Roy Halee | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Roy Decker Halee |
| Born | 1934 (age 90–91) Long Island, New York, US |
| Occupation(s) | Record producer, audio engineer |
Roy Decker Halee (born 1934)[1] is an Americanrecord producer andengineer, best known for working withSimon & Garfunkel, both as a group and for their solo projects.
Halee grew up onLong Island, New York. His father, also named Roy Halee, provided the singing voice forMighty Mouse in the late 1940sTerrytoons cartoons, as well as the voices ofHeckle and Jeckle from 1951 through 1961. His mother,Rebekah Cauble, was a former stage actress with severalBroadway credits.[2]
Halee, who had been studying to be a classical trumpet player, began working as a cameraman forCBS Television in the late 1950s, eventually becoming an audio engineer forGoodson-Todman game shows and the top-ratedThe $64,000 Question.[3]
As television shows moved to the West Coast, he lost his job in a union dispute and layoff at CBS Television. He went to work atColumbia Records Studio A, first as an editor then later a studio engineer, where his first recording session was forBob Dylan's 1965 albumHighway 61 Revisited, including the first long-format radio single, "Like a Rolling Stone".[4]
In 1964, he first encounteredSimon & Garfunkel during their Columbia audition, and he is mentioned in the song "A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission)" byPaul Simon. In 1965, Halee collaborated with Columbia staff producerTom Wilson to overdub electric instruments and drums onto the originally-released acoustic version of "The Sound of Silence" without the duo's knowledge, with the remixed version reaching number one on the Billboard singles chart.[5]
Halee's role with Simon and Garfunkel expanded to producer-engineer, with Halee producing several albums with the duo. Halee discovered that the uniqueness of Simon & Garfunkel's vocal harmonies could only be achieved by recording both voices on the same microphone at the same time.[6] The song "Mrs. Robinson", from the 1968 albumThe Graduate, won him a Grammy Award. Three more Grammy Awards followed for his work on the albumBookends, and the song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in 1970.[4][5] After Simon & Garfunkel split up, Halee co-produced Simon'sfirst solo album and its follow-up,There Goes Rhymin' Simon.
Halee also worked withthe Lovin' Spoonful,the Dave Clark Five andthe Yardbirds, as well asBarbra Streisand,the Byrds,Journey (on their first albumJourney),Willie Nile,Laura Nyro,Blood, Sweat & Tears,Mark-Almond Band,Rufus andBlue Angel.[3] After working at Columbia studios in New York and Los Angeles, Halee established Columbia's San Francisco recording studio. In 1975 he left those studios forABC Recording Studios, where he worked with new acts and established ABC artists as producer, engineer or both. His first project was theMark-Almond Band.[7]
In 1985, Halee went with Paul Simon to South Africa to record something new that, he said, "wasn't written yet, we were going with nothing, so it was a gamble. A lot of people thought we were nuts." It led to the Grammy Award-winning albumGraceland. "I was having a ball recording these guys. For a guy from my background, everything was so organised generally. Here in the rawness of this, the earthiness, I was in seventh heaven."[8] AfterGraceland, Roy Halee continued travelling with Simon as an engineer, to Brazil and West Africa, for the albumThe Rhythm of the Saints, with "all congas, bass drums, bata...everything imaginable."[9] He has continued working with Simon.[10]
In 2001, Halee was named to theTEC Awards Hall of Fame.[4]
Halee married his wife Katherine in 1970. Together they have three children.[citation needed]
