgers University with two degrees (Economics and Recording Engineering), [6] Musso began obtaining studio work as a musician, engineer and producer. During this period, he worked with a wide variety of artists, including Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, the Dalai Lama, Miles Davis, Al Green, Bob Marley, Herbie Hancock, Sting, Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, The Seventy Sevens, David Bowie, George Clinton, Dave Matthews, Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, Peter Gabriel, The Ramones, Iggy Pop, Blondie, Whitney Houston, Sly & Robbie, Fine Young Cannibals, Pharoah Sanders, William Burroughs, Julian Schnabel, Bootsy Collins, The Last Poets, Ozzy Osbourne and Steve Vai. [6] In 1981, he began a long and fruitful association with Bill Laswell. These projects included Material's Hallucination Engine , Sly and Robbie's Rhythm Killers (1987), One Down with Whitney Houston, and the multinational Method of Defiance project. He has also recorded with Tom Waits ( Raindogs ), Ginger Baker ( Horses & Trees ) and P.M. Dawn ( The Bliss Album ). His work for Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, and Bob Marley were album remixes and done posthumously.

As a musician, Musso studied jazz guitar with Ted Dunbar and played in the Livingston Jazz Ensemble. [6] He has played on recordings by Tom Waits, P.M. Dawn, Ginger Baker, Material, Machine Gun, Lunar Ensemble, etc. [6]

In 1986, Musso founded MuWorks records [7] in order to promote improvised music. Artists who have released CDs through MuWorks include Thomas Chapin, Last Exit, Lunar Bear Ensemble, Musso himself and Machine Gun.

Beginning in 1986, Thomas Chapin and Musso led the downtown improvisational ensemble, [8] Machine Gun. Three of their concerts have been preserved on CD.

He is a member of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), and is a Certified Audio Engineer by the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE). [6] He is also a registered NYC 9/11 First Responder.

Discography

Solo work (as Robert Musso)

Solo work (as Transonic - these releases appeared on the Fax label and Fax sub-label Ambient World)

with Machine Gun

Related Research Articles

<i>Electric Ladyland</i> 1968 studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

Electric Ladyland is the third and final studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the final studio album released in Hendrix's lifetime before his death in 1970. Released by Reprise Records in the United States on October 16, 1968, and by Track Records in the UK nine days later, the double album was the only record from the band produced by Hendrix. By mid-November, it had charted at number one in the US, where it spent two weeks at the top spot. Electric Ladyland was the Experience's most commercially successful release and their only number one album. It peaked at number six in the UK, where it spent 12 weeks on the chart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Laswell</span> American bass guitarist (born 1955)

William Otis Laswell is an American bass guitarist, record producer, and record label owner. He has been involved in thousands of recordings with many collaborators from all over the world. His music draws from funk, world music, jazz, dub, and ambient styles.

Karl Hans Berger is a German jazz pianist, composer, and educator.

Betty Davis was an American singer, songwriter, and model. She was known for her controversial sexually-oriented lyrics and performance style, and was the second wife of trumpeter Miles Davis. Her AllMusic profile describes her as "a wildly flamboyant funk diva with few equals ... [who] combined the gritty emotional realism of Tina Turner, the futurist fashion sense of David Bowie, and the trendsetting flair of Miles Davis".

Jair-Rôhm Parker Wells Musical artist

Jair-Rôhm Parker Wells is an American electric bassist. He is one of the founding members of the improvising band Machine Gun with Thomas Chapin and Robert Musso and the founder of the Meeting Interdisciplinary Arts Festival in Stockholm, Sweden. He lived in Stockholm, Sweden, from 1985 until 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eddie Kramer</span> British audio engineer and producer

Edwin H. Kramer is a British recording producer and engineer. He has collaborated with several artists now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, including Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, the Kinks, Kiss, John Mellencamp, and Carlos Santana, as well as records for other well-known artists in various genres, including Anthrax, Joe Cocker, Loudness, Peter Frampton, John Mayall, Ten Years After, Mott the Hoople, John Sebastian, Carly Simon, Dionne Warwick, Small Faces, Sir Lord Baltimore and Whitesnake.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electric Lady Studios</span> Recording studio in New York City

Electric Lady Studios is a recording studio in Greenwich Village, New York City. It was commissioned by rock musician Jimi Hendrix in 1968 and designed by architect John Storyk and audio engineer Eddie Kramer by 1970. Hendrix spent only ten weeks recording in Electric Lady before his death that year, but it quickly became a famed studio used by many top-selling recording artists from the 1970s onwards, including Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, and David Bowie.

<i>Band of Gypsys</i> 1970 live album by Jimi Hendrix

Band of Gypsys is a live album by Jimi Hendrix and the first without his original group, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was recorded on January 1, 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York City with Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums, frequently referred to as the Band of Gypsys. The album mixes funk and rhythm and blues elements with hard rock and jamming, an approach which later became the basis of funk rock. It contains previously unreleased songs and was the last full-length Hendrix album released before his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hey Joe</span> Song written and composed by Billy Roberts

"Hey Joe" is an American song from the 1960s that has become a rock standard and has been performed in many musical styles by hundreds of different artists. The lyrics tell of a man who is on the run and planning to head to Mexico after shooting his unfaithful wife. In 1962, Billy Roberts registered "Hey Joe" for copyright in the United States.

<i>Shout</i> (Devo album) 1984 studio album by Devo

Shout is the sixth studio album by American new wave band Devo, released on October 9, 1984 by the labels Warner Bros. and Virgin. Arriving two years after their previous album, Oh, No! It's Devo, the album retained the synth-pop sound of their previous few records, with an extensive focus on the then-new Fairlight CMI Series IIx digital sampling synthesizer. Despite the popularity of synth-pop in 1984, the album was a critical and commercial failure, peaking at only No. 83 on the Billboard 200 and ultimately leading to Warner Bros. dropping the band from their label.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legacy Recordings</span> American record label

Legacy Recordings is an American record label that is a division of Sony Music. Formed in 1990 after Sony's acquisition of CBS Records, Legacy originally handled the archives of Sony Music-owned labels Columbia Records and Epic Records. In 2004, under the Sony BMG joint venture, the label began to manage the archives of RCA Records, J Records, Windham Hill Records, Arista, LaFace, Jive, and Buddah Records. Legacy Recordings also distributes Philadelphia International Records and the catalog of recordings produced by Phil Spector. It is not related to the defunct British independent label Legacy Records.

Celluloid Records, a French/American record label, founded by Jean Georgakarakos operated from 1976 to 1989 in New York City, and produced a series of eclectic and ground-breaking releases, particularly in the early to late 1980s, largely under the auspices of de facto in-house producer Bill Laswell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Ludwig</span> American audio mastering engineer

Robert C. Ludwig is an American mastering engineer. He has mastered recordings on all the major recording formats for all the major record labels, and on projects by more than 1,300 artists including Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, Queen, Jimi Hendrix, Bryan Ferry, Paul McCartney, Nirvana, Bruce Springsteen and Daft Punk resulting in over 3,000 credits. He is the recipient of numerous Grammy and TEC Awards.

Thomas Chapin was an American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist. Though primarily an alto saxophonist, he also played sopranino, as well as soprano, tenor, baritone saxes and flute. Many of his recordings as a leader were in a trio with bassist Mario Pavone and drummer Michael Sarin. Chapin studied with Jackie McLean and Paul Jeffrey and studied with Lionel Hampton. He died of leukemia three weeks before his 41st birthday. He played at a benefit concert two weeks before his death.

Ron Saint Germain is an American record producer, audio engineer, and mixer born in post-war Frankfurt, Germany, into a career Air Force family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jimmy Norman</span> American singer-songwriter

Jimmy Norman was an American rhythm and blues and jazz musician and a songwriter. In his early career, Norman had a charting single of his own, "I Don't Love You No More ", as well as performing session work with Jimi Hendrix, but he is better known as a lyricist and songwriter. He wrote the expanded lyrics of the song "Time Is on My Side", which became a hit for The Rolling Stones and was later re-recorded and produced by Stephen Vanderbilt featuring "St. Tropez" as the A side of a 45 released from the album Home throughout Europe. Norman composed a number of songs performed by well-known musicians including Johnny Nash and Bob Marley. In 1969 he became involved with doo-wop band The Coasters, first as a producer and then as a touring member. He was also recording independently, releasing a solo album in 1998, the same year poor health forced him to retire from performance. Like many other musicians of his time, he was not financially prepared for retirement or heavy medical bills, and with few royalties for his writing soon found himself in economic crisis. With the assistance of charitable organization Jazz Foundation of America, Norman regained his feet and resumed performing, releasing his first wide-distribution album in 2004, Little Pieces. He performed in the Manhattan area until shortly before his death.

<i>The Third Power</i> 1991 studio album by Material

The Third Power is a 1991 album by the New York based music group Material. The album mixes reggae. funk, dub and rap music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jimmy Robinson (recording engineer)</span>

James Kelly Robinson II was an American recording engineer, record producer and musician. He was best known for his engineering techniques with both analogue and digital audio recordings with prominent popular pop and rock records in American music from the late 1960s to the present. In addition to his recording expertise, Robinson was also an accomplished musician in his own right and had been awarded gold records as both a saxophonist and bass guitarist.

<i>Songs for Groovy Children: The Fillmore East Concerts</i> 2019 box set live album by Jimi Hendrix

Songs For Groovy Children: The Fillmore East Concerts is a chronologically sequenced collection of American musician Jimi Hendrix's 1969–1970 New Years recorded performances at the Fillmore East in New York City. It was released as a box set of five-CDs on November 22, 2019 and an eight-LP set on December 13.

References

  1. "Asana OHM Shanti", liner notes
  2. Robert Musso career info
  3. "Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969-1974", liner notes
  4. "Taoue" liner notes
  5. Musso Music Discography By Date Archived 2011-07-14 at the Wayback Machine
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Faculty". www.audioschool.com. Archived from the original on March 16, 2010.
  7. The Music Forum - Reviews: Robert Musso
  8. Going Outside