“Legend” has become too commonplace a word that rarely describes a subject of popular narratives, yet Terry Manning, who passed away on March 25th at the age of 75, deserved this title. There’s no other engineer and producer whose resume would include such different artists as Otis Redding and LED ZEPPELIN, Shakira and ZZ TOP, Isaac Hayes and THE TRAGICALLY HIP, Lenny Kravitz and IRON MAIDEN. A staple of Stax as a teenager, he became a master in the art of recording and a mentor to several generations of studio dwellers and performers – and the veteran was an artist, too, a musician and a photographer of note whose shots of Martin Luther King and Dusty Springfield considered classics.
“I love sounds and sights so much, and I love to immerse myself in those things – they are both definitely part of my character,” told Terry to this scribe during the interview that, spread over two days and three sessions, took place a week before Manning’s untimely passing. We were wrapping it up just one day before the tragedy struck. This is why there’s not much sense in digging into his biography, as so much got covered in the conversation we had just a few days before he died. What must be said, though, is that Terry Manning was a wonderful human being: open, humorous and full of zest to the very end. He will be sorely missed and warmly remembered.
