Draft:Carl Marsh

Carl Marsh is an arranger, composer, orchestrator, conductor and musician from Memphis, Tennessee who since 1986 has been based in Nashville. Though he has worked with a wide range of artists in many traditions and genres - including Steve Cropper, John Prine, Garth Brooks, Donna Summer, Willie Nelson, ZZ Top, Amy Grant and R.E.M. - perhaps his most distinctive credit is writing the orchestrations (and playing bassoon) on the third record by Big Star, alternately known as Sister Lovers and Third, which was cited by Rolling Stone as one of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time." Most recently, among many other ongoing projects and commissions, Marsh's orchestrations of five R.E.M. songs is part of the "R.E.M. Explored" touring orchestral concert program that features the first concerto by Mike Mills of R.E.M. that was commissioned by concert violinist Robert McDuffie.

Early years

Carl Marsh's namesake father, Prentice Carl Marsh, started all his children on piano lessons at age five. By the age of 20, Marsh had mastered more than 30 instruments, but bassoon would become the first instrument that advanced his career. He was more interested in a more hip reed instrument, the saxophone, but his father told him that learning a more obscure instrument like the bassoon that is included in symphony orchestras would make him more eligible for college scholarships. He studied bassoon with Bernard Garfield, principal bassoonist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The bassoon was his ticket to a full-tuition scholarship at Memphis State University, now the University of Memphis. Marsh came to play bassoon well enough to earn a seat in the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. By then, he had started developing into more than a musician. Inspired by Terry Kirkman, who played thirty-something instruments with the band The Association, Marsh learned to play so many instruments that he started orchestrating compositions. “I knew basically the inner workings of a lot of instruments,” Marsh said. “So, taking the next step to becoming an orchestrator was just pretty natural.”

Marsh's musical career was hybrid - orchestral and popular - from his youth. He played in rock bands as a youth in Memphis, including with Jody Stephens, who would go on to co-found Big Star with Alex Chilton and Chris Bell; this was what led to Marsh working with Big Star. Even when Marsh was learning bassoon well enough to earn an orchestra job, he was signed to Arista Records as a recording artist by Clive Davis. It was a lead vocal that Marsh sang on a demo of "I'm Your Puppet" that caught Davis' ear. As an arranger and orchestrator, Marsh had a pivotal early relationship with Steve Cropper, the R&B guitarist for Booker T. & the M.G.’s, songwriter and producer. Marsh did so much work for Cropper at Ardent Studios in Memphis that they both kept offices there. Marsh arranged and played on thousands of recording sessions in every genre imaginable. His clients included The Staple Singers, Sam and Dave, the Bar-Kays and John Prine.

Prine one of the first major label artists whom Marsh worked with via Cropper's reliance on him. Cropper hired Marsh to work on Prine's album Common Sense. "Steve had me sit with John and write out the charts," Marsh said. "Every day, I would go to the Holiday Inn Rivermont in downtown Memphis and pick John up and take him to the studio [Ardent]. John would go into the studio and write the song, which would take him about an hour and a half. Then he would play it to me, and I would write the chord chart out, and we would record it that night. Every day, he did that without missing one time." Then Cropper offered Marsh a much more interesting musical opportunity. "Steve had been using L.A. arrangers, but for the first time he gave me a big break and asked me to do strings on a couple of sides," Marsh said. "I was ecstatic, but I was scared to death." The Prine songs he orchestrated were "Way Down" and the title track of the record, "Common Sense."

Big Star's Third

Marsh's transformative orchestrations for Big Star's Third was the fruit of two musical relationships: his work with Steve Cropper at Ardent Studios and his youth gigging with Jody Stephens. Marsh was working for Cropper on Prine's album at Ardent when he bumped into Stephens in the atrium canteen. Big Star had Ardent Studio B booked. Stephens — who knew about his former bandmate's orchestral skills — wanted Marsh to put strings on a song he had written for the session. That song became "For You," Stephens' best-known composition and lead vocal in Big Star's oeuvre.

Stephens' typically toiled in the shadows of the bandleader, Alex Chilton, whose competitive instinct was sparked by the drummer adding an orchestral touch to one of his songs. “Jody wanted strings on his song,” Marsh said, “so, Alex wanted strings on one of his songs.” Marsh started on a Chilton demo working-titled “People to See,” played the cassette over and over, figuring out melodies on his Wurlitzer electric piano. On Marsh original Big Star string charts, that song was still labeled with that working title. It became “Nightime."

One of Marsh's personal connections that he brought to the session would end up providing one of the album's more cryptic song titles. Marsh hired Noel Gilbert, a former colleague from the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, to play strings on the session. Gilbert's violin performance at the head of one song was so dynamic, Chilton spontaneously cried out, "Stroke it, Noel," then made that phrase the name of the song. For the bassoon part on "Blue Moon," Marsh put to work another veteran of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra: himself.

R.E.M. and R.E.M. Explored

Marsh's work with Big Star would lead to his playing on an R.E.M. record and orchestrating five R.E.M. songs for an orchestral reworking of the band's material after they called it quits. Producer Scott Litt suggested Marsh to the band as a supporting musician for their fifth record, Document, which they recorded in 1987 at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, where Marsh recently had relocated. Marsh had arranged strings on many R&B sessions at the Power Station in New York, when Litt worked there as an engineer. Recording R.E.M. in Nashville, Litt wanted to take advantage of having Marsh across town—with his Fairlight, an early synthesizer. However, the band was non-plussed as Litt ran through Marsh's many impressive credits as a sideman and orchestrator - The Temptations, Willie Nelson, José Feliciano, Art Garfunkel - until Litt mentioned a then-little-known Memphis rock band Marsh had worked with: Big Star. “The band just all in unison said, ‘Dude: You’re hired,’” Marsh remembered.

Marsh ran back into Mike Mills of R.E.M. in the context of the Big Star revival spearheaded by Chris Stamey, co-founder of the the dB’s, and others. Near the end of 2010, the year Chilton died, they started to stage live performances of Big Star’s Third—including Marsh’s winds and strings arrangements. Marsh conducted his scores for Big Star’s Third revival concerts where Mills played bass. “I truly began to appreciate his arrangements, hearing them live,” Mills said of Marsh.

A few years later, Mills called Marsh with a commission. He invited him to “deconstruct” a handful of R.E.M. songs and make new orchestral compositions out of their elements. Mills was in the process of revising a symphony program anchored by a concerto he had written on commission from Robert McDuffie, the concert violinist and a former fellow chorister with Mills in a Macon, Georgia church. Mills told Marsh he did not want trite symphonic embellishments of R.E.M. melodies—that had already been done — he wanted new music for orchestra with R.E.M. songs encoded within them. “He’s such a creative guy,” Marsh said of Mills. “He gave me so much room to be creative. He said, ‘Just do what you want to do and surprise me.’ That was wonderful.” Mills assigned Marsh five R.E.M. songs: “Pilgrimage” from Murmur(1983), “Cayuhoga” from Lifes Rich Pageant (1986), “Near Wild Heaven” from Out of Time (1991), and “Try Not To Breathe” and “Everybody Hurts” from Automatic for the People (1992). “A mix of hits and things I like,” Mills said. Marsh provided a detailed explanation of his work orchestrating these songs to The Common Reader.

ZZ Top

The Fairlight that Marsh played on R.E.M.'s Document record was critical to Marsh's playing on a string of sizzling ZZ Top records (Recycler through Antenna). Marsh first suggested to John Fry, the owner of Ardent Studios, that he purchase this digital audio work station for the studio; the instrument soon became so popular among clients that Fry hired two other people who also could play it. ZZ Top recorded with it in Ardent, but when they decided to record elsewhere, Fry would not loan out the machine. So Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top called Marsh, who had bought his own Fairllight by then, and hired Marsh to play on the sessions that became Recycler and the brought him back for Greatest Hits and Antenna. Marsh worked with Gibbons on programming the Fairlight and was especially impressed with his musicianship. "He is one of those guys who can pick up a guitar, and it's been on the stand and is out of tune, and he can play it in tune," Marsh said of Gibbons. "My time with ZZ, I really loved."

Contemporary Christian Music

Marsh has worked with a veritable who’s-who in the field of contemporary Christian music, starting in the 1970s with DeGarmo and Key, Petra and Twila Paris and continuing up to the present with Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, MercyMe, Third Day and Point of Grace. The Christian Music Archive's citations for Marsh's contributions are voluminous, with his roles all over the map from musician (Fairlight, keyboards, strings, vocals, bass and drums), songwriter, arranger and conductor.

His relationship with Amy Grant has been especially extensive, writing orchestrations for her records and live shows and playing keyboards on her records. That relationship developed from Marsh's relationship with her producer Brown Bannister, who used Marsh for keyboards only until he could find none of the many established orchestrators in Nashville to orchestra "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring" with a solo for fiddle for Grant's Home for Christmas record. Mark O'Connor eventually recorded the solo fiddle part that Marsh wrote. "That was really my first shot at being a high-level orchestrator," Marsh said. "That was the catapult." It led to many of Marsh's orchestrations on contemporary Christian recordings.