ABSTRACT
This essay proceeds from the occupational perspective of a particular popular music collaborator-the one credited on record album jackets as the “recording engineer” or “sound mixer.” The sound mixer is a popular art technician, a type of collaborator also common to theatrical, radio, television, and film productions, but whose role in shaping the aesthetics of popular art is little understood. In addition to illuminating the role of the popular art technician, studying the recent history of the sound mixer’s relationships with his collaborators provides the sociology of art with examples of how a craft becomes art and how craftsmen attempt to become artists. For, in the late 1960s, recording artists began annexing the craft of sound mixing to their art, while some sound mixers attempted to slough off their designation as “technicians” and to establish a new collaborative role as “artist-mixers.” These reciprocal transformations created problems for popular music collaborators and led to the emergence of new institutions for production in this art world.
