Costa, Guy (23 January 1946-24th February 1997)

Technical whiz born Gaetano Costa who was the nephew of the arranger Don Costa. He engineered a couple of early Diana Ross albums, the soundtrack of Lady Sings the Blues and the live album, An Evening with Diana Ross. He was billed as a special sound consultant on the soundtrack of another Ross project, The Wiz.

In 1979, he was credited with arrangement, conducting and music preparation on Frank Sinatra’s boxed set, Trilogy. A year later, he engineered Jose Feliciano’s self-titled album. In 1981, he performed similar duties on Billy Preston’s The Way I Am. Along with Ralph Sutton and Russ Terana, he worked on the music for the 1983 and 1984 Emmy awards ceremonies.

In 1985, he did a cinematic turn as a technical advisor on Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon. Later in the decade, he served as president of The Society of Professional Audio Recording Services.

In 1992, he mixed Lionel Richie’s Back to Front, and engineered and produced The Jacksons: An American Dream. He spent the mid-’90s mastering Amy Arena’s eponymous album, Nicholas Gunn’s Afternoon in Sedona, Edwin Hawkins’ All Things Are Possible: Live in Toledo, Tag Team’s Audio Entertainment, and Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s Bow Wow. In 2006, some material Guy had engineered for Diana Ross in 1972 was finally released: The album, entitled Blue, is a mix of jazz and blues covers that Ross had done around the time of Lady Sings the Blues. His final project before he died was mastering Lionel Richie’s Louder Than Words.

Guy also worked at his uncle Don Costa’s production company and served as Vice President of Engineering in the Los Angeles division of Motown Records.

Suffering from pancreatic cancer he died at his home in Westlake Village, California, when he was 54 years old.

Frank Sinatra recordings
That’s What God Looks Like To Me (Stan Irvin/Lan O’Kun)
Reprise RPS 49233 (XNY2101S) (US 45)
Theme from “New York, New York” (Fred Ebb/John Kander)
Reprise RPS49233 (XNY 2103 S) (US 45)

Here’s “Solitude” from the Diana Ross album, Blue…

Sources:

Costa, Guy (23 January 1946-24th February 1997)

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