Hurricane Smith

Norman Smith (22 February 1923 – 3 March 2008) was an English musician, record producer and engineer. In the 1960s, he notably engineered all of the Beatles' EMI studio recordings up to the end of 1965 and produced three Pink Floyd albums including their first, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967). He later had a successful recording career as Hurricane Smith, achieving a transatlantic hit single with "Oh Babe, What Would You Say" in 1972.

Smith was born in Edmonton, Middlesex, and served as an RAF glider pilot during World War II. He began pursuing his interest in music after the war, playing drums and piano with several trad jazz combos. After an unsuccessful career as a jazz trumpeter and struggling as a session pianist and drummer, He joined EMI as an apprentice sound engineer in 1959.

Smith was the engineer on all of the EMI studio recordings by the Beatles until the autumn of 1965, when EMI promoted him from engineer to producer. The last Beatles album he engineered was Rubber Soul. Smith engineered the sound for almost 100 Beatles songs.

As a reference to Smith's amiable and calm demeanor, John Lennon bestowed upon him the nickname of "Normal" and eventually Smith referenced this directly in the title of his self-published autobiography.

While working with the Beatles on 17 June 1965, he was offered £15,000 by the band's music publishing company, Dick James Music, to sell outright "Don't Let It Die", a song he had written.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.