Conductor, music-video director, percussionist and producer
who emigrated to L.A. from New York in 1967 and found his niche at Warner
Bros., where he worked on a string of successful albums for the likes of
Fats Domino, Ella Fitzgerald, and Tiny Tim.A year later, Richard conducted at
Tim's concert at Royal Albert Hall.A CD of the concert is available on
the Rhino label.He is also
credited with signing the first all-girl rock band, Fanny, whom he
considered the female equivalent of The Beatles, in the late '60s.In 2003, a boxed set, First Time in a Long Time: the Reprise
Recordings, was released, again courtesy of Rhino.Richard quit Warner in the early '70s,
but it certainly didn't hamper his career.He went on to produce Stoney End for Barbra Streisand, and
dotted the charts with #1 records, eclipsing any
other producer's record in the '70s.These included "Nobody Does It
Better" and "You're So Vain" by Carly
Simon, "Photograph" and "You're Sixteen" for Ringo Starr, and "When I Need You" and "You
Make Me Feel Like Dancing" for Leo Sayer.This last recording won two Grammys
in 1977.A year later, Richard
had the money and the street cred to start Planet
Records, which became a haven for The Pointer Sisters, with whom Richard
formed a lucrative partnership, producing a prodigious amount of hit
records in a very short amount of time, including "Automatic", "Dare
Me", "Fire", "He's So Shy", "I'm
So Excited", "Jump (For My Love)", "Neutron Dance",
"Slow Hand", and "Should I Do It?"Richard also directed the
accompanying videos, which helped the Sisters garner a Best Black Video
Group award in 1984 and 1985, courtesy of the American Music Awards.Richard scored a monster hit in 1984
with "To All The Girls I've Loved Before", a duet sung by
Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson, winning Record of the Year at the Academy
of Country Music awards.A year
later, he produced DeBarge's "Rhythm
of the Night", his sixth top-ten hit in the span of a year.At various times throughout 1985,
Richard produced songs that topped the Country, Dance, Pop and Urban
charts.In the late '80s,
Richard embarked on a massive project entitled Rock, Rhythm and Blues, drawing together an incredible amount
of talent, including El DeBarge, Rick James, Elton
John, Chaka Khan, Manhattan Transfer, Christine McVie,
The Pointer Sisters, and Randy Travis, for covers of '50s rock
classics.Travis's cover
of "It's Just a Matter of Time", the old Brook Benton
hit, went to #1 on the country charts and was nominated for a Grammy
award.Richard continued
forming new creative partnerships in the '90s, most notably with Ray
Charles, Rod Stewart, and The Temptations.He produced "The Motown Song"
in 1991, with Rod Stewart on lead vocals, in tandem with The
Temptations.In 1993, he
produced My World for Ray Charles,
which included a remake of Leon Russell's "A Song For You":It became Charles' first
top-ten chart entry in more than twenty-five years, and won Best R&B
Male Vocal Performance at the 1994 Grammys.In the mid-'90s, Richard
turned to the past again, producing an album of standards for The
Temptations, For Lovers Only, which
put an R&B spin on songs such as "Night and Day":It was used in the movie What Women Want.Richard continued the trend with Rod
Stewart's The Great American
Songbook in 2002 and its sequel in 2003, which debuted at #2 on the
Billboard Top 200.The two
albums have gone platinum several times over.Richard employed the formula again
with Carly Simon on 2005's Moonlight Serenade, debuting at #7
on the Top 200 and becoming Simon's first album to climb that high in
over twenty-five years.In
2007, he worked on a similar project, Some
Enchanted Evening, employing the vocal talents of Art Garfunkel.Other artists and groups with whom
Richard has worked include Captain Beefheart, Burton
Cummings, Neil Diamond, George Harrison, John Lennon, The Manhattan
Transfer, Johnny Mathis, Paul McCartney, Harry Nilsson, Jeffrey Osbourne, Martha Reeves, Diana Ross, Ringo Starr, Donna Summer, and Tina Turner.Richard has produced a top-ten album
in every decade from the 1960's to the present.In 2006, he was the subject of a
four-part radio programme on BBC2.BBC has also produced a TV
documentary to commemorate his illustrious career.
