Bob Johnston

Donald William "Bob" Johnston (May 14, 1932 – August 14, 2015) was an American record producer, best known for his work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, and Simon & Garfunkel.

Johnston was born into a professional musical family. His grandmother, Mamie Jo Adams, was a songwriter, as was his mother Diane Johnston. Diane wrote songs for Gene Autry in the 1950s and scored a hit in 1976 when Asleep at the Wheel covered her 1950 demo "Miles and Miles of Texas". After serving in the U.S. Navy, Johnston returned to Fort Worth, Texas, where he and his mother collaborated on songwriting for rockabilly artist Mac Curtis and others. From 1956 to 1961, Johnston recorded a few rockabilly singles under the name Don Johnston.

He married songwriter Joy Byers with whom he began to collaborate. In later years, Johnston claimed that songs still credited to his wife Joy Byers were actually co-written, or solely written by himself. He has cited old "contractual reasons" for this situation. The songs in question include Timi Yuro's 1962 hit "What's A Matter Baby", plus at least 16 songs for Elvis Presley's films between 1964 and 1968, including "It Hurts Me", "Let Yourself Go", and "Stop, Look and Listen". Two songs credited to Byers, the aforementioned "Stop, Look and Listen" and "Yeah, She's Evil!" were recorded by Bill Haley & His Comets (the latter song was titled "The Meanest Girl in Town" when Presley recorded it). Presley recorded "The Meanest Girl in Town" on June 10, 1964, while Bill Haley recorded his version a week later, on June 16, 1964.

By 1964, he had moved into production work at Kapp Records in New York, freelance arranging for Dot Records, and signed as a songwriter to music publisher Hill and Range.

Johnston began working for Columbia Records in New York, where he began producing Patti Page and the Pozo-Seco Singers. In 1965 he was successful in gaining the assignment to produce Bob Dylan, followed by Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Flatt & Scruggs, and then Leonard Cohen. His style of production varied from a 'documentary' approach capturing a fleeting moment (exemplified by Dylan's albums and Cash's live albums) to providing subtle arrangements with strings, background vocals and seasoned session musicians (exemplified by Cohen's studio albums).

After a couple of years in New York, Johnston became head of Columbia in Nashville, Tennessee, where he had known many of the session musicians, such as Charlie Daniels, for years. He produced three of Cohen's albums, toured with him and also composed music to the Cohen lyric "Come Spend the Morning", recorded by both Lee Hazlewood and Engelbert Humperdinck.

Bob Johnston was very sophisticated. His hospitality was extremely refined. It wasn't just a matter of turning on the machines. He created an atmosphere in the studio that really invited you to do your best, stretch out, do another take, an atmosphere that was free from judgment, free from criticism, full of invitation, full of affirmation. Just the way he'd move while you were singing: He'd dance for you. So, it wasn't all just as laissezfaire as that. Just as art is the concealment of art, laissezfaire is the concealment of tremendous generosity that he was sponsoring in the studio.

— Leonard Cohen quoted in The Stranger Music of Leonard Cohen by William Ruhlmann, Goldmine