Al Schmitt

Engineer to the stars BORN 1930

Every time we re-watch Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s enchanting song Moon River in the film Breakfast At Tiffany’s, we hear Al Schmitt’s board mastery at work. And then there’s his engineering for Sinatra, Dylan, Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, Steely Dan, Natalie Cole, Barbra Streisand and umpteen others – his range was one of his many superpowers. He was also a producer, overseeing the Jefferson Airplane’s acid-dropped 1967 classic After Bathing At

Baxter’s. The Brooklyn native was mentored at his uncle’s studio and later befriended by musician/ recording visionary Les Paul, eventually winning more Grammys than any other engineer or producer. Raised in the era before multitracks, Schmitt knew how to place microphones, which became a lost art when fixing-itin-the-mix arrived. “As much as sound is important to me as an engineer,” he once noted, “it is the performance and the feel that sell the record.”