Richard Perry, a record producer who became one of the most sought-after figures behind the scenes of pop music in the 1970s and ’80s through his work with Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, the Pointer Sisters and others, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 82.
The cause of his death, in a hospital, was cardiac arrest, said Daphna Kastner Keitel, a friend.
Mr. Perry began his producing career in the late 1960s with some of music’s most inspired oddities: He recorded Tiny Tim’s debut album, “God Bless Tiny Tim” (featuring “Tip-Toe Thru’ the Tulips With Me,” a Top 20 hit in 1968), and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band’s “Safe as Milk.”
But by the early 1970s, he had become one of the most reliable hitmakers in the business, wrapping stars in a clear, powerful production style that sounded superb on the radio.
He recorded Ms. Streisand’s 1971 album “Stoney End,” on which she embraced the contemporary pop songwriting of Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman. After that, he produced Harry Nilsson’s “Nilsson Schmilsson” (1971), featuring the hits “Without You,” “Jump Into the Fire” and “Coconut”; Ringo Starr’s solo LPs “Ringo” (1973) and “Goodnight Vienna” (1974); and Ms. Simon’s “No Secrets” (1972), which included her signature song “You’re So Vain.”
A trained oboist and drummer who had sung in a teenage doo-wop group, Mr. Perry had a deft ear for crafting the sharpest and most appealing performance of a song. That often involved huge studio budgets and exacting attention to detail.
For “You’re So Vain,” he went through three drummers in search of the ideal beat; Ms. Simon told the British music magazine Uncut in 2010 that he recorded 100 takes before he was satisfied. The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart and created a lasting mystery about its subject, a self-absorbed playboy who tossed women aside the way he changed his apricot-colored scarf. Over the years, Ms. Simon has been coy about who inspired the character, but Mr. Perry said she told him it was a composite largely based on the actor Warren Beatty.
Mr. Perry also lived the high life as a top-of-the-heap producer. His book “Cloud Nine: Memoirs of a Record Producer” is packed with tales of late-night cruising with Paul Simon, dancing with Tina Turner and star-filled parties at his home in the Hollywood Hills, which was once owned by Ronald Reagan. In recent years, he had been romantically involved with Jane Fonda.
In the studio, Mr. Perry saw himself as a dedicated “song doctor.” While other producers left audible fingerprints on their work, his style was more identifiable by its clarity. And his track record of success earned him a grudging respect from critics as one of the architects of the radio-ready soft rock of the 1970s.
“Perry is a commercial genius,” Stephen Holden wrote in Rolling Stone in 1973. “The quality of sound Perry can produce is frightening. It is cold and glamorous in its corporate calculation, flexible enough to embrace the entire pop mainstream.”
Richard Van Perry was born in Brooklyn on June 18, 1942, to Mack and Sylvia Perry, who ran a business selling musical instruments to schools. In his memoir, he described teenage pilgrimages to the disc jockey Alan Freed’s concerts at the Brooklyn Paramount, where he saw early rock heroes like Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly.
By 16, he was singing bass with a vocal group called the Legends. Renamed the Escorts, they made a handful of records in the early 1960s, including a version of “Somewhere” from “West Side Story,” as well as another that became a collectors’ novelty: “Gaudeamus,” a bouncy doo-wop setting of “Gaudeamus Igitur,” a graduation song with lyrics in Latin and medieval roots.
After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1964 with a degree in music, Mr. Perry returned to New York hoping for a career on Broadway. But he was soon drawn to the pop record business. With Gary Katz — later Steely Dan’s producer — he became a partner in a production company, Cloud Nine, and received producer credit for singles on Kama Sutra and other labels.
In 1967, Mr. Perry moved to Los Angeles and produced “Safe as Milk” with Bob Krasnow for Buddah Records, a label affiliated with Kama Sutra. That fall, Mr. Perry joined Warner Bros. Records as a staff producer.
His first assignment was recording Tiny Tim (real name: Herbert Khaury), who sang ballads and show tunes from the early 20th century in cartoonish voices while accompanying himself on the ukulele — a self-consciously eccentric style he had developed over the years in Greenwich Village clubs and as a “freak” attraction in a Times Square dime museum.
Mr. Perry saw an opportunity to present Tiny Tim’s music as a kind of surrealistic vaudeville, backed by cinematic strings and light rock instrumentation. “I wanted listeners to close their eyes and feel as if they were floating in the clouds while Tiny serenaded them,” he wrote in his memoir.
He also recorded a comeback album for Fats Domino, “Fats Is Back” (1968), and Ella Fitzgerald’s “Ella” (1969), on which she sang Beatles and Motown songs. He left Warner Bros. in 1970.
After recording Ms. Streisand’s “Stoney End” and its follow-up, “Barbra Joan Streisand” (1971), Mr. Perry became heavily in demand. He produced records for Art Garfunkel, Andy Williams, Diana Ross and Leo Sayer, whose “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” rose to No. 1 in early 1977.
The album “Martha Reeves,” a high-budget comeback attempt in 1974 by the former Motown star, was a rare dud.
In 1978, Mr. Perry started his own label, Planet Records, and signed the Pointer Sisters, who had tasted success with an eclectic style that drew on R&B, funk, nostalgic jazz and even country. He led the group to a streamlined sound that fit more neatly on rock and pop radio, with Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire” and songs like “Slow Hand” and “He’s So Shy.” Mr. Perry eventually sold Planet to RCA.
By the early 1980s, the Pointer Sisters had embraced the synth-pop sound of the new decade with “Jump (For My Love)” and “Neutron Dance,” which Mr. Perry produced and also helped direct music videos for. Among his seven Grammy Award nominations was one as a director of their “I’m So Excited” video.
Although he never won a competitive Grammy, Mr. Perry was given a Trustees Award for lifetime achievement as part of the 2015 awards.
Mr. Perry also produced “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” Julio Iglesias’s duet with Willie Nelson, which reached No. 5 in 1984, and DeBarge’s “Rhythm of the Night,” a No. 3 hit in 1985.
In later years, he recorded Ray Charles’s “My World” (1993) and began working with Rod Stewart on a standards project. After the idea was presented to Clive Davis of J Records — who suggested the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as inspiration — Mr. Stewart recorded “It Had to Be You … The Great American Songbook” (2002), produced by Mr. Perry, Mr. Davis and Phil Ramone. Four more “Great American Songbook” albums followed, with Mr. Perry credited as a producer on three of them.
Mr. Perry is survived by his brothers Roger, Fred and Andrew. His marriages to Linda Goldner and Rebecca Broussard ended in divorce.
Although he was sought after in the music industry as a studio perfectionist and reliable hitmaker, Mr. Perry tended to portray his process as simply a quest to elevate the artist and the song.
“I try to make the artist the biggest and best they can possibly be,” he told Musician magazine in 1985. “I always conceived of producing as bringing the artist to life in someone’s living room in the most glorious, complimentary performance one could imagine.”
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