Malcolm Cecil, a UK-born bassist with the soul of an engineer who revolutionized electronic music by helping create a giant analog synthesizer that gave a new sound to Stevie Wonder’s albums, died Sunday in a Valhalla hospital, NY. He was 84 years old.
His son Milton said the cause was not yet clear.
Mr Cecil, a talkative man with a curly head, had played double bass in jazz bands in England and was night maintenance engineer at Mediasound Studios in Manhattan in 1968 when he met Robert Margouleff, a film and record producer he owned and owned and operated a moog there -Synthesizer.
“He said, ‘Robert, if you show me how to play the synthesizer, I’ll teach you how to be a top-notch sound engineer,” Margouleff said in a telephone interview.
They started designing and building what would become the Original New Timbral Orchestra or TONTO. Starting with the Moog and adding other synthesizers and a collection of modules, some of which were designed by Mr. Cecil, they created a massive semicircular device that took up a small space and weighed a ton. It could be programmed to produce a variety of original tones and to modify and process the sounds of traditional musical instruments.
While developing it, Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff recorded an album entitled “Zero Time” (1971) under the name of TONTO’s Expanding Head Band.
Timothy Crouse wrote about Zero Time in Rolling Stone: “How to take acid and discover that your mind has the power to stop your heart, the realization that this instrument can do all sorts of things to you now that you have it it has you is troubling. “
The album caught the attention of Mr. Wonder, who had just turned 21 when he appeared on Mediasound over Memorial Day weekend in 1971. Mr. Cecil lived in an apartment above the studio so he could fix anything that could go wrong, day or night.
“I get a ringtone,” Cecil told the Red Bull Music Academy in 2014. There’s my friend Ronnie and a guy who turns out to be Stevie Wonder in a green pistachio jumpsuit and what my album looks like under his arm. Ronnie says, ‘Hey Malcolm, has someone here who wants to see TONTO.’ “
What began as a demonstration by TONTO for Mr. Wonder turned out to be a weekend-long recording experiment. Seventeen songs were recorded and a collaboration was born.
Over the next three years, TONTO became an important sound element of Mr. Wonder’s music on the 1972 albums “Music of My Mind” and “Talking Book” and their successors “Innervisions” (1973) and First Finale of Fulfillment (1974).
In an interview with the music website Okayplayer in 2019, Mr. Cecil described part of the creative process behind the recording of “Evil”, the final track of “Music of My Mind”.
“When you hear ‘Evil’ it has a fantastic opening that is all TONTO and the sound was classic,” he said. “There was an oboe sound. There was a horn sound and a foreboding bass. “He added,” When Stevie wanted something, he explained what he was hearing in his head and we tried to get it as specific as possible. “
The experience with Mr. Wonder was, said Mr. Margouleff, “very much in the moment; nothing was planned in advance. It was all intuitive and wonderful. “
Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff won the Grammy Award for their development of “Innervisions”, which included the hits “Living in the City” and “Higher Ground”. Mr. Wonder won Grammys that year for Album of the Year and Best Rhythm and Blues Song for “Superstition,” which mixed Mr. Wonder’s drums and clavinet play with a funky TONTO bass sound.
The partnership of Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff with Mr. Wonder ended after four albums.
“We never brought the business part of our relationship with Stevie together,” said Margouleff. “Business problems have made our relationship untenable.”
A year later, Margouleff and Cecil split after technical difficulties during Billy Preston’s live appearance by TONTO on the NBC music show “Midnight Special”.
Malcolm Ian Cecil was born in London on January 9, 1937. His mother, Edna (Aarons) Cecil, was an accordionist who played in bands, including one that was all women, and maintained troops during World War II. His father David was a concert organizer who also worked as a professional clown under the name Windy Blow. They divorced when Malcolm was very young.
Malcolm started playing the piano at the age of 3 and began playing drums a little later. As a teenager he started playing the double bass and was soon playing in jazz clubs. He studied physics at the London Polytechnic for a year before joining the Royal Air Force in 1958. His three years as a radar operator prepared him for future studio work.
After his release he was the house bass player in the nightclub of saxophonist Ronnie Scott in London, where he played with American musicians such as Stan Getz and JJ Johnson. a member of Alexis Korners Blues Incorporated, a band whose evolving line-up included Charlie Watts and Jack Bruce; and the solo bassist of the BBC Radio Orchestra. He also had a shop that set up sound systems and other equipment for musicians.
Mr. Cecil suffered from collapsed lungs and decided he needed a warmer climate. He moved to South Africa where he continued to play bass. But he didn’t like living in the midst of apartheid.
He sailed for San Francisco in 1967 and then went to Los Angeles, where he spent a year as a chief engineer in Pat Boone’s recording studio. He later moved to New York City, where he worked at the Record Plant for six weeks before joining Mediasound as a maintenance engineer.
He admired the Moog Synthesizer IIIc in Mediasound, but only met Mr. Margouleff on his fifth night there. They quickly began recording experimental psychedelic music together, and six months later jazz flautist Herbie Mann signed them to his Embryo label.
The first track they recorded for their album “Zero Time” was “Aurora” which was originally 23 minutes long. “I said, ‘Malcolm, I’m not even sure it’s music,'” Margouleff recalled. They cut its length by two thirds.
Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff made TONTO the most advanced synthesizer in music. It was mostly used in its heyday in the 1970s for recording Richie Havens, the Doobie Brothers, James Taylor, Quincy Jones, Joan Baez, Little Feat, and others.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Cecil produced several Gil Scott-Heron albums and produced or constructed albums by the Isley Brothers, Ginger Baker, Dave Mason and other artists. He also played bass on Mr. Scott-Heron’s 1994 album “Spirits”. Mr. Margouleff went on to produce the rock band Devo.
TONTO’s Expanding Head Band released another album in 1974, “It’s About Time”. “Tonto Rides Again,” a digitally remastered compilation of the previous two albums, was released in 1996.
“Margouleff and Cecil were about 30 years ahead of their time when they started this project,” wrote Jim Brenholts in a review of “Tonto Rides Again” on AllMusic.
In addition to his son Milton, Mr. Cecil is survived by his wife Poli (Franks) Cecil.
TONTO had several homes in New York City, including Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios; It also spent time in Los Angeles and in a converted barn owned by Mr. Cecil in the Hudson River town of Saugerties, NY
In 2013, TONTO was acquired by the National Music Center in Calgary, Alberta, where it was restored and its effects celebrated in a five-day event in 2018. A Tribe Called Red, a Canadian electronic music duo that TONTO admires and contemplates an influence performed there, and Mr. Cecil gave a demonstration.
One member of the band, Ehren Thomas, compared TONTO to the combination of spaceship and time machine in a long-running British TV series.
“It’s like the Tardis in Doctor Who,” he told the CBC, “because you can’t program it to do anything. You can set up the parameters and ask TONTO to do what you want , but what comes out of it is beyond your control. “
