R.I.P.: Famed Record Producer Bob Johnston

Bob Johnston w/Johnny Cash

Bob Johnston, who produced some of American music’s most enduring and beloved albums, including Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” and Johnny Cash’s “At Folsom Prison,” died Friday.

He was 83 years old, according to The Tennessean.

Johnston was born May 14, 1932, in Texas, and grew up in a musical family. After a stint in the U.S. Navy, he, too, began pursuing a career in music. He had a short career as a rockabilly artist, then, in the early 1960s, began writing songs for placement in Elvis Presley movies, and traveling to Nashville to record demos.

Eventually, he got a job at Columbia Records in New York. One of the first recordings he produced there was Patti Page’s “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte,” which became a Top 10 hit in 1964. Following that success, he began working with Dylan.

Over the course of his lengthy and distinguished career, Mr. Johnston also produced multiple stellar albums by Leonard Cohen, Simon and Garfunkel, Flatt & Scruggs, Pete Seeger, Marty Robbins and several other now-legendary artists, all within a 10-year span. This track record of classics will likely never be duplicated. His career continued through the 1990s, when he produced albums for Willie Nelson and Carl Perkins, and into the new millennium.