R.I.P. Bob Johnson (producer of Dylan's "Blonde On Blonde" and Johnny Cash's "At Folsom Prison")

[Miles Archer]

Bob Johnston, Bob Dylan Producer, Dead at 83
Columbia Records staffer worked on 'Blonde on Blonde,' Johnny Cash's prison LPs and Leonard Cohen's 'Songs of Love and Hate'
By Daniel Kreps August 16, 2015

Bob Johnston, a staff producer at Columbia Records who worked on legendary LPs like Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, Johnny Cash's At Folsom Prison and Simon & Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, passed away Friday at a Nashville hospice. He was 83.

A friend of Johnston's confirmed the producer's death to the Austin Chronicle, saying, "For several days before, swinging, swaying, and waving around his hands, telling stories out loud, entertaining and consuming all those that saw and heard him. Once he was confined to [a] bed and connected to machines, hospice only gave him a few days to live. He was on morphine to help any pain he was experiencing. Bob's wife told me he pass[ed] away peacefully. The grand master waved his magical wand for the last time, then disappeared off into the night."

Johnston was born to a musical family on May 14, 1932 in Hillsboro, Texas; his mother Diane Johnston wrote songs for Gene Autry as well as the single "Miles and Miles of Texas," which became an Asleep at the Wheel hit in the Seventies. After writing songs for Bill Haley and his Comets and Elvis Presley, Bob Johnston later scored a job as an in-house producer at Columbia Records. It was around this time that Dylan split from his go-to producer Tom Wilson after recording "Like a Rolling Stone. Dylan would soon team with Johnston for 1965's Highway 61 Revisited.

"All I know is that I was out recording one day, and Tom had always been there – I had no reason to think he wasn't going to be there – and I looked up one day and Bob was there," Dylan told Rolling Stone in 1969 about how he and Johnston were first paired.

[shenmue]

1. Rest in peace