Jack Richardson, CM, has left the studio for the final time. After decades of being Canada’s father of record producing, “Sir” Jack passed away last week in London, Ontario at the young age of 81.
In his career Jack produced many of the Guess Who hits including These Eyes and American Woman. In the mid 1960’s he was one of the founders of Nimbus 9, a mutli-media production company that had the best recording studio in Toronto in Yorkville in the early 1970’s. Bob Ezrin started his career working for Jack at Nimbus 9. Ezrin brought in Alice Cooper, and they produced the Love it to Death album together, featuring the hits I’m Eighteen and the Ballad of Dwight Fry. Jack also produced Night Moves for Bob Seger and countless other International and Canadian acts throughout his five decade career. See Jack Richardson on Wiki.
I spent time at Nimbus when I was growing up, and I recorded with Jack on a couple of forgotten projects in the late 1970’s. Later, when Nimbus was closing down (around 1980?), Dee Long and I bought Ezrin’s favourite EMT Plate and some microphones and baffles for ESP, our studio in Buttonville. Bob pulled off the side cover so he could make sure it had his file marks on the metal sheet! Awesome!
Alice Cooper’s DaDa was recorded at ESP, which of course meant that Vince used the very same EMT reverb in two very different studios.
In reading about Jack’s career I couldn’t help but notice that he never won a Juno Award for Producing. Yes I know they have renamed the Producer Award in his honor, but, how could he have not won ten of them? That’s Canada for you.
Alice Cooper at Nimbus with Jack Richardson in the 70s