Music producer Larry Klein still at the top of his game
Joni Mitchell's ex-husband has worked with the singer and with a roster of names including Herbie Hancock, Norah Jones, Melody Gardot, Tracy Chapman and Kyle Eastwood
Record producers, for the most part, are only at the top of their game commercially for a short time. One day you're hot, the next you're not.
Larry Klein is a rare exception to this rule. For more than 20 years, the albums he has overseen have enjoyed both critical acclaim and healthy sales. Klein made the leap from journeyman bass player to greatly sought-after record producer while married to Joni Mitchell, and picked up his first Grammy in 1995 for co-producing her Turbulent Indigo album.
They were divorced by the time it was completed, but their professional relationship continued, and he went on to win more Grammys for his ex-wife's orchestral album, Both Sides Now, and Herbie Hancock's tribute to her, River: The Joni Letters.
Klein does not work exclusively with female singers - apart from Hancock he has also produced albums for Walter Becker, Till Bronner, Kyle Eastwood and Zachary Richard, among many others - but he is known for producing them particularly well, and his client list includes Norah Jones, Tracy Chapman, and Melody Gardot, for whom he produced 2009's My One and Only Thrill - a global hit which received three Grammy nominations and has to date sold about 1.5 million copies.
For the follow-up, 2012's The Absence, another producer, Heitor Pereira was engaged, and it sold well, but not quite as well. So for her latest, Currency of Man, Klein, not surprisingly, has been re-engaged.