Joel Moss, Broadway Cast Album Producer Who Worked With Ray Charles, Tony Bennett, and More, Dies at 79

Joel Moss, a Grammy-winning music producer and recording engineer who worked with score of Broadway stars, in addition to the likes of Tony Bennett, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, and more, has died at the age of 79.

Moss was one of the masterminds behind Sh-K-Boom Records and its Broadway subsidiary, Ghostlight Records, founded by Kurt Deutsch and Sherie Rene Scott. He won Grammys for the original cast albums of Beautiful: The Carol King Musical and In the Heights, in addition to nominations for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Drowsy Chaperone, Hair, and others.

He produced or engineered solo albums for the likes of Patti LuPone, Christine Ebersole, Judy Kuhn, and Sutton Foster, and was behind the cast albums of a wide range of shows, from properties like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Legally Blonde, and Next to Normal, to Michael John LaChiusa’s Giant, Queen of the Mist, See What I Wanna See, and both First Lady Suite and First Daughter Suite.

Broadway was a later-career development for Moss, whose career started as a folk music performer before transitioning behind the desk. He worked with the Minnesota Orchestra and recorded local artists like Al Jarreau. His career led him to studios with Led Zeppelin, the Beach Boys, Elton John, the Eagles, Rod Stewart, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and scores of others.  Moss was one of the engineers on Ray Charles’s final studio album, Genius Loves Company, for which he won one of his seven Grammys; earlier in his career, he became the first person to transfer analog recordings to 24-track digital for the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense.

Notable film soundtrack credits include Sister Act and its sequel, Little Shop of Horrors, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Chicago.

Moss had a long association with the Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, where he first performed as a teenager and currently worked as a sound technician.