The producer of Massive Attack's seminal debut album Blue Lines has died. Jonny Dollar passed away at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London on May 29, aged just 45, Music Week reports.
As well as working with Massive Attack on their critically lauded and influential debut album, he also produced Gabrielle's 1999 album Rise which went multi-platinum. He first became known through his work with Neneh Cherry; producing her early album Raw Like Sushi which contained hits Buffalo Stance and Manchild.
Regarded by many as the first trip-hop album (though the term didn't exist in 1991 when it was released), Blue Lines was groundbreaking because of it's underground British slant on US hip-hop, utilising live instruments and combining rapping, sampling and breakbeats with a much slower overall tempo (60 - 100 bpm over the album). It also includes their most successful track Unfinished Sympathy.
Speaking about Jonny Dollar, Polydor boss Ferdy Unger-Hamilton said: "These records had a profound effect on me, Buffalo Stance and Manchild when I was about 14 and when I first heard Unfinished Sympathy like everybody else who heard it, I don't think I could really believe what I was hearing."
He added "As committed and driven a producer as I've ever met, I literally had to take the tracks by force back off him, he was so determined to make them perfect. He was as tough artistically as he was gentle a person."
Dollar is survived by his wife Harriet and four children, he will be buried at a private ceremony in Cornwall with a memorial service in London to follow.
3:32 PM | 03/06/2009
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