Teo Macero essential playlist

Teo Macero was best known as a record producer whose technical expertise helped Miles Davis change the face of modern jazz on a series of groundbreaking albums. But his skills involved far more than mere knob-twiddling. He was a highly talented composer and saxophonist who played with the likes of Charles Mingus and it was his innate musicianship, as well as his innovative approach to recording, that helped Davis and others to realise their vision in the studio.

To Mecero, production was a creative art in itself, and the way in which he edited, spliced and sequenced the music was frequently key in transforming the raw material into a rounded, coherent work. Among the other jazz greats he produced were Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz, and he branched out into rock and pop, working with the likes of Robert Palmer, the Lounge Lizards, Vernon Reid and D.J. Logic among others.

Born Attilio Joseph Macero on October 30, 1925 in Glens Falls, New York, he served in the US Navy immediately after the end of World War Two. On his discharge he studied composition at New York's Juilliard School of Music and graduated in 1953. Throwing himself into the city's avant-garde jazz scene he helped Charles Mingus found the Jazz Composers Workshop and recorded several albums with the great bass player, contributing tenor and alto saxophone to Jazzical Moods (1954) and Jazz Composers Workshop (1955).

His first album as a band leader, Explorations, also appeared in 1954 and showcased his experimental, atonal compositions in the jazz-classical crossover mode known at the time as “third stream”.

His greatest contribution to jazz history, however, came after he joined Columbia Records in 1957, first as a music editor and then graduating to staff producer two years later. Among the landmark recordings he produced were Brubek's Time Out (1959), which included the classic Take Five and he also signed Monk and Mingus to the label. But it was his long and prolific relationship with Miles Davis that is his greatest legacy.

Their partnership began on Kind of Blue (1959), a record which is often cited as the greatest jazz album of all time. It continued through Sketches of Spain (1960) and into Davis's extraordinary electric jazz-rock fusion period of the late-1960s and early-1970s. On albums such as Bitches Brew (1969)and A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1970), Macero used tape splicing and electronic effects to help shape the music, recording hours and hours of Davis and his musicians improvising in the studio and then painstakingly editing it into something that was still cutting-edge but more cohesive and digestible.

His editing sometimes led to clashes with Davis, whose ego instinctively objected to anyone “messing” with his music; but he knew that Macero was right and after the producer left Columbia in 1975, they continued to work together until 1983.

Digital technology has since made Macero's techniques common place but at the time they were unique and Brian Eno is among the many modern producers who have not only acknowledged his influence but also marvelled at how he did it at a time when the only way to edit tape was by splicing it with a razor blade.

Beyond jazz, while at Columbia Macero also produced a number of Broadway cast recordings including A Chorus Line and Bye Bye Birdie and oversaw Simon and Garfunkel's soundtrack to the 1968 film, The Graduate. After leaving the company, he formed his own production company and worked with a wide variety of artists in different genres, ranging from Tony Bennett and Herbie Hancock to Robert Palmer and DJ Logic. He also released numerous albums of his own compositions, wrote and produced television and film soundtracks, composed for the New York Philharmonic, and scored a number of ballets.

His death followed a long illnessHe is survived by his wife, Jeanne.

Teo Macero, producer and composer, was born on October 30, 1925. He died on February 19, 2008, aged 82