American record producer best known for his work in the 1960s with Bob Dylan, the Mothers of Invention, Simon & Garfunkel, the Velvet Underground, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Eddie Harris, Nico, Eric Burdon and the Animals, the Blues Project, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, and others.
On graduating from Harvard, he borrowed $500 (equivalent to $4,830 in 2020) to set up Transition Records, having a goal in mind of setting up a record label and recording the most advanced jazz musicians of the day. The label released about a dozen albums, including Sun Ra’s Jazz By Sun Ra (retitled Sun Song when reissued in 1968), which was Ra’s first LP (a second LP of Transition material remained unreleased until 1968), and the album Jazz Advance by Cecil Taylor, which was Taylor’s debut release. Transition also released the first sessions led by Doug Watkins, Donald Byrd, and Herb Pomeroy. The label went bankrupt in 1957 and the catalog was sold off to the Blue Note and Delmark Records. Wilson’s work with Transition Records helped him obtain a job with United Artists Records in 1957. He worked as a producer for jazz labels, including Savoy Records, for whom he again recorded Sun Ra in 1961.
As a staff producer at Columbia Records, Wilson was one of the ‘midwives’ of folk-rock, producing three of Bob Dylan’s key 1960s albums: The Times They Are a-Changin’ , Another Side of Bob Dylan, and Bringing It All Back Home, along with the 1965 single, “Like a Rolling Stone.”
Wilson produced Simon & Garfunkel’s 1964 debut LP Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. which included “The Sound of Silence”. Seizing on local radio interest in the song in Florida and inspired by the huge success of the Byrds’ folk-rock version of Dylan’s “Mr Tambourine Man”, Wilson took the duo’s original acoustic track and, without Simon’s or Garfunkel’s knowledge, overdubbed electric instruments, turning the track into a #1 pop hit, helping to launch the folk-rock genre. Simon and Garfunkel, who had already split, re-united after the hit and went on to greater success.
In 1966, Wilson signed the Mothers of Invention to Verve Records and was credited as producer on the group’s debut album Freak Out!.
Also in 1966, after the Animals split from producer Mickie Most, Wilson became their producer, which continued until the original band broke up in 1967. Wilson also produced the Velvet Underground, featuring Lou Reed and John Cale.
Tom Wilson died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on 6 September 1978, aged 47.
Link to Wikipedia biography