Record legend dies, 97
RIPRobert Peter Munves, a record executive who made millions out of old classics, died this week at the age of 97.
Munves walked around with the Columbia and RCA catalogues in his head. He reinvented them as Mozart’s Greatest Hits and Switched-On Bach, using flashy covers and bargain-basement prices. ‘You can call me the P.T. Barnum of the classics,’ he liked to say. He signed letters with all three initials: RPM. ‘They are on every phonograph record,’ he said.
Well, this is a bit short shrift for a true legend. First, Peter was one of the original employees of Columbia Records in 1950, and if you were fortunate enough to work with him, you could be entertained with stories about Peter being the product manager for Glenn Gould, Leonard Bernstein (who ended his recording sessions supposedly with “and what are we doing for Peter”, like a Rossini overture or The Lark Ascending, just for Peter’s compilations) and just about all the classical artists on Columbia in the 1950s, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Jimmy Durante, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Zero Mostel, Goddard Lieberson, Lerner and Loewe, and what it was like to sit in on Miles Davis’ recording sessions in the 1950s.
He also claimed to have invented the “Greatest Hits” concept – which he would furiously insist that Clive Davis “stole from him”. I worked with him during his 1990s stint with PolyGram (we left in 1998, just before Universal bought the company), and he was brilliant, eccentric and despite his utterly disorganized life, totally committed to creating product that would appeal to an audience outside of the classical music scholars. When he was hired, he blew up the notions that were prevalent at the classical labels, and he was a one man wrecking crew – even haranguing DG’s studio engineers that their standard practice of putting 10 seconds of silence between tracks on compilations was “insane”. I travelled with him to conventions in the early 1990s and he loved putting on his enormously outdated vaudeville act about classical music, which we hated because it was so deeply old fashioned, but I always remember that no one in the audience EVER complained because he was a truly original showman and salesman. He would be close to fainting at the end of some of these showcases.
He always bragged that he was responsible for selling more classical music than anyone – and if you look at the secondary lines he developed in his career – CBS “Great Performances” line with their distinctive headline look, the “Dinner Classics” line, the Greatest Hits concept, DG’s “Mad About” series (which Time Magazine noted as one of the best products of the year when it was released), Philips’ groundbreaking lifestyle series which started with “Mozart in the Morning” and went on and on.
There were plenty of bad ideas too – in fact, one of my jobs was to work behind the scenes to kill the bad ideas (like a compilation based on the OJ Simpson trial), but if there was a more brilliant “behind the scenes” person in the classical music record label world between 1950 and 2010 (the last time I worked with Peter), I never met them.
I concur with everything Greg said above. Besides the business part, Peter was one of nicest people I’ve ever worked with in my 35+ years in the music business. While he was in his own words the “PT Barnum of classical” – he was also the equivalent of today’s Wikipedia – he knew everything about every recording and performer and was a legend. Godspeed.
Yes, for all of Peter’s genius re-packaging concepts, he was also responsible for some real turkeys… Who could forget “Eleanor Steber – Live at the Continental Baths” (subtitled “A Black-Towel Affair”). He also once attempted to release a disc of the excruciating “World’s Highest Tenor” Stefan Zuker – but fortunately cooler heads at RCA prevailed and prevented it. Peter was also the inventor of “Aerobic Conducting”. I was privileged to witness Maestro Munves standing in his living room in his underwear between 2 huge speakers, as he conducted (and sang along) to recordings of symphonies of Mahler, Beethoven, and Wagner operas. Believe me: it was UNFORGETTABLE ! ! ! ! They threw away the mold – there will never be another Peter Munves!
On RCA he did Lou Reed-Metal Machine Music and he told me his
main job on this album was to convince Lou to make it a Single not Double LP. I believe the might have been branded RCA Red Seal.
Thanks for this!
Thank you for honoring him by sharing your memories and educating us about this genius who gave so much to the music world.
What a lovely obituary. Everyone will have one his albums lurking in their collection somewhere as compilations were often the best way into classical music. And Switched On Bach definitely did it for me.
I remember the CBS ‘Great Performances’ line. Think we had one or two of those LPs in the house growing up. My parents did not have a large classical collection but at least we were exposed to different styles of music.
Those type of creative packaging ideas for records really were fun to look at and must have brought classical music to a much wider audience as well. RIP and thank you.
Thank you for such an illuminating post Greg.
A wonderfull indeed enlightening read
Thanks for it.
ive screenshotted it thanks
A larger-than-life character and always good value whenever I dropped into his office…
Norman, after 65, NO DEATH is unexpected
It is, if you’re over 65
Taking credit for other people’s work
Switched-on Bach was not dug up from old catalogues. It was an inspired album by Wendy Carlos in the early days of the Moog synthesiser.
She subsequently shot to fame with a truly stunning rendition of the Queen Mary Funeral music in Kubrick’s movie rendering of A Clockwork Orange.
True, but the packaging and marketing concepts (which made this album a success) came from the brain of Peter Munves.
Thanks. Useful information.
Surely Mr Munves was one of the last (if not THE last) great Classical Record producers of the 1950’s and ‘60’s. His compilations may have seemed trite to some, but in a more curious time they may well have served for some as a springboard for a further investigation of the classics. We shall not see his like again.
Well said. I was one of those who used that springboard.
He also had a clever way of sneaking some genuine vault treasures into those RCA Victor/Victrola “greatest hits” compilations, stuff rare enough and unavailable long enough that from time to time even very serious collectors would bite the bullet of shame and buy a greatest hits disc just to get that vault treasure. Pretty sly.
Truly one of a kind! Shared many rides to work and stories with him, of an industry that could make you laugh and cry hard. I think back frequently to such a different time in the business, and was happy to have known him.
He compiled a great life, too.
The “Greatest Hits” concept was basically fine – new bottles for old wine, in a form that reached out to the curious man in the street. Most stop there, but a few develop beyond that point.
I remember reading his name in liner notes prior to coming to my job at RCA Red Seal and finally meeting him one day at the ‘promo’ closet, where he’d come and cadge as many records as he could carry (he brought canvas bags!!).
He’d be talking non-stop as he sorted through the stacks of goodies and walk away laden with LPs.
Taking a cue from Rock n’ Roll, Country, Jazz and other formats, he created the “Greatest Hits” of classical composers series for CBS Masterworks – Genius!
Although I just read that he actually came up with the “Greatest Hits” concept and that it quickly adopted by pop music and its various genres.
He was single-handedly responsible for boosting the bottom line for the classical music divisions where he worked by virtue of his brilliant mind and creativity.
Peter made classical music fun!
He started conducting to classical music LPs as a way to lose weight and he lost a lot of it by doing just that.
As I was often tasked with creating compilations from recordings in the archives, I would sit in my office and wonder how I could out think him and create recordings, he hadn’t thought of.
It was tough, perhaps the best one that I put together that every other label emulated was “The Wedding Album”.
Peter was a riot and oh so talented. I’m happy he lived a long life and trust that the industry will salute him properly.
RIP Peter – go meet your classical idols.
Munves’ biggest mistake was his failure in 1970 to come through with his own proposal to record all the Mahler symphonies with Horenstein and the LSO for RCA.
Even if RCA had given him the budget for such a monumental project (which they didn’t), it takes several years to book the orchestras, plan the concerts and recording sessions, etc. And as Horenstein died in 1973, the project – even if it had gotten off the ground, wouldn’t have been finished.
What a remarkable guy. I feel like I just met him on a train journey and fell into conversation with him. The video of him talking about Lenny and the many fond memories of the guy from people who actually worked along side him turned a somewhat paltry obit into a portrait of an industry legend. Thanks.
It was the greatest hits of Mozart and Bach that introduced me to these classics and I treasure them still today. I thank Mr. Munves though I had never heard of him for the gift of the classics.
I just returned from out of town and heard the sad news.
Peter was the classical music marketing genius in the post war industry. Not all of his ideas flew, some were really out there, but for instance, he saved Goddard Lieberson and Columbia Records with his composers “Greatest Hits” series and they never gave him a dime other than his salary. Lieberson was funding a lot of projects like Robert Craft’s Gesualdo and Webern recordings that never sold and Stravinsky paid Columbia back the large advances through his royalties. Peter truly bailed him out with that series. His final project with RCA was classical music to shtup by….Shacking up to Chopin, Making it with Mozart etc. etc. It bombed in the US but found great success in Europe and that was around 2007. He was underappreciated by Columbia until he left and they are still selling CD’s and downloads of those albums.
One of his funniest repackaged albums was the Emerson Lake and Palmer “Pictures of an Exhibition” with Vladimir Horowitz performing the cycle on the piano. When it was released, it illicited an unwanted response when Wanda Horowitz called him and proclaimed, “Mr. Manfreeze, what does Emerson Lake and Palmer have to do with my beloved Volodya?”. His response was “Munves Madame!” and hung up the phone.
The last time I saw Peter was shortly after he moved back to New York City after selling his Long Island home, I fondly named, Cat Piss Manor. (Anyone who had been there will understand.) I had dinner plans at an upscale BBQ joint with some recording industry folks and as Peter always had great stories, I invited him along. He showed up a half hour later in his blazer and khakis sat down, ordered and then announced he needed the facilities. He left the table, the next thing I know, Peter was walking around the restaurant talking to people like he was the maitre d’ and with their permissiopn sampling finger food off their plates. He certainly had a way with people and also knew I was picking up his tab.
Sadly, I had not seen him in a number of years. Recently, I had a question for him on a project I was working on and I knew he was the only who would know the answer. One of our mutual friends told me he was no longer able to respond. It struck me than that a beautiful, active mind was gone. Now that he was truly gone, I will miss him, there was no other like him in the classical recording world.
This is truly sad news. I have no connection to the record industry, and very little knowledge of music itself, but I was lucky enough to have met Swami through my friendship with Tisch (the off camera voice gently prodding him to remain on topic) and his son Ben.
I have some wonderful memories of several years where Swami was a guest at my home for the holidays, and he was truly a character and highly entertaining raconteur. I remember there was a time he told me that he’d spent time during the previous day just riding the elevator of his high-rise to see how many people he could meet. Did he really do it? Very likely, it was definitely something that he would do.
Special gratitude should be paid by this community to Ben and Tisch who recognized Swami’s achievements and made a point of recording his legacy in his own words. We should all be lucky to have friends and family show us such love and appreciation.
Fare thee well, Sir.