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Recording engineer
Larry Levine committed to tape producer
Phil Spector's grandiose sonic vision to create some of the most influential and enduring pop singles ever made. Born May 8, 1928, in New York City and raised in Los Angeles,
Levine served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. After returning stateside, he went to work at his cousin
Stan Ross' fledgling Hollywood studio Gold Star, learning the intricacies of recording technology on the job. By the time Gold Star opened a second studio room in 1956,
Levine was in full command of the mixing board's possibilities, helming a series of sessions for rockabilly icon
Eddie Cochran that yielded classics including "Summertime Blues," "Twenty Flight Rock," and "C'mon Everybody."
Levine first met
Spector in 1958, when the 18-year-old wunderkind entered Gold Star as a member of
the Teddy Bears to record the chart-topping ballad "To Know Him Is to Love Him" -- although
Ross engineered the session in question,
Levine stepped in when
Spector returned to the studio in July 1962 to produce "He's a Rebel," the third single by his up-and-coming girl group
the Crystals. The record hit number one, and after reuniting with
Spector three weeks later on the follow-up,
Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans' "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,"
Levine was officially installed as the producer's engineer of choice.
Working in Gold Star's now-legendary Studio A, a space renowned for its exceptionally resonant echo chambers,
Levine brought clarity and cohesion to
Spector's larger-than-life Wall of Sound, couching acts like
the Ronettes and
the Righteous Brothers in potently symphonic pop music sculpted from multiple guitars, pianos, brass, percussion, and myriad other instruments. Paired with arranger
Jack Nitzsche and the first-call session musicians later known as the Wrecking Crew -- among them drummers
Hal Blaine and
Earl Palmer; guitarists
Barney Kessel,
Tommy Tedesco, and
Bill Strange; bassists
Carol Kaye and
Larry Knechtel; and pianist
Leon Russell --
Levine was both sounding board and translator for
Spector, making concrete the producer's most daring and original ideas. "
Phil wanted everything mono but he'd keep turning the volume up in the control room,"
Levine later explained. "So, what I did was record the same thing on two of the [Ampex machine's] three tracks just to reinforce the sound, and then I would erase one of those and replace it with the voice." The resulting music speaks for itself: singles like
the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron,"
the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," and
the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" elevated rock & roll into the realm of art. "[
Levine] made
Phil Spector a genius by applying the simple logic of using echo,"
Stan Ross later proclaimed. "I showed him how you work this echo chamber thing and he got into it and sure enough it worked...It gave [the music] dimension. It sounded like it was a football field."
Levine's Gold Star efforts extended far beyond the
Spector sphere: in 1965 he won his lone Grammy Award when
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass' "A Taste of Honey" was named Best Engineered Recording alongside its Record of the Year and Best Pop Arrangement honors. So critical was
Levine to
Alpert's Latin jazz sound that he was informally recognized as the eighth member of
the Tijuana Brass -- when
Alpert and
Jerry Moss began construction on a new Hollywood recording studio for their A&M Records label, they hired
Levine to oversee the project in an effort to re-create Gold Star's signature acoustics. He also engineered
the Beach Boys' landmark album Pet Sounds, a recording heavily indebted to
Spector's genius.
Levine remained inextricably tied to
Spector throughout his career, even after the producer's pop empire crumbled in the wake of
Ike & Tina Turner's 1966 single "River Deep, Mountain High," both a creative zenith and a resounding commercial failure:
Levine later resurfaced on
Spector-produced sessions including
Leonard Cohen's 1977 LP
Death of a Ladies' Man and
the Ramones' 1980 effort
End of the Century.
Levine and
Spector also reunited to digitally remaster their classic Gold Star-era collaborations for the 1991 box set Back to Mono. After a long battle with emphysema,
Levine died at his Encino, CA, home on May 8, 2008, his 80th birthday. ~ Jason Ankeny