Arif Mardin, the record producer who worked with stars like Aretha Franklin and the Bee Gees and more recently Norah Jones, died on Sunday. He was 74.
His publicist, Lydia Sherwood announced his death and said that he had been suffering from pancreatic cancer. Mardin was born in Turkey, but immigrated to the United States in 1958 where Dizzy Gillespie and Quincy Jones convinced him to take up music as his career. Mardin graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1981.
He began work in Atlantic Records in 1963and his career took off rapidly as he became a producer and arranger and then a senior vice-president. He joined Manhattan Records in 2001 and played a huge part in reviving that label. Mardin retired in 2004. He won 11 Grammys in his career, the last four for Norah Jones's best-selling album "Come Away With Me."
"He never made an Arif Mardin record, he made records that served the artist," Bruce Lundvall, president of EMI Jazz & Classics said in a tribute to Mardin. "Some producers, you can tell who produced the record just by listening. He always served the artist and did the right thing. He had a way with the artist that was very gentle and yet very firm."
Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said Mardin had made his native country proud, "I was deeply saddened by the death of Arif Mardin, who is considered to be one of the most important music producers of the 20th century," he said in a statement. "He will always be respectfully remembered as a person who made our nation proud."
Arif Mardin is survived by his wife, Latife, son Joe and daughters Julie and Nazan.
