Bob Thiele

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Bob Thiele was an American record producer who worked on many classic jazz albums and labels. He was born on 27 July 1922 in Brooklyn, New York. At fourteen he was already presenting a jazz programme on the radio, and he played clarinet and led a band. At seventeen he founded the label Signature, on which he recorded Lester Young, Erroll Garner and, in 1943, Coleman Hawkins, among others. In 1952 he went to American Decca, where he ran the subsidiary label Coral. There he produced the singer Teresa Brewer, whom he later married, and Buddy Holly at his sessions in New York.

Music and breakthrough

From 1961 to 1969 he ran the label Impulse!. His best-known work there was with John Coltrane, but he also recorded Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler. His biggest hit as a writer was What a Wonderful World, together with George David Weiss, sung by Louis Armstrong. For it he used the pseudonyms George Douglas and Stanley Clayton, made up from the names of his uncles. At the label BluesWay he produced B. B. King, including the 1967 album Lucille, and John Lee Hooker and T-Bone Walker. In 1968 he founded Flying Dutchman Productions, and the labels Doctor Jazz and Red Baron followed later. In 1995 his memoir appeared, What a Wonderful World. He died on 30 January 1996.

Influence

Thiele shows what a producer could do in jazz: give room to adventurous musicians and at the same time bring a melody like What a Wonderful World to a large audience.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1972Those Were the Days
• 1975I Saw Pinetop Spit Blood
• 1991Louis Satchmo

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• After Hours: Session 3^NL Reader