Eddie Kramer

The reason behind my choice of picking Eddie Kramer for my assignment is mainly down to the fact I’m a big Jimi Hendrix fan and love the quirky experimental effects and ideas Kramer had to expand the sound of the artists he worked with in the late 60s/70s. Eddie Kramer was born in Cape Town, South Africa 1941 and in his early teen years studied classical piano, cello and violin at the South African College of Music. At about this time Eddie began listening to American 50’s music changing his classical views to a more mainstream approach.

In December 1960 Kramer who was now 19 years of age moved to London and found work as a messenger boy for a company located in the same building as a small TV studio. Eddie being interested in music and its production began to visit the studio frequently to see how the sound engineering took place and setup a small home studio to record local jazz bands. In 1962 Kramer became the assistant engineer at Advision studio and 2 years later became hired by Pye records and recorded artists Sammy Davis Jr. and the Kinks.

Eddie began to make a name for himself in 1965 when he was offered a job at KPS studio which was quite limited only having a 2 track recorder but gained such a good reputation from Kramers work that it was bought out by Regent Sound and hired Eddie to guide the design and construction of their new 4 track studio.

But Eddie Kramers best known work came about when he was offered a job at Olympic Sound studios where he engineered bands such as Small Faces, The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix along with plenty of others. Kramers work with Hendrix became quite extensive as he engineered almost every one of Jimi’s albums and co-produced a few albums such as “War Heroes” and “Rainbow Bridge” after Hendrix’s death.

When 1968 came around the music industry was thriving with great acts and albums, Kramer had now moved to New York City to work at “the Record Plant” and engineered Hendrix’s highest US rating album “Electric Ladyland”. At this time Eddie was also working with a lot of other various acts and engineered albums for Vanilla Fudge, NRBQ and Joe Cocker.

By 1969 Eddie believed it was time to go solo and became an Independent producer / engineer and recorded artists such as the famous albino blues guitarist Johnny Winter and engineered Led Zeppelin II which is regarded by critics and fans as some of their best work. Kramer spent a large amount of time recording with Led Zeppelin engineering Led Zeppelin III, Houses Of The Holy, Physical Graffiti and Coda.

In 1969 Kramer was asked to record the Woodstock music festival for both the album and movie. Eddie summed up the event by saying “The whole thing was recorded under the most primitive conditions, but we got it done, Woodstock was 3 days of hell and drugs”. But it did pay off for Eddie as he became recognized across the globe for being one of the best live engineers and recorded some of the best live albums by artists such as Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Kiss, John Mayall, The Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, Joe Cocker, Curtis Mayfield, Santana, David Bowie, Derek and The Dominoes and many others.

Hendrix was so impressed by Kramers work that he decided to hire him to help build his state of the art studio named after his hit album Electric Ladyland the studio took over 13 months to build and a million dollars to create. After the death of Hendrix in September 1970 Kramer stayed on as the directing engineer up until 1974 continuing to produce and engineer albums by artists such as Carly Simons, Sha Na Na and Peter Frampton. When 1975 came around Eddie became heavily involved with Kiss and their live productions producing all 3 “Alive” albums and having great fan and critic reviews. As well as this Kramer engineered the hit Peter Frampton album “Frampton Comes Alive!” and Led Zeppelins “The Song Remains The Same”.

From the 1980s up to today Kramer continued to produce and engineer with fantastic artists and create brilliant albums. His work with metal band “Anthrax” on their album “Among The Living” shows his versatility as a producer / engineer and earned himself a great deal of respect from other metal bands.

In the later months of the 80’s Kramer asked great artists such as The Cure, Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy to help raise funds for the United Negro College Fund by creating a Hendrix tribute album. The album was named “Stone Free” raising $750,000 allowing under privileged kids to have a shot at music by offering scholarships to great music schools. By the time the 90’s came around Kramer started to slow down in his work load undertaking only a few artist a year but in 1994 produced “Slippin’ In” by Buddy Guy which received the award for the years Best Contemporary Blues Record and a W.C. Handy Blues Foundation Album of the Year Award.

In 1995 Kramer produced another Hendrix tribute album called “In From The Storm” featuring artists such as Sting, Steve Vai and Carlos Santana with The London Metropolitan Orchestra. By this time digital recording technology had almost completely taken over the world and a lot of famous analogue mixer designers found themselves out of work. Kramer loving the sound of analogue material and the sound bleeding onto tape decided to get the best of both worlds creating a new state of the art studio which has about 8 Digidesign 192 racks and reel to reel tape recording devices.

Having listened to a lot of the artists Kramer has worked with I can pretty well say his had quite a impression on each and every one of them. His sound is a unique blend of class A tone packed with imagination and that is why he is still regarded today as the God of rock.

References:
Accessed 4th March 2007 4:42pm - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Kramer - Various Authors
Accessed 5th March 2007 9:34pm - http://www.kramerarchives.com/bio.html - Webmaster Author / Kramer Archives inc.
Accessed 5th March 2007 10:22pm - http://www.tomfolio.com/autographimg.asp?sigid=344&ret=AGIni - Tom Folio
Accessed 13th March 2007 2:24pm - http://www.apogeedigital.com/users/kramer.php - Author Sean McArthur
Accessed 14th March 2007 12:54pm - http://www.studioexpresso.com/profiles/EddieKramer.htm - Author Rob Putnam