Curt Boettcher

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Curt Boettcher
Born 1944
Origin Flag of the United States USA
Died 1987
Genre(s) Pop
Rock
Occupation(s) Record producer, Songwriter, musician
Years active 1964 - 1983
Associated acts The Goldebriars
Website curtboettcher.com

Curt Boettcher, later Curt Boetcher and Curt Becher (January 7, 1944–June 14, 1987), was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer from Wisconsin. His career spanned 1964 to 1983. He reverted to the original spelling of Curt Boettcher, although nothing was issued after 1983.

Boettcher was one of the most important personalities of Sunshine Pop in the 1960s, even influencing Brian Wilson before the production of Pet Sounds. Boettcher worked with The Association, Gary Usher, The Millennium, Sagittarius, and The Beach Boys, among others. Curt Boettcher sang some background vocals on The Byrds' The Notorious Byrd Brothers album, a Gary Usher production job.

Contents

[edit] History

Even before forming The GoldeBriars, he did few recordings but not in a professional setting. Then he formed the GoldeBriars in 1963 with the Holmberg sisters and Ron Neilsson. They recorded two albums which were released by Epic Records, and a third (which apparently found them heading in a prototypical folk-rock direction) was recorded but was rejected for release. Under the influence of the recording producer Ron Morgan, the voacals were mixed up-front and enriched by double-tracking (so it would sound like six voices). Ron Morgan did engineered a few easy-listening vocals group where he used this technique. The group had added drummer Ron Edgar prior to recording their third album, who would later join The Music Machine before working with Boettcher again in The Millennium (See Lee Mallory).

Following the demise of The GoldeBriars, Boettcher moved into production and songwriting work for others, including Tommy Roe and The Association, as well as forming a group called The Ballroom. Though the group signed to Warner Bros. and recorded an album in 1966, it remained unreleased in its entirety until 2001. Curt Boettcher met both Brian Wilson and producer Gary Usher while working on the first single of Lee Mallory, That's the Way It's Gonna Be issued in Valiant Records in 1966 . Brian Wilson was so impressed that for sometime, he was even running away everytime he would see Curt Boettcher. Gary Usher, in particular, was so impressed that he bought the contract of Curt Boettcher and signed him as a staff producer for Columbia Records. He called him to help him on his own project, Sagittarius. Some of the songs came from The Ballroom, others were re-recorded with new arrangements.

Gary Usher's clout, as well as his successful productions for The Association and Tommy Roe, allowed Boettcher to start working on his own studio project for Columbia Records. In 1967, having been given carte blanche, he assembled a group of musicians and songwriters that he knew (including Sandy Salisbury, Lee Mallory, Joey Stec and Michael Fennelly), as well as a flank of top Los Angeles session men, and started recording an album under the group moniker The Millennium. The album was co-produced by Keith Olsen who was a friend of Curt Boettcher since his college days. Their only album, Begin, was the most expensive album that Columbia had released at that point, and despite the release of several singles, it was a commercial failure. This has been partially attributed to Boettcher's reluctance to tour. The group did attempt a few live performances in Los Angeles, but the difficulty of reasonably replicating the album on stage presented a large enough challenge to disinterest Boettcher, and though the single "It's You" did become a substantial hit in several regions, there was no group to support it (surprisingly enough, "5 AM" also became a hit as well, in the Philippines).

Though the lack of success for the album took a heavy toll upon the group, they did recorded one final single, Just About The Same b/w Blight that wasn't issued at the time.

Soon after The Millennium broke up, Boettcher's friend Gary Usher, fired by Columbia Records started a record label called Together Records. He brought in Boettcher and Olsen as staff producers, and Boettcher was involved in several projects for the label. These included his first attempt at a solo album, as well as producing recordings for a Sandy Salisbury solo album, contributing to the second Sagittarius album, and co-producing with Olsen the Moses Lake album, a weird mixture of garage rock with psychedelia and sunshine pop elements. Though the Sagittarius album, entitled The Blue Marble, did see release (and also notched a minor entry on the singles chart with a cover of The Beach Boys' "In My Room"), and several Sandy Salisbury singles were released, the label folded before any of his other work could be completed (though it was eventually released in the early 2000s). Among others Boettcher productions still waiting for a release are sessions for Twice Nicely, the band of the legendary Californian guitarist Waddy Wachtel and the singer Judy Pulver(both author of Malachi Star that we can find on the only official solo album of Curt Boettcher), a single for Don Grady of The Yellow Balloon fame, sessions produced with Gary Usher of a duo of two guitarists called Tom and Dick (Dick being the songwriter David Batteau who will wrote songs with and for Curt Boettcher in his California days). On the session of Tom and Dick, Ron Edgar was the drummer.

Following this, and without having a substantial hit in any form for several years, Boettcher's career started to stall. In 1971, he signed a deal with Elektra Records at the insistence of Jac Holzman, who was a huge fan of Begin. Even after telling Holzman that the album would take a long time to produce, Holzman still insisted, and Boettcher reluctantly started working on a solo album. His influence was soon bolstered after meeting a young multi-instrumentalist named Web Burrel, and taking a cue from the early entirely-solo albums by Emitt Rhodes, Boettcher decided to record the album in a similar fashion, using as few musicians as possible. After almost two years of work, There's An Innocent Face was finally released in 1973. It differed from his early work (though, as posthumous collections show, it was a continuation of the direction that The Millennium had taken with their unreleased recordings), as it was a collection of songs with country, sunshine pop, arena rock, and folk stylings. Despite its eclectic nature, it was another commercial failure.

He did attempt to record a follow-up album, tentatively titled Chicken Little Was Right, but it was never completed. A CD reissue by Rev-Ola Records shows that the arrangements were still to be worked out for most of the songs.

His output, both as a musician and producer, was severely curtailed afterwards, and he did very little work during the last years of his life. His best-known (if not highly regarded) work following There's an Innocent Face is a 10-minute disco version of the song "Here Comes the Night" by The Beach Boys, which was a moderate hit in 1979 and was included on L.A. (Light Album), though it is generally considered to be vastly inferior to the original recording from their 1967 album Wild Honey. He also produced Mike Love's solo album Looking Back With Love, which many Beach Boys fans regard as the worst album ever associated with the group. Others productions were largely ignored such as the Geno Washington album That's Why Hollywood Loves Me as well as The Diamonds Live And Well album. Unfortunately, he never had the opportunity to revive his career, and he died in 1987 in Los Angeles County, California, an AIDS-related death. Prior to his death, he set up the Valley Studios Center with musician Mark Antacky and engineer Dave Jenkins, and was recording music with Randy California, the guitarist of Spirit that has never been released.

[edit] Critical opinion

Critical opinion of Boettcher's work and importance varies, as some find his work outside of The Millennium to be rather lightweight and aloof, arguing that the technical quality of his productions and arrangements are often offset by subpar material (style versus substance). Gary Usher, however, maintained until his dying day that Boettcher was "light years" beyond Brian Wilson as a producer, though this is certainly open to debate. In spite of all of this, his output has achieved a substantial cult following, particularly amongst sunshine pop aficionados and in countries where sunshine pop is popular (such as Japan), and The Millennium's Begin is generally regarded nowadays as one of the finest pop albums from the late 60s. It's quite hard to estimate the quality of Curt Boettcher productions as there is still a lot to be heard. Some fans would like to hear the Kaleidoscope (the American group) sessions he had produced in 1966!

[edit] Discography

Producer:

  • The Association - And Then...Along Comes The Association (1966, Valiant)
  • Tommy Roe - It's Now Winters Day (1967, ABC)
  • Jameson - Color Him In (1967, Verve)
  • Eternity's Children - Eternity's Children (1968, Tower)
  • Sagittarius - Present Tense (1968, Columbia)
  • Sagittarius - The Blue Marble (1969, Together)
  • Song - Album (1971, MGM)
  • Mike Love - Looking Back With Love (1981, Boardwalk)

Related projects:

  • Your Gang - Your Gang (1966, Mercury)
  • Friar Tuck - Friar Tuck and his Psychedelic Guitar (1967, Mercury)
  • Chad & Jeremy - Of Cabbages and Kings (1967, Columbia)
  • Chad & Jeremy - The Ark (1968, Columbia)
  • The Byrds - The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968, Columbia)
  • Paul Revere & The Raiders - Hard 'N' Heavy (With Marshmellow) (1969, Columbia)
  • Michele - Saturn Rings (1969, Mercury)
  • Emitt Rhodes - Emitt Rhodes (1970, Dunhill)
  • Emitt Rhodes - Farewell to Paradise (1973, Dunhill)
  • Andy Goldmark - Andy Goldmark (1973, Warner)
  • Elton John - Blue Moves (1976, MCA)
  • Bruce Johnston - Going Public (1977, Columbia)
  • Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue (1977, CBS/Caribou)

[edit] External links