Who Was Curt Boettcher?
A little chronicle:
Curt Boettcher first entered [Columbia Records producer Gary] Usher’s consciousness in the spring of 1966. Their meeting had such a dramatic impact upon Usher that he still remembered it in detail 22 years later. “I’m over at Studio Three West with Brian Wilson. We were with (engineer) Chuck Britz, doing something. I think it was a movie soundtrack. The (tape) machine was stopped. All of a sudden, I heard a sound, and the instant I heard it, I froze just like someone had thrown a bowling ball at me. My ears just perked right up. And Brian looked at me, I looked at Brian, and we both said simultaneously, ‘What was that?’
“I walked over to the hallway,” Usher continued. “We put our ears out the door and listened to what was coming down that way. We went right down the hallway, around a corner, and when we followed the sound, the louder it got. We were walking and walking and walking up to the point where we were running into this room. And here’s this little kid with an earring. That was the first time I met Curt, and it was while he was producing Lee Mallory’s record ‘That’s the Way it’s Gonna Be.’
“Brian said, ‘What is that?’ That record stunned Brian. He’s doing little surfer music, and here comes this kid who is light years ahead of him. I had never seen Brian turn white. It stunned him. All he talked about for a week was that song and that kid. Brian sensed that was where it was at, that’s where it was going.”
— Dawn Eden, 1997, liner notes for Sundazed reissue of Sagittarius album Present Tense
More about Curt:
Curt Boettcher at Wikipedia
CurtBoettcher.com (maintained by Matthew Moring)
Liner notes for Magic Time (Sundazed compilation)
Curt Boettcher at Spectropop