Island Guides

Friday, March 12, 2010

Posted by Keith Whiting at 1:57 PM

Keith Whiting: Born in London England, I started playing drums at 7 and played semi-professionally at 12. Turned professional at 15 and played throughout England and into Germany. As a member of the band Rare Amber I recorded a spectacularly unsuccessful album, which for some strange reason is now a collectors item and sells for ridiculous amounts of money! But the life of a starving musician lost it’s appeal and I started working at Phillips Records as an assistant recording engineer. At 18 I was hired by Decca Records as a record producer. I stayed there until moving to Canada at 21. I continued to work as a freelance producer and as the senior music producer at CBC Radio. I worked with most of the top names in jazz including - Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson, Pat Metheny, Woody Herman, and many others. I produced the Gold Certified Album “Black Noise” by the group FM, and formed the world beat group “Kaleefah” and “The Gospel Project”. More recently I turned to writing and wrote a number of plays, including “Stride”, a story about a young Stride piano player in 1938 Chicago. I produced an album of the music for the play, which won “Classic Jazz Album of the Year”.