Larry Levine

Larry Levine ( born May 8, 1928 in New York; † May 8, 2008 in Los Angeles ) was an American sound engineer and Grammy Award-winner, responsible for the Wall of Sound - Sound of the recordings of music producer Phil Spector.

Career

Raised in Los Angeles Levine did his military service in the Korean War. Back in the U.S. he trained as a sound engineer by his cousin Stan Ross, co-owner of Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. In the early 1960s met Levine on Phil Spector. This he described his ideas about music production, and left it to Levine to implement them. The difficulty in recording and mixing of Spector's productions was the large number of session musicians called Wrecking Crew, in to small spaces. This problem he solved by extensive use of reverb effects in a concrete echo chamber.

Their first production was He's a Rebel by The Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron followed by. This was followed by, among others, River Deep, Mountain High by Ike and Tina Turner, as well as for 've Lost That Lovin ' Feelin ' the Righteous Brothers, according to surveys of BMI the most sent in the U.S. radio piece of the twentieth century, and to place 34 of the 500 Greatest songs of All Time Rolling Stone Magazine. The collaboration with Spector ended only with his retreat from the music business after the last production, End of the Century by the Ramones (1979).

Besides Spector Levine also worked for other artists, such as The Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, The Wings and The Carpenters. For his work on Herb Alpert's A Taste of Honey in 1966 he won a Grammy Award.