Val Valentin

Luis Pastor "Val" Valentin (January 6, 1920 – March 24, 1999)^[1] was an internationally renowned recording engineer with six decades of work in the music industry. Much of his work has been done for MGM Records and its associated labels, including Verve Records. His large discography includes legendary Jazz albums such as Ella and Louis, Night Train, and Getz/Gilberto.

He also recorded Rock albums, such as Freak Out! (1966), Absolutely Free (1967), and the third The Velvet Underground album (1969). Valentin's work in films includes The Color Purple.^[2]

Career

Valentin's earliest known engineering credits are from around 1951, when he was credited on records released by MGM and 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. He apppeared with his daughter Kim on the game show Blockbusters in 1982 but did not win.

Valentin retained a very low profile and very little is publicly known about his life.

Engineer work

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.^[3] 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.

Arguably one of the most fascinating, yet untold parts of his early career is the recordings he engineered at MGM during the last two years of Hank Williams' life.^[4]

External links

• Extensive Discogs discography
• Extensive AllMusic Discography

References