R.I.P.: DJ, Hit Producer Snuff Garrett

Snuff Garrett

You've probably heard some pop hit produced by Tommy "Snuff" Garrett, who died at his Tucson, Arizona home on December 16 at 77. He'd been battling cancer.

A Dallas, Texas native, Garrett, who worked as a Lubbock, Texas disc jockey and got to know Buddy Holly, who hung around KDAV radio in Lubbock. He got his nickname as a play on the Garrett brand of snuff.

Garrett also worked in radio in Wichita Falls, Texas, where he performed on-air stunts. On February 3, 1959, Garrett broadcast his own tribute show to Holly after he was killed (along with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper) in a plane crash in Iowa.

In 1959, Garrett became a producer at Liberty Records in Hollywood. His first job as producer for the label was on Johnny Burnette's "Settin the Woods on Fire" on July 9, 1959. Among Garrett's roster of artists were Bobby Vee, Johnny Burnette, Gene McDaniels, Buddy Knox, Walter Brennan, Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Del Shannon and later (after leaving Liberty) Cher and Sonny & Cher.

He was also responsible for hiring Phil Spector for a short period as an assistant producer for Liberty. Later Garrett had his own record labels, Snuff Garrett Records and Viva Records.

With Cher

Between 1961 and 1969 he released a series of instrumental albums, featuring solo guitar work by Tommy Tedesco, on Liberty Records by "The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett", six of which appeared on Billboard Top LPs chart.

Many of Garrett's hit singles came from songs by the Brill Building songwriters in New York City. One of his assistants was future recording star Leon Russell. Garrett was invited early on to produce the Monkees, but a test session did not go well, with the Monkees preferring to work with Boyce and Hart, writers of "Last Train to Clarksville" and the Monkees's theme song.

In addition to his string of hits with Sonny & Cher for Kapp Records and MCA Records in the 1970s, Garrett also produced Vicki Lawrence's "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" for Bell Records (a song written by Lawrence's then-husband Bobby Russell), and Tanya Tucker's "Lizzie and the Rainman" for MCA. Other artists produced by Garrett in the 1970s included Brenda Lee and "singing cowboy" Roy Rogers.



Garrett worked regularly with the Johnny Mann Singers and the Ron Hicklin Singers on many projects, and was responsible for the new sound of The Ray Conniff Singers in the early 1970s (which employed the Hicklin Singers), producing two albums with Conniff. Garrett also produced several tracks by Nancy Sinatra in the mid-1970s that were issued by Private Stock Records. In 1976, Garrett set up a sublabel of Casablanca Records, Casablanca West.  The label released just one album and two singles before folding. In 1978, Garrett produced the country-oriented soundtrack of Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way but Loose, which appeared on Garrett's latter-day label, Viva Records.