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Business News Obituaries
Producer Jonny Dollar dies
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 3 June 2009
Producer Jonny Dollar, aka Jonathan Sharp, has died at the age of 45 after suffering from cancer. He is credited with being integral to the development of the so-called ‘Bristol sound’ of the nineties, having worked on Massive Attack’s seminal ‘Blue Lines’ album, but he also worked with Neneh Cherry, and on Gabrielle’s triple platinum album ‘Rise’.
Polydor president Ferdy Unger-Hamilton has called Dollar an unsung hero, and says of him: “I knew Jonny from his work with Neneh Cherry, he co-produced a lot of her work with Cameron McVey and Massive Attack. He also produced ‘Blue Lines’. These records had a profound effect on me, ‘Buffalo Stance’ and ‘Manchild’ when I was about 14, and when I first heard ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ like everybody else who heard it, I don’t think I could really believe what I was hearing. As a man of these records it was a natural thing for me to call him up when we were looking for a producer for Gabrielle’s third album ‘Rise’. As committed and driven a producer as I’ve ever met, I literally had to take the tracks by force back off him, he was so determined to make them perfect. The result was a number one single and album ‘Rise’. He was as tough artistically as he was gentle a person”.
Dollar is survived by his wife and four children.
