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But from now on, he won't have to win a Juno to get his name on the award. A Juno is going to be named after him.
Richardson, 72, of London, was honoured yesterday by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), as the first person to have a Juno Award named after him. The best-producer Juno will now be called the Jack Richardson Producer Award.
"Shock, literally shock. I was absolutely speechless when I heard," Richardson said yesterday when the CARAS honour became public.
He had learned of it in August from his son, Garth Richardson, who's also a successful record producer, for such acts as Rage Against the Machine and the London metal band Kittie.
"You have some retrospect on it," Jack Richardson says of the way the news has settled in. "What really impresses me most is, it's something that happened when I'm still alive."
Richardson helped the Guess Who to stardom more than 30 years ago. The band's success established his Nimbus Nine production company as one of the hottest in the world.
Richardson went on to work with Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Poco, Dickey Betts, Brecker Bros., the Rovers and the Boss Brass. He has produced more than 280 albums, with dozens of them going gold.
A London-region film crew has been preparing a documentary on his life.
Richardson was inducted into the CARAS Canadian music hall of fame for his "industry builder" status at the 1986 Junos, being presented with the Walt Grealis lifetime achievement award. Richardson was nominated for production Junos in 1975, 1979 and 1981.
"I've never had a Juno (except for the 1986 honour) . . . because in most cases the Junos didn't come into being until after I had reached my peak as far as Canadian performers were concerned," he said. CARAS awards the Junos annually to celebrate the excellence of Canada's recording artists and industry.
The "semi-retired" Richardson still teaches three days a week at Fanshawe College's music industry arts program. He moved to London and became a Fanshawe professor on a full-time basis in the 1980s. His wife is blind and the couple believed it was time to leave the industry, which was taking him away from home up to four months of the year.
A producer has to match the artist's abilities with the industry's expectations. "What he's bringing to the process is an ability to look at material as objectively as possible and then take a look at how it could be structured in the most effective way," Richardson said.
Richardson has a warning for the Fanshawe students he helps prepare for the industry.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money-trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side," is how the warning goes.
But he was positive when it came to the Guess Who. He believed so strongly in the Winnipeg rock band that he mortgaged his home to create his own label, Nimbus Nine, and finance the Guess Who's album, Wheatfield Soul, which was released in early 1968. Nimbus then signed a deal with RCA records and this association was heralded by RCA as the beginning of the Canadian Invasion.
When the first single, These Eyes, began to stall, Richardson hired promotional people in key American cities. This tenacity by both Nimbus and RCA paid off, as the song broke new ground in the U.S., eventually reaching No. 3 and selling a million copies. This opened the door for a string of hits, including Laughing, Undun and the band's biggest-selling record, American Woman.
Richardson has been involved with CARAS for many years, helping foster the growth of the producer and recording engineer categories. He was also one of the early founders of the Canadian Independent Record Producers Association, which successfully lobbied for Canadian content rules.
"Jack is a pioneer whose productions have stood the test of time," CARAS chairperson Ross Reynolds said in announcing the award's name. "It is very fitting that his name will be associated with honouring the future's best producers."
The first Jack Richardson Producer Award will be handed out at the 2002 Juno Awards ceremonies April 13-14 at St. John's, Nfld. Richardson expects to attend.
"It's one of those things that behooves me to be there just because it's the first. I just want to be there, put it that way."