Val Valentin is an internationally renowned recording engineer whose large discography includes such legendary albums as Freak Out!, the first The Velvet Underground record, Ella and Louis, Night Train (album), Getz/Gilberto, Absolutely Free and the film The Color Purple (film).[1] With six decades of highly influential work in the recording industry, including a period working as jazz label Verve Records' house engineer, Valentin retains a very low profile and very little is publicly known about his life.
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Valentin's earliest known engineering credits are from around 1951, when he was credited on records released by MGM/Metro Records. When Verve Records was sold to MGM in 1961, Valentin, who had already been engineering for Verve for over five years, was soon after made the label's house engineer.
Valentin has hundreds of engineering credits and has worked with such artists as: Dimitri Tiomkin, Barney Kessel, Art Tatum, Shelly Manne, Red Mitchell, Marty Paich, Lester Young, Gene Krupa, Bobby Short, Art Pepper, Julie London, Coleman Hawkins, Buddy Rich, Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, Astrud Gilberto, Count Basie, Kenny Burrell, Lalo Schifrin, John Barry and literally hundreds of others.[2] The importance of his engineering discography of jazz recordings is arguably second only to that of Rudy Van Gelder, with whom he worked on many Verve recordings including Getz/Gilberto#2. His talents have also been utilized for many movie soundtracks, including What's Up Tiger Lily.