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Howard's death is no surprise. He was failing for some time. Nevertheless, his contribution to the birth of the Lp makes him one of the important players in the success of Columbia Masterworks and worthy of remembrance. He liked to tell the story of moving a cot into a studio where he could nap in between supervising dub editing lacquer cuts into Lp masters, and it was all true, including having to re-make a majority of what had been produced after technical problems in manufacturing caused them all to be scrapped. Despite that setback, he and his engineering team began again and met their deadline in time for the spring 1948 launch of the new format. In the decade before 1961 he supervised many of the Masterworks recordings that allowed Columbia to lead the U.S. market. I have a photo of Howard auditioning a test pressing sometime in the early fifties. He is young, balding and clean shaven, attired in a dress shirt and tie. Like his mentor, Goddard Lieberson, he set great store by dressing well. I worked on many recordings that he supervised when they were reissued on CD, and admired his preparation and disciplined approach. What isn't mentioned in that NY TIMES obit is that he was born Shapiro but, according to the assimilationist impulse of his day, changed it to Scott in the late forties. It was a privilege to have known him. *Requiescat in pace* . DDR On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 11:03 AM, David Lewis <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/arts/music/howard-h-scott-a-developer-of-the-lp-dies-at-92.html?_r=1 > > Funny, he was mentioned here not long ago. > > Uncle Dave Lewis > -- Dennis D. Rooney 303 W. 66th Street, 9HE New York, NY 10023 212.874.9626