Roy Halee

Roy Halee is an American record producer and engineer, best known for working with Simon & Garfunkel, both as a group and for their solo projects.

Roy Halee
Born
Roy Decker Halee

1934 (age 85–86)
Long Island, New York, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Occupationrecord producer and audio engineer
Known forrecording engineer for Simon and Garfunkel
Children3 - Roy Halee, Jr., Walter R. Halee, Laurie Halee Beyer [1][2]
Parent(s)Roy Halee (father)

Early life

He grew up on Long Island, New York. His father, also named Roy Halee, provided the singing voice for Mighty Mouse in late 1940s Terrytoons cartoons, as well as the voices of Heckle and Jeckle from 1951 through 1961.

Career

Halee started working as a cameraman for CBS Television in the 1950s. He was also studying to be a classical trumpet player.[3]

He became an audio engineer for CBS Television, working on many shows and the top rated The $64,000 Question television quiz show.[3]

As television shows moved to the West Coast, he lost his job in a union dispute and layoff at CBS Television. He went to work for Columbia Records in New York as an editor and later as a studio engineer, working with Bob Dylan, including the first long-format radio single, "Like a Rolling Stone".[4]

After working with the Lovin' Spoonful, the Dave Clark Five and the Yardbirds, he began his partnership with Simon & Garfunkel.[4] He has also worked with other groups such as the Byrds, Journey (on their first album Journey), Willie Nile, Laura Nyro, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Mark Almond Band and Blue Angel. Halee was named to the TEC Awards Hall of Fame in 2001.

Simon & Garfunkel

Halee discovered that the uniqueness of Simon & Garfunkel harmonies could only be achieved by recording both voices on the same microphone at the same time. That technique did well, as the song "Mrs. Robinson", from the 1968 album The Graduate, won him a Grammy Award.[4]

Three more Grammy Awards followed for his work on the album Bookends, and the song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in 1970.[4]

Halee co-produced and engineered singer songwriter Albert Hammond's self titled 3rd solo album released in 1974.

Halee is best known for producing several albums with Simon & Garfunkel. He is mentioned in their 1965 song "A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission)", written by Paul Simon. He also co-produced Simon's first solo album and went with Simon to South Africa in 1985 to record something new that "wasn't written yet, we were going with nothing, so it was a gamble. A lot of people thought we were nuts", Halee says. It led to the Grammy Award-winning album Graceland. "I was having a ball recording these guys. For a guy from my background, everything was so organised generally. Here in the rawness of this, the earthiness, I was in seventh heaven."[5] After Graceland, Roy Halee continued travelling with Simon as an engineer, to Brazil and West Africa, for the album The Rhythm of the Saints, with "all congas, bass drums, bata...everything imaginable."[6]

Personal life

Anybody who knows Roy personally would first point out that he is the proud owner of three german shorthaired pointers. Other personal details include his marriage to Katherine for 53 wonderful years. Roy has three children: Roy Halee, III a post-production mixer for the CBS television program 60 Minutes in New York City, Walter Halee, a former book publicist and now a ski instructor at Beaver Creek in Colorado and Laurie Halee, a mother and massage therapist who resides in Nederland, Colorado.

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References
  1. Walter Halee
  2. Vilkomerson, Sara, "Countdown to Bliss: Roy Halee Jr. and Yvonne Miller", The New York Observer, April 4, 2005
  3. Jackson, Blair, "Interview: Roy Halee" Archived 2007-02-11 at the Wayback Machine, Mix magazine, October 1, 2001
  4. Mix Foundation. 2001 Hall of Fame Inductee Roy Halee Archived 2008-07-04 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Marre, J., (Documentary, ISIS Productions/Daniel Television/Paul Simon 1997)
  6. Luftig, S., The Paul Simon Companion, Four Decades of Commentary, pp. 197–198 (Biography, Schirmer Books/Omnibus Press New York, 1997)
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