Reply With QuoteA lot of us know the stories of how Larry would be hired to start a mix, and then be deemed "in no condition to perform" after he was already paid and spent many long hours in the studio.
Somebody then had to come in and finish (or sometimes even start beyond the first musical change) the mix.
To be fair to Larry he did eventually become more dependable. But it took a while for him to get there....and lots of John Morales (and others) hearing "We already went to press- we'll change it on the second printing". The second printings came....but the changes (takes money to do that- and not as cheaply or quickly as we could do it today in 2010) were not done.
This was back in the day when people READ their record labels and jackets- so the legend stuck. Salsoul didnt help because they were (like most labels) money driven- not fact driven. And in that time, in that day, the name Larry Levan meant an awful lot of local sales in their home market of NYC. Unlike most labels they would regularly mis-credit if it was to their financial advantage. CREAM EVENTUALLY ROSE TO THE TOP as John Morales quickly became a dependable and durable talent able to carry/boost record sales with his own name or that of his late business partner Sergio Munzibai.
By the time Larry got clued in and learned how to properly and dependably "work" for record labels, he became ill and thus a decline of a different and more tragic sort began.
As far as John Morales being a classy guy- yes he is. Like Tom Moulton who often did far more than you would ever believe on some really big records he mixed (because, you see mixing may have been the least he did on certain records). Guys like that know to keep the focus on the music, which is why we love them, right?
Bookmarks