Axelrod, David. Snob-exhumed purveyor of 1960s orchestral funk. A West Coast producer-arranger with a C.V. worthy of a James Ellroy character—as a young man he dabbled in violent crime, and went on to become a jazz producer in the 50s—Axelrod established himself in the mid-60s producing artists as varied as Lou Rawls and the Electric Prunes, and under his own name recorded ambitious, layered albums that defied categorization. (He once used Blake poems as lyrics.) A commercial failure in his own era, Axelrod embarked on a cocaine-fueled downward spiral, but fortune smiled upon him in the 1990s when the likes of Lauryn Hill, Dr. Dre, and DJ Shadow sampled his work.
Axelrod, David. Snob-exhumed purveyor of 1960s orchestral funk. A West Coast producer-arranger with a C.V. worthy of a James Ellroy character—as a young man he dabbled in violent crime, and went on to become a jazz producer in the 50s—Axelrod established himself in the mid-60s producing artists as varied as Lou Rawls and the Electric Prunes, and under his own name recorded ambitious, layered albums that defied categorization. (He once used Blake poems as lyrics.) A commercial failure in his own era, Axelrod embarked on a cocaine-fueled downward spiral, but fortune smiled upon him in the 1990s when the likes of Lauryn Hill, Dr. Dre, and DJ Shadow sampled his work.