Bill Halverson

Bill Halverson started his music career in 1961 as a trombone player in jazz big bands led by Allen Ferguson and Tex Beneke. Around the same time, he began working with the legendary Wally Heider as an assistant on remote recording projects. These occasional gigs turned into a steady job by 1965, allowing Bill to learn invaluable skills from Heider on live dates at L.A. area clubs and as a second engineer at Heider’s Hollywood recording studio. His credits during this time included work with the Beach Boys (both live and in the studio) and at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival (where he recorded Ravi Shankar, among others). Johnny Cash’s Live at Folsom Prison was among the historic recording sessions he assisted in. After years of apprenticeship, Halverson began to receive engineering credits on albums by such famed artists as Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix and Joe Cocker.

Halverson’s work as a live engineer on Cream’s 1968 album Wheels of Fire proved to be a turning point in his career. That same year, he advanced further by engineering the debut album by Crosby, Stills and Nash. Halverson’s methods for recording CS&N’s vocals and guitars contributed to the album’s massive success and became highly influential. He continued to work with Crosby, Stills and Nash (and Young) in various combinations, engineering and/or co-producing Déjà vu, 4-Way Street, Stephen Stills I and II and Nash/Crosby in 1970-72. During this same period, he engineered the final Cream album (Goodbye) and tracks for Eric Clapton’s solo debut.

The mid-1970s saw Halverson active as a producer as well as an engineer. REO Speedwagon, Roger McGuinn, America and Batdorf & Rodney were among his production credits during this time. Though L.A. remained his home base, projects with Jack Bruce, Bad Company, Alvin Lee and others took him to England as well. A stint in Cincinnati found him working with the country rock band Highwind (featuring Rick Fox).

In the 1980s, Halverson relocated to Nashville and established himself as a producer in the country market, working with such hit-making artists as the Texas Tornados, Flaco Jimenez and Jo-el Sonnier. He also began his ongoing association as a guest lecturer at the Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio.

Halverson continued to work on recording projects in the ‘90s, among them Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Looking Forward (1999). He remains active in the music business, continues to teach and is currently working on a memoir of his years in the recording world.