David Axelrod

David Axelrod (born April 17, 1936, Los Angeles) is an American composer, arranger and producer, across a wide range of musical genres. He produced his first album in 1959, saxophonist Harold Land's The Fox, which was seen as a landmark record showing that West Coast musicians could play top quality hard-edged jazz. In the late 60's and early 70's he recorded and arranged for Cannonball Adderley and Lou Rawls albums, in addition to many other jazz/funk/soul artists. He also arranged & produced albums for garage bands The Electric Prunes and The Common People and released a number of solo instrumental albums. His music is a heavily layered fusion of orchestral soul and jazz, mixing funk instrumentation with strings and orchestral brass. After relative obscurity for nearly 30 years, Axelrod's music was re-discovered by a new generation of musicians and DJs, most notably James Lavelle, head of Mo'Wax Records and the hip hop artist DJ Shadow who cites him as a major influence. As a result of this, Mo'Wax released an album of previously unheard Axelrod tracks, entitled just 'David Axelrod'.