RIP George Marino

dafos said:

Is this the George Marino behind the recent quality records reissues?

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Yes.

John72953 said:

A great loss! RIP Mr. Marino and thank you!

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In memorium from Acoustic Sounds:

The recording industry lost a skilled musical craftsman and enthusiastic ambassador for the vinyl format with the passing Monday of legendary mastering engineer George Marino. Marino died after a yearlong bout with lung cancer. He was 65.

There's a quote from George that appears with our description for the Verve titles he remastered that were reissued by Analogue Productions. It captures Marino's passion for his work and attention to detail perfectly.

"This is why I got into this business," said Marino, after working with the master tapes for Billie Holiday's Body and Soul.

In his career, spanning more than 40 years, Marino mastered thousands of records, many of them among the most important titles of all time.

A three-time Grammy winner, Marino joined New York's Sterling Sound in 1973 and helped build the company into one of the world's premier mastering facilities.

Sterling Sound released the following statement upon learning of his death: "Today Sterling Sound and the music industry as a whole has suffered a tremendous loss. Senior Mastering Engineer George Marino lost his battle with cancer this morning. Words cannot express the sorrow we feel. George was family to us all and we will miss him dearly."

The latest of Marino's Grammy wins was for his work on Arcade Fire's 2011 Album of the Year, The Suburbs. His tremendous career had a long discography that included such classic albums as AC/DC's Highway to Hell, Don McLean's American Pie, Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy, and Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet, among others.

"Just the experience of being able to hear these recordings in the studio with all of the original stuff the way they were intended to be heard ... You've really captured an emotion that you don't necessarily get nowadays. People strive for it, but those were special artists," Marino said, in an interview in conjunction with his work for Analogue Productions on our Verve series, 25 cherry-picked titles reissued on 200-gram, 45 RPM double LPs, as well as SACD.

Other records that Marino mastered for Analogue Productions included Tea For The Tillerman, by Cat Stevens, "The Power of The Orchestra," featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 24 Karat Hits and Elvis is Back, both by Elvis Presley, Night Beat by Sam Cooke, and Someday My Prince Will Come and Seven Steps To Heaven, both by Miles Davis.

You can view George's video interview with vinyl guru and analog expert Michael Fremer on Fremer's DVD "21st Century Vinyl, Michael Fremer's Practical Guide to Turntable Set-up," available from acousticsounds.com and many other online retailers.

Marino's masterful ear for how music should sound was matched only by his engineering and technical skills in the control room. In the later years of the decade ending in 2010, Sterling was using at the time the only modified Ampex ATR tape machine that could be used in conjunction with its Neuman VMS 80 cutting lathe to cut lacquers used to produce records. Many of the vintage LPs reissued by Analogue Productions and others were originally recorded in the studio onto an Ampex recorder.

Working with the same brand of tape machines, coupled with advances in Neuman electronics, helped Marino capture more detail from the recorded studio tapes without the mechanical limitations imposed when the recordings were originally made.

"I think we're giving people a lot truer representation of what was intended back then," Marino said at the time.

Modest to a fault, Marino often skipped the custom of inscribing his initials in the lead-out groove area of the thousands of great records he cut. If you see a STERLING stamp, it might also show a GC for Greg Calibi, or TJ for Ted Jensen or LH for Sterling founder Lee Hulko. But if you see just a plain STERLING stamp, chances are the record was cut by Marino.

In the control room, Marino was professional and proud of his work.

"He was really, really calm, and in control. Not flustered. People who are really good at what they do, they seem to do it very easily," says Barry Wolifson, a technical engineer at Sterling who worked closely with Marino.

Marino's first job in the industry was as a librarian and assistant at Capitol Studios in 1967. He then apprenticed in the mastering department, helping cut rock, pop, jazz and classical albums.

"Someone at Capitol told him, when he was first starting, that if you can cut records, you'll have a job for life," Wolifson says.

Marino took the sage advice to heart. His timing was such that he soon was working with projects destined to become colossal works.

"He started cutting Beatles parts in 1967 at Capitol," Wolifson says. "One of the first things he mastered was ‘Hey Jude.'"

When Capitol shut down its New York studio, and before heading to Sterling Sound, Marino joined the fledgling Record Plant, and eventually became a partner in the recording mastering studio. He quickly established his reputation with projects such Don McLean's American Pie, and classic albums by the Allman Brothers Band and Stevie Wonder.

Although Marino did mastering for all types of recorded music, he preferred some styles over others.

"His favorite artist was Charlie Christian," says Wolifson. Christian, who died in 1942, was a jazz and swing guitarist, and an early proponent of what would become bebop and cool jazz. "That's the sort of stuff he liked."

— David Clouston