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The Producer Series: Leon Sylvers III

Seventeen tracks from the producer who built the sound of SOLAR Records — and, through it, a large part of what the early eighties sounded like on the radio.

Leon Sylvers of the singing family group ... The Sylvers | The ...

Leon Sylvers III

Leon Sylvers III came out of a family act. The Sylvers were a large, talented Memphis-born family group whose hits he wrote and played on, and his younger brother Foster Sylvers had a hit of his own as a child.

Where he mattered most, though, was as the in-house producer at SOLAR — Dick Griffey's Sound of Los Angeles Records — where between roughly 1979 and 1984 he was responsible for an extraordinary run of records by The Whispers, Shalamar, Dynasty and Carrie Lucas.

His signature is instantly identifiable once you know it: a hard, clipped synthesised bass, bright keyboard stabs, handclaps on the backbeat, and an arrangement that keeps the midrange almost empty so the vocal sits forward. It is one of the most heavily sampled sounds in hip-hop, precisely because there is so much room in the mix.

What to listen for

The Whispers' "And the Beat Goes On" is the template — and note how little is actually happening. The groove is bass, clap, and a two-note keyboard figure.

Shalamar's "Make That Move" and "A Night to Remember" are the peaks. The latter is a full-blown anthem in Britain and a footnote in America, which says more about American radio than about the record.

"The Second Time Around" in the twelve-inch version is the one to play loud.

Dynasty's "Adventures in the Land of Music" is the deepest cut and possibly the most purely enjoyable thing here.

Carrie Lucas's "Show Me Where You're Coming From" is the SOLAR record that got overlooked, and Foster Sylvers' "Misdemeanor" is the 1973 family-act hit that predates all of it.

Gladys Knight's "You're Number One" shows him working with an established star, and The Whispers' "Emergency" is where the sound starts to harden towards the mid-eighties.

Blackstreet's "Before I Let You Go" sits at the end as the descendant — new jack swing built on foundations laid a decade earlier.

Go deeper

The Whispers' self-titled 1980 album and Shalamar's Three for Love are the two records where the SOLAR sound is most complete.

For the wider label story, add Lakeside, Midnight Star and Klymaxx. Then listen to early Dr. Dre and DJ Quik productions and count how often that bass tone reappears.

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