Gregg Field on Music Production and the Importance of Pursuing Your Passion

By Mr. Bonzai | October 2, 2024

Gregg Field is a music producer, drummer, educator, recording engineer and eight-time Grammy and Emmy recipient, including Latin Grammy “Producer of the Year.” Starting at age 21, drummer Field toured with Ray Charles, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. His work has resulted in collaborations with Barbara Streisand, Seal, Dean Martin, John Williams, Herbie Hancock and Ariana Grande.

In this episode of Bonzai Beat, Fields tells an awe-inspiring story about how pursuing his passion for drumming as a teenager ended up in a magical moment onstage with Count Basie’s band. He talks about
how being prepared creates opportunity and how a less critical, more encouraging approach in the recording studio gets him better results. Fields details how he remixed an unreleased Ella Fitzgerald recording and shares why he thinks tapping into your emotions — as a singer or instrumentalist — matters.

▸ ▸ ▸

MrB: So good to have you here today. Tell us this story briefly about how you ended up playing drums with the Count Basie big band. I mean, how did that happen?

Gregg Field: It's an incredible story. I had been playing drums from about nine years old, and hadn't really heard any jazz. I grew up in the East Bay outside of San Francisco, and every year my parents would take my brother and I to Disneyland. I was 10, and we were standing in front of a large stage inside the park and waiting to see what was going to happen. The curtain opened up, and it was Count Basie and his band. I had never heard anything like that. I'd never really heard jazz. And here was this incredible band playing, and I, for the first time, really reacted to music. I had a physical reaction, and my hair was standing up in the back of my neck. I was very excited as a 10-year-old.

I asked my dad to buy every Count Basie record he could find, and I would come home for hours and hours and hours at a time, sit in my bedroom and try to learn these songs. And I didn't just learn the drum parts. I could sing the trumpet parts, and I could tell you when the alto opened up his vibrato. I was doing a deep dive.

This continued all through elementary school, junior high school and high school. We had a great music program in our high school. I read in the paper in my senior year that Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie were going to perform at a theater for a week outside of San Francisco, and I asked my dad if I could go every night. And he said, sure.

So I bought a ticket every night, and I would stand outside the stage door because I wanted to watch the musicians come in. I recognized all of them by name, and I was a fanboy and sitting there smiling at these guys, and they would walk in and I would go around and watch the concert. Well, I did this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Finally, it was Saturday, and they were doing two shows that night, which played a big role in the story. My girlfriend and I were going to go to the second show. But she called me that afternoon and said, Yeah, Gregg, not feeling very good. I'm going to pass. I thought, well, I've got nothing else to do.

So I went to the first concert, and like every other night, I'm standing outside the stage door and the musicians are coming in. And that night, one of the guys stopped and he said, Do you work here? And I said, No. He said, What are you doing out here every night? I said, I'm a drummer and I'm just a big fan. He said, my name is John Williams. Now it's not Star Wars John Williams, this was a baritone saxophone player in the band. And I said, Yeah, I know you're John Williams. You're John Calvin Williams. You play baritone sax. You joined the band in 1970 and you're from Greensboro.

And he said, Wow. Why don't you come back?

So all of a sudden I find myself in this green room, and there's Freddie Green and Eddie Lockjaw Davis and Al Gray and all these iconic musicians from the Count Basie Band, and I get introduced to a few of them.

Basie hadn't shown up yet. He was coming by private car. So it's about five minutes before the concert, and everybody's standing in the wings, and I'm standing there, and up comes Basie. John said, What's your name? And I said, Gregg Field. He said, Basie, this is Gregg, and he's a drummer.

Now try as I might, I can't remember what Basie and I said to each other, but I remember he was a really nice man, and basically at that moment, it was time for the band to get on stage.

The whole band walks out, sits down, and they're about to introduce Basie, and the manager comes up and said, Hey, Basie, Sonny Payne's not here. Sonny Payne was the drummer.

Basie said, Didn't you say you were a drummer? And I said, Yeah. He said, You want to play? I said, yeah.

So I walked out. I didn't have time to think about it or get nervous. I walked out, and I sat down on Payne's drums, and where the music would normally be, on the left, there was no music. I turned to Al Gray, the trombone player. I said, Where's the music? And he said, Well, we don't pull it out, son, he knows it all.

At that moment, I hear Voice of God say, ladies and gentlemen, Count Basie, and he starts to play a song called “Splanky” that I played in my bedroom hundreds of times. Honestly, I thought I sounded better than I did, because I'm playing with the greatest band in the world. No matter what I did, I couldn't screw it up, but I didn't screw it up.

I played that song, and I played the next one, and I ended up playing the whole set. I knew every song but one; it was a ballad I could fake my way through.

At the end of the concert, Basie had me stand up. He said, ladies and gentlemen. I don't remember this young man's name, but I think we should give him a round of applause anyway.

That night led to me ultimately realizing what was an incredible dream for me to join the band. It was seven years later, I moved to L.A. and was trying to get in the studios or get a gig. I ended up getting a gig with Ray Charles, and I toured with him, and I started working with Herbie Hancock for the first time. This was back in 1977 and started just kind of making my way. I was a new guy auditioning wherever I could, but I was getting opportunities here and there. And then, sure enough, in 1980 I was home in my little apartment in West Hollywood, and the phone rang. It was Basie’s manager who said, you want to join the band?

It's so outrageous that a young white guy in his 20s is going to get the most coveted job in jazz, which was to become Basie’s drummer. And within a year, I recorded an album that went on to win a Grammy. I played the Kennedy Center Honors where they were honoring Basie, and I met my future father-in-law, Henry Mancini. He actually came up to me and he said, wow, kid, you got the greatest job in the world. You're Count Basie's drummer. And I thought, man, Henry Mancini's talking to me.

I did a TV show called The Man in His Music with Frank Sinatra and NBC special, because we did it with Basie. But all this to say that I don't believe in coincidence, and there were so many things that had to line up to put me in that spot at that moment, that I started making a study of, is there something else going on here? What I've learned over the years is that where I put my passion and attention, I find doors start opening.

MrB: People talk about good luck. But when you're in the right position, if you haven't done the homework, the good luck is not going to mean anything. But you were prepared. There’s the crux of the matter right there, that if you're prepared, then when the currents come, that you might call good luck, then you can make it work for you. As a music producer, you're responsible for a lot of things. What are the essential responsibilities? What's a day in the life of a music producer?

Gregg Field: Busy, thankfully. It's been that way for a while.

One more thing about good luck. I would say that it appears to be luck, because we don't necessarily know all the other things that are going on behind the scenes.

This sounds a little metaphysical but there was a great book Carl Jung wrote. He created a term called synchronicity. He had two outrageous things happen in his life, and he made a life study as a psychologist of what was going on. And he found there are things that happened on the unconscious and the subconscious that affect things like that guy stopping that one night. John didn't stop any other night he stopped that night. So yes, you have to be prepared. But I think in the preparation you start attracting opportunity in the preparation. In other words, those hundreds of hours I spent immersed in Basie, I think, start to, on the unconscious level, create opportunity.

About music production. When you first hear the idea of music producer, you think Oh, I'm going to be in a studio with a famous artist, and we're going to make some great music. There is that, but there's a lot more to music production than the actual getting in the studio and hitting record.

To ultimately be a successful music producer, you've got to make successful records. Because it's our job, and we do this for a living. I've been doing this a long time, and I've never, ever felt like I had to sacrifice the music I'm making to turn something into a commercial success.

But doing this for a lot of years, you start to gain skills of how to take an artist that maybe is a little more eclectic and thread that needle where they're satisfied as an artist, and yet you're making something that is commercially viable. Understanding the business side of it is really important. Understand that, if you've got a budget and you want to make a record, and the record company is going to give you this much, or the artist is going to give you that much, how do I make the record I want to make with those restrictions?

One of the blessings is this studio that I'm in was built in 2000 for Concord Music Group. I used to be one of the owners. When one of the Concord artists would come here to work, we didn't bill them for the time. So you could mix and edit and overdub and create the record you want to make. And so now this studio is fully back under my purview, and if I have X amount of dollars for a budget, I can still come in here and put in as much time as I want to to make it great, and I want to make it great.

So honestly, I respect the dollar side of it, but I'm always focused on making something that's musically really fun and great, because that's the passion, I think.

And then moving from drummer or whatever the instrument you play, moving to producer, when I really started understanding the role of a producer, it made me a much better drummer. Because when I listen to music now, from a drummer standpoint, I don't listen to myself very much. I listen to everybody else.

Like, I can play this beat, and I can talk to you about … I don't know if you felt it, but we had an earthquake this morning, right at about seven, I think, right? I didn't feel it. My wife did. So you and I can have this conversation, and I'm playing this beat, right? So I don't need to tell my hand to do this, I don't need to listen to myself. So what I find is, as a producer and as a drummer, that I play less, and what I play is more organic and means more with the overall picture, and that comes from the production side.

I would recommend for all of you out there that do want to produce, that's a really essential part of this. I mean, I describe it as imagine you had four chefs, and they all want to make a cake, but none of the chefs know what the other chefs are going to put in for an ingredient, and they just put in their favorite ingredients. Well, of course it would be a mess. So if you don't know exactly what everybody else is doing, how do they know what to add? It's exactly the same with music.

When you pick up your trumpet or your guitar, open your ears up to everything else that's going on and blend and choose those notes that break the silence. A lot of that perspective comes from having produced for years.

MrB: You mentioned Carl Jung and the unconscious. Doesn't there have to be a certain amount of knowledge about the deeper thinkings of people, so that you're not hammering them down to make it sound the way you want, but figuring out a way to get them to maybe give you something more than you expected?

Gregg Field: That's an incredible question. That's one of the most important questions I think you could ask.

I've worked with a lot of producers as a drummer, a lot with Phil Ramone and a lot with David Foster, who are very different people. Foster's pretty hard ass. It's like, come on, guys, get this together, right? He's that kind of guy, and he gets incredible results. He's a wonderful guy, but he's pretty hard ass.

Phil Ramone was the opposite. Phil Ramone was the most gentle person in the studio, and when things were starting to, the boat is kind of rocking, and we're not making it as a rhythm section, he would say something that would give you more confidence.

What I find is that for me as a producer, that's the road that I follow. Nobody's trying to play a wrong note, nobody's trying to play out of tune, nobody's trying to be uncreative. I think the question you want to ask is, are you going to get better results if you encourage people and create an environment of joy and happiness, especially when it's going to get tough? I get better results with that.

I'll go back to my high school band for a moment. There was a trombone player that wasn't very good, but he was in the band and he would play a wrong note, and the lead trombone player would just give him a lot of crap. And it kind of pissed me off, too, because he was like, Come on, man. But the guy wasn't trying to play bad. This was his skill level.

So what I do as a producer, when a musician, or especially a singer, because I work mostly with singers, I think, what can I do to create an environment that they feel they can fly, right? And that's what I go for every time, and it's a lot of psychology.

MrB: That sense of creation in the studio, especially with temperamental artists and musicians, it can get so uptight over some little things in the studio that can completely destroy a session. You've got to be sensitive to that.

Gregg Field: You can always say, let's take a break and come back tomorrow. Or, what Phil Ramone would do, which was absolutely brilliant, because a lot of these sessions that I was doing with him, like the Frank Sinatra duet sessions, which was probably 70 or 80 musicians, it's Frank Sinatra, and I'm 30 years old or whatever, and I'm trying to do my best. My first time at Capital Studios actually was for that album.

But Phil, just before we were about to start, literally, the conductors on the podium maybe almost has his hands up, drop the downbeat. Phil would hit the talkback button and say something hysterically funny. Everybody would [let out a sigh of relief]. I’ve stolen that a couple times.

MrB: I was there one night. I wasn't supposed to be. Al Schmidt said, MrB I don't think so. We can't. The wives don't even come to these sessions. But he let me sneak in. And I saw Phil. I mean, they were a team, an engineer and a producer, that created magic. I always remember what Phil said. His main concept was that it's about the music. So just always get back to that.

Gregg Field: It is about the music and about storytelling. That's another thing for producers out there.
When I played drums with Sinatra, it was my last touring gig for the last five years that he toured. He was older, and he sounded older… would come up to me and they say, he doesn't sound like the Frank of old. And I said, Yeah, you're right.

But we were making duets, and on one of the tracks on duets was this famous ballad that Frank had recorded in the 50s called “One for My Baby.” It's a saloon song. It's about a guy sitting at the bar ordering another round to talk about how heartbroken he is.

Frank recorded this, it was a big hit for him in the 50s. Well, we re-recorded it for duets, and Frank sounded particularly old on that track. And whenever anybody would come visit the studio, when they were putting the album together, mixing it and so forth, he would always play that track.

I finally said to him one time, Phil, Frank sounds so old on that track. Why do you play that one? And he said, Gregg, you don't get it. In the vocal are 50 years of whiskey and Eva Gardner, who was the woman who broke Frank's heart.

It was like the heavens opened up and I realized, oh God, right! It's not just about getting the perfect note in tune. It's about getting the perfect emotion. And that vocal was so replete with heartache, and when I listened to the original now, I almost can't listen to it, because I know what he went through in his life, especially with his heartaches over the years.

And when I'm working with a singer in the studio, I try to get them in the emotional place that what’s going on inside their soul and in their heart as they're telling the story of whatever the lyric is, that when your emotions start to take over all the phrasing and all of that takes care of itself. You don't have to say to a singer, hey, why don't you hold this note out a little longer, a little bit shorter? You can do that, and you can get results, but if I can get a singer, even on a bad day, into an emotional spot.

Sinatra once said I never let my singing get in the way of my storytelling. And I thought, boy, is that profound.

I toured with Frank, I toured with Ella. I've worked with Tony Bennett in a number of situations, mostly producing, not playing, and Luther Vandross. I find that those singers, somehow they were wired that when something came out of their mouth and they were singing it, it was channeled through their emotions. It's almost as though they didn't know how else to do it.

You can take a mediocre vocal that has honesty and emotion and heart. I'll take that any day over a perfectly tuned vocal.

Now, granted, it depends on the genre, but if we're talking about something other than, say, very electronic music, where you might want to auto tune somebody to death for the style of the music, that's all fine. But for what I’m doing … and the same thing with an instrumentalist — emotion should drive everything.

MrB: Let’s talk about someone who has a studio that they can work in, whether it's their own or their friend has it. They know musicians who are very talented, and they feel that they want to take on the role that we've been talking about. What's something that you can offer to somebody who's just getting their getting their career off the ground?

Gregg Field: I think what's really important is that whatever discipline, whether it be producing or engineering or playing, the passion for wanting to do it, will get you through the slow times, and it'll pique your curiosity.

When I was starting to do sessions, I was curious about what was going on in the studio. I wanted to know about reverb, and I wanted to know how that worked. I used to bug the hell out of Al Schmidt and all these great engineers I worked with, but I was like a sponge. It was an internal passion. I loved the idea of doing this. So first of all, if you don't have the passion for it, find whatever the discipline is, whether it be music or whatever, that you do have that passion.

I taught at USC. I taught drum set for 18 years, and I would find that when you would get through the four years of school, and now you're out, you've been intense, intense, intense, for four years. You got classes every day, things are happening. You've got things to do. Suddenly, you're out of school, and you're in our world, and now you're wanting to become a part of this.

Well, it's incremental, isn't it? Because you'll get a quick opportunity. Maybe somebody couldn't make it, you know, could you come in and just be a second engineer or an assistant or could you play drums on something? The same things are happening to your friends and colleagues.

Eventually you find that you get more work and more work, and if you're competent, it takes a bit of time, but you'll create opportunity, which is what I experienced.

But to be an engineer, honestly, I find a lot of engineers, not at the level of Ed Cherny or Al Schmidt or Moogie Canazio or all the guys that are out there that are so great, but younger engineers that really haven't spent time playing in a band, their experience is they're behind glass. They set up mics, they come back in the studio, and they work from behind glass.

I spent years and years on the road playing from symphonies to big bands to pop bands to R&B bands, and played all that. So you start to get that knowledge in your head of what things can sound like.

I've been engineering my own albums now for 15 years, and I feel comfortable with my skill set, so that if I'm going for a particular sound, I know how to get there, right? But you were asking, if you don't have all the bells and whistles that I'm fortunate enough to have, what do you do?

The way things are set up now, with the plugins being at such a high level. I use a lot of waves plugins. They're not expensive. Some of these plugins are inexpensive and they're great, but it's learning what can they do? What I would do is if I’m trying to mix a vocal, and I'm listening to some of the vocals that are out there right now that I really love. Why is it sounding that way? And I go in and I try to make it work, or I'll call the engineer and say, What did you do?

On the last Adele record, I was blown away by a track called “My Little Love.” It's the third track on Adele 30, and it was sonically so fascinating. Even on just stereo speakers, you heard these background vocalists just singing ooze, and the ooze, or say, right here, and then Adele starts singing, and she's like, up in front of them, and it felt like a three-dimensional mix.

I called Joe Chiccarelli, and I said, you have any idea what's going on there? And he said, Yeah, I think I know what's happening. And he showed me a couple of plugins that make doing that very simple. So I was curious, I was excited, and I wanted to know how to do it. And I just called somebody that would know how and help, and why not?

MrB: I was going to ask you about networking. I think any way that you contact your contemporaries or people that are maybe even more talented than you, they can enhance and motivate and move your career in the right direction.

Gregg Field: Sure, yeah. Usually the guys I call I've known for a long time, so it's more of an SOS call, right? But we don't know everything certainly, and again, it's the curiosity, and I'm not afraid of what I don't know at all.

I've had students that would come in and want to take a lesson with me, drummers. It's happened many, many times. And the drummer will start to play, show me something that he can do that she can do that's really good. And I'll say, wait, wait, wait. I don't need to know what you can do. I need to know what you can't do.

You wouldn't go to a doctor if you break your left arm and the doctor's about it to examine it, and you say, look how great my right arm works. You're missing the boat.

You want to be your most vulnerable, your most honest and your most curious when you're around anybody that could give you another piece of the puzzle.

There's another important part of that. If you listen to the way records were mixed, pop records, I'm referring to mostly, or R&B records, but in the, say, in the 2000 to 2010s, I find that the vocals were much further back. And if you go back even further into the 90s and 80s, vocals are really almost buried, for my taste.

Now, all this to say that the way that we hear music and approach it in terms of mixing and producing is constantly evolving. An engineer that may have been really successful 20 years ago, that may not work now. So as a producer and as an engineer, I'm constantly looking for how to make it better, how to make it better, how to make it better.

The record label, Verve called me about four years ago, and they had an unreleased Ella Fitzgerald record. And it was a live recording she made in 1962 in Berlin, and it was already mixed. It was a little half inch tape or quarter inch tape, and it was mixed probably back in ‘62 and never released. It was a trio: bass, drums, piano and Ella. The piano was all the way on one side, the drums were all the way on the other. The bass was in the middle, and Ella was kind of thin and back.

I had just received some beta software from iZotope called Music Rebalance. And Dave Godowsky over there who's really a wonderful guy at iZotope, said, listen, we've got this. Do you want to try it? I said, Yeah. I said, You mean, you tell me it'll actually separate the instruments and the vocal? He said, Yeah.

So I was able to separate the bass, the drums and the piano, and Ella, and I brought the bass and drums in, and I gave them a room so they felt a little more organic. I brought the acoustic bass up in terms of the level, and also just the low end of it, where we like to hear bass now, our 2024 ears. And I took Ella, she was a little thin, and around the 500 cycle range, fill her vocal up. I brought her really forward, and I used a completely contemporary music chain on her vocals. I ended up using a very short serial delay, a more traditional delay and two verbs, I think I used brick casty and EMT 140 possibly. It's something I would use on a contemporary vocalist now, and I used it on Ella, and I brought her really forward.

Well, the album came out, and Stereo File Magazine said it was the best sounding Ella Fitzgerald live record she ever made. And it is, because of our ears. It's not that I was this magician. It’s that if you would have heard that same recording with its original mix, it would be much less compelling, because the mix sounded of that era, right? So we have to keep pushing the envelope.

MrB: I's a wonderful story, because it's really bringing us back to what Ella's essential character talent was and bringing it all so that we can appreciate it. That sounds simple, but complicated.

I think we got an idea where your mojo comes from, Mr. Field. But briefly, you've been to a couple of NAMM Shows, haven't you?

Gregg Field: I actually went to the very first NAMM Show, and it was at the Marriott at LAX. I'm pretty sure it was the first one, but it would have been probably when I was about 18 or 19.

MrB: I've talked to other people, your colleagues, shall we say, and they just love going to The NAMM Show to noodle around, to check out the new stuff and what's hot. What does NAMM mean to you?

Gregg Field: It’s meant a lot for a lot of years. Initially, as a drummer, I had an endorsement deal early on with Pearl, then I moved to Yamaha a number of years ago, and with Zildjian, and with Remo and with Vic Firth the drumstick maker, to shoutout all my endorsements. But it was a chance for me to be with the people that ran it. And they would say, are you liking your drumstick? What can we change? What about that symbol? Remember that symbol we sent you a year ago? Did you end up using it? And it's firsthand. It's not over the phone, it's not on the internet. It's person to person.

And now for me, at this point, I'm dying to go because I want to know what Abbott's putting out. I wonder if they've got a new board that I want to use, and it's about personal relationships. You run into all your friends. I see Stevie there every year. He usually goes on Saturday, and I run into him there, and it's like a big social event, aside from the obvious career benefit from it. It's a social event that none of us want to miss.

MrB: Thank you, Mr. Gregg Field, this has been great spending time with you like this. We've known each other for a while, but we've talked about some things today that we didn't really get into in the past, and I appreciate what you've offered in the way of advice to people who have their aspirations. Anything's possible. You just have to find the path that works for you.

Gregg Field: Be curious and follow the passion.

Related Content