Richard Podolor

Richard Podolor
Birth name Richard Allen Podolor
Also known as Dickie Podolor
Richie Allen
Born (1936-01-07) January 7, 1936
Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation(s) Musician, record producer
Instruments Guitar
Years active 1956-2000s
Associated acts The Pets
Sandy Nelson
Three Dog Night
etc.

Richard Allen "Richie" Podolor (born January 7, 1936)[1] is an American musician, record producer and songwriter. His career started as a session musician in the 1950s, and he is best known as the producer of Three Dog Night.

Life and career

He was born in Los Angeles, and learned guitar as a child.[2] He became a session musician at the age of 16, and played on Bonnie Guitar's hit, "Dark Moon", in 1956. He made some recordings as Dickie Podolor in the late 1950s, and toured as a member of the Pets, a group that also included session musicians Plas Johnson and Earl Palmer. He played on the Pets' 1958 hit "Cha Hua Hua". His success as a musician enabled his family to open a recording studio, the American Recording Company, initially run by his brother Don Podolor. Together with drummer Sandy Nelson, Richie Podolor recorded a demo of "Teen Beat", but the song was then taken up and recorded by other musicians with Nelson, becoming a hit in 1959. Because Podolor was not given a co-writing credit for "Teen Beat", Nelson later credited him with co-writing some of his later recordings, including his 1961 hit "Let There Be Drums".[2]

Podolor released recordings for Imperial Records in the early 1960s, using the name Richie Allen (or, on one single, Dickie Allen). His 1960 single "Stranger From Durango" reached number 90 on the Billboard Hot 100.[3] His early 1960s albums as the leader of Richie Allen and the Pacific Surfers featured top Los Angeles session musicians including René Hall, Tommy Tedesco, Plas Johnson, Lincoln Mayorga, and Sandy Nelson. Two of these Imperial albums, The Rising Surf and Surfer's Slide, were later reissued on CD.[2]

He continued to record under his own name as well as working as a session musician. By the mid-1960s, he increasingly worked as a recording engineer as well as a musician, on recordings by the Monkees, the Turtles, the Electric Prunes, the Grateful Dead, Donovan, and others. He produced Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild", and Three Dog Night's "Mama Told Me Not To Come" and "Joy to the World", leading to his work on all subsequent albums by Three Dog Night.[4] Other acts with whom he worked as a producer included Iron Butterfly, the Dillards, Chris Hillman, and Black Oak Arkansas.

Discography (producer)

Three Dog Night

Iron Butterfly

The Blues Image

Albums: OPEN (1970), RED WHITE & BLUES IMAGE (1970) Atco Records

The Dillards

Jellyroll

The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band

Chris Hillman

20/20

Alice Cooper

Phil Seymour

Dwight Twilley

Steppenwolf

John Kay & Steppenwolf

London

References

  1. ↑ State of California. California Birth Index, 1905-1995. Sacramento, CA, USA: State of California Department of Health Services, Center for Health Statistics, Ancestry.com. Retrieved 26 January 2016
  2. 1 2 3 Dik de Heer, "Richard Podolor", Black Cat Rockabilly. Retrieved 26 January 2016
  3. ↑ Whitburn, Joel (2003). Top Pop Singles 1955-2002 (1st ed.). Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. p. 12. ISBN 0-89820-155-1.
  4. ↑ "Gwen Mars Hits Wolf Mountain Next Thursday", The Deseret News, July 28, 1995
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