Keith Olsen | |
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Origin | Sioux Falls, South Dakota |
Occupations | record producer, rock musician |
Instruments | bass guitar |
Years active | 1960s–present |
Associated acts | Fleetwood Mac Grateful Dead Music Machine, The Ozzy Osbourne Scorpions Whitesnake |
Website | keitholsenproductions.com |
Keith Olsen (born in South Dakota) is one of the most prolific and successful music producers in the industry.
With over 120 albums produced netting a 1 in 4 Gold or better ratio, of which more than 24 are Platinum or better, and more than 14 are multi-Platinum, sales from Keith Olsen’s work exceeds 110 million units at retail, equaling more than a Billion dollars in business. To date his work appears on more than 250 albums. He produced Rick Springfield's #1 song Jessie's Girl.
He also has 45 Gold (or Platinum) Record Awards and six Grammy Awards.[1] Olsen was born in a small town in South Dakota, but moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota at the age of twelve, where he received a very midwestern cultural education. As he became more and more interested in music, both classical and the pop music of the time, he was lucky enough to earn some valuable experience in a couple of the only recording studios in the Minneapolis area. A wealth of soon to be discovered super talents were touring and commingling within the folk rock circuit Keith found himself involved in, like David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, and Chris Hillman, just to name a few.
After a brief stint as corporate director of global product development at Mackie Designs, during their public ownership era, Keith used his first-hand knowledge of how production equipment is used, what is needed, and how to hopefully keep technology out of the way of creativity, to assemble a team of experts to develop their digital products line.
Olsen produces several albums per year for Pogologo Productions Group and gives his time and energy tirelessly to the "National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences" (NARAS) Producers and Engineers Wing, the mission of which he strongly believes is so necessary in this era of digital revolution. He currently serves on the P&E Steering Committee, P&E Advisory Council.
Olsen was the bass player for The Music Machine, who later went on to producing, co-producing the Fleetwood Mac album Fleetwood Mac, which was released in 1975. His career has spanned decades and included many of the top 50 artists of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. His award-winning career is well documented by numerous websites, books, and episodes of VH1's Behind the Music.
Also, among so many other works, he produced the American edition of Whitesnake's 1984 album "Slide It In", the 1987 album "Whitesnake" with Mike Stone and 1989's "Slip of the Tongue" (1989) with Mike Clink. He also produced the album Crazy World with the Scorpions. This album contains such popular songs as "Wind of Change", "Send Me an Angel", "Hit Between the Eyes", etc. Keith was also a producer and engineer for the Grateful Dead's 1977 release Terrapin Station Sheila's (B Devotion) "Little Darlin'" in 1981, and also co-produced No Rest for the Wicked by Ozzy Osbourne. A lesser-known credit was his first Spanish-language album, Quisiera, for Mexican superstar Emmanuel in the late 1980s. The original English-language version was never released but the Spanish version was hugely successful.