Michael Viner
| Michael Viner | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 27, 1944 Washington, D.C., USA |
| Died | August 8, 2009 (aged 65) Beverly Hills, California, USA |
| Occupation(s) | Film producer, record producer, musician |
| Associated acts | Incredible Bongo Band |
Michael Ames Viner (pronunciation: /ˈvinər/ VEEN-ər; February 27, 1944 – August 8, 2009) was an American film producer and record producer, who later shifted into book publishing and became an innovator in the audiobook field. A widely sampled percussion break in the recording of the song "Apache" by the Incredible Bongo Band, a group he assembled in the early 1970s, has been frequently integrated into many hip hop recordings.
Viner was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Jeanne (née Spitzel) and Melvin Viner. Viner attended the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, California, majored in English at Harvard University, and studied at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He worked on Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. Viner began his entertainment industry career working summers during high school in the mail room at Twentieth Century Fox; after Kennedy's assassination, he worked for movie studios, and ran a record division called Pride for MGM. He was the producer of the inaugural ball for President Richard Nixon in 1973.
Viner produced a record in 1970 called The Best of Marcel Marceao, a joke album produced for under $50 and consisting of nineteen minutes of silence followed by one minute of applause on each side of the record, purportedly recording performances by the famous mime artist Marcel Marceau, his name intentionally misspelled on the album for unstated reasons. The album led to a production deal with Mike Curb at MGM Records, where he helped produce a cover version of The Candy Man, which was a chart-topping hit for Sammy Davis, Jr. in 1972.
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