Bruce Swedien (; April 19, 1934 – November 16, 2020) was an American

recording engineer An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproductio ...

, mixing engineer and

record producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure.Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

. He was widely known for his work with

Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the " King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over ...

Quincy Jones Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer. His career spans 70 years in the entertainment industry with a record of 80 Grammy Award n ...

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and

Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand (; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success in multiple fields of entertainment, and is among the few performers awar ...

. Swedien first achieved widespread recognition as engineer with

Frankie Valli Francesco Stephen Castelluccio (born May 3, 1934), better known by his stage name Frankie Valli, is an American singer, known as the frontman of the Four Seasons beginning in 1960. He is known for his unusually powerful lead falsetto voice. ...

and the Four Seasons' 1962 single "

Big Girls Don't Cry Big Girls Don't Cry may refer to: Music * ''Big Girls Don't Cry'' (Lynn Anderson album), 1968 * ''Big Girls Don't Cry'' (The Weather Girls album), 1986 * "Big Girls Don't Cry" (Fergie song), 2007 * "Big Girls Don't Cry" (The Four Seasons song), ...

" which sold over one million copies and stayed at number one on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 for five weeks. Swedien won 5

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...

s for Best Engineered Album for his work with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. He received 13 additional nominations.

Early life and education

Swedien was born on April 19, 1934, in

Minneapolis, Minnesota Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origi ...

. His parents, Ellsworth and Louise (Perusse) Swedien, both of Swedish descent, were both classically-trained musicians, leading Swedien to develop a passion for music and recording at an early age. His father bought him a disc recording machine when he was 10 and a professional tape recorder after graduating high school. Swedien studied electrical engineering and music at the University of Minnesota but did not graduate. At age 20 he set up his own recording studio in an old movie theatre."Bruce Swedien, a Shaper of Michael Jackson’s Sound, Dies at 86,"
''The New York Times'', November 22, 2020.

Career

In 1957, he left Minneapolis and began working for

RCA Victor Records RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Ari ...

in Chicago. Shortly after that, he left for

Universal Recording Corporation Universal Recording Corporation was a recording studio in Chicago founded by Bill Putnam, Sr. for the purpose of investigating new recording techniques and the development of specialized recording equipment. Universal Recording was seminal ...

where he worked under chief engineer

Bill Putnam Milton Tasker "Bill" Putnam (February 20, 1920 – April 13, 1989) was an American audio engineer, songwriter, producer, studio designer and businessman, who has been described as "the father of modern recording". He was the inventor of the mo ...

. He first met Quincy Jones when Jones was vice president for

Mercury Records Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. In the United States, it ...

in Chicago. The two worked on albums for artists like

Dinah Washington Dinah Washington (born Ruth Lee Jones; August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963) was an American singer and pianist, who has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the 1950s songs". Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performe ...

and

Sarah Vaughan Sarah Lois Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer. Nicknamed "Sassy" and " The Divine One", she won two Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and was nominated for a total of nine Grammy Award ...

. Swedien then moved to

Brunswick Records Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916. History From 1916 Records under the Brunswick label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, a company based in Dubuque, Iowa which had been manufacturing prod ...

where he ran and developed the label's studios and sound in the late 1960s and 1970s. The label was responsible for numerous R&B and pop hits during that time, with artists such as The Chi-Lites, Tyrone Davis and Jackie Wilson. Swedien was known for pioneering the "Acusonic Recording Process", pairing up microphones together on vocals and instruments, a technique enabled by synchronizing several multi-track recorders with

SMPTE timecode SMPTE timecode ( or ) is a set of cooperating standards to label individual frames of video or film with a timecode. The system is defined by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers in the SMPTE 12M specification. SMPTE revised ...

. This achieved an enhanced roomy ambient sound, some of which is evident on albums produced in collaboration with Jones on such tracks as

George Benson George Washington Benson (born March 22, 1943) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist. A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, play ...

's " Give Me the Night", and the

albums on which he had worked. He would often experiment while recording with Jackson, having the singer stand at different distances from the microphone and singing through a cardboard tube, among other techniques. Swedien wrote about his experience working with Jackson in a 2009 book titled ''In the Studio With Michael Jackson''. His pop work included recordings by

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Roberta Flack Roberta Cleopatra Flack (born February 10, 1937) is a retired American singer. She topped the ''Billboard'' charts with the No. 1 singles " The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", " Killing Me Softly with His Song", " Feel Like Makin' Love", " W ...

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, and

. He worked on the scores for '' Night Shift'', ''

The Color Purple ''The Color Purple'' is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction.

'' and '' Running Scared''.

Recognition

On November 10, 2001, he was awarded an

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

in philosophy from the

Luleå University of Technology Luleå University of Technology is a Public Research University in Norrbotten County, Sweden. The university has four campuses located in the Arctic Region in the cities of Luleå, Kiruna, Skellefteå, and Piteå. With more than 19,000 students ...

for his achievements as a sound engineer. Swedien also held "masterclasses" at the Swedish National Radio for practicing sound engineers. On August 30, 2015, he was presented the Pensado Giant Award at the second annual Pensado Awards held at

Sony Pictures Studios The Sony Pictures Studios is an American television and film studio complex located in Culver City, California at 10202 West Washington Boulevard and bounded by Culver Boulevard (south), Washington Boulevard (north), Overland Avenue (west) and ...

Culver City, California Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. Founded in 1917 as a "whites only" sundown town, it is now an ethnically diverse city with what was called the "third-most ...

. The award was presented by

Death

Swedien died from surgery complications for a broken hip on November 16, 2020. He was 86.

Awards

Swedien won 5

s and was nominated 12 times.

References

External links

In The Studio with Bruce Swedien
*
Archived interview with Mr. Bonzai, November 2006Bruce Swedien on Recording, Mixing Michael Jackson

Q&A session with Bruce Swedien on GearSlutzBruce Swedien Interview - NAMM Oral History Library (2016)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Swedien, Bruce American audio engineers Grammy Award winners Record producers from Minnesota Businesspeople from Minneapolis 2020 deaths American people of Swedish descent 1934 births