Career
Much of his work has been done for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Records and its associated labels, including Verve Records. His large discography includes legendary Jazz albums such as Ella and Louis, Night Train, and Getz/Gilberto. He also recorded Rock albums, such as Freak Out! (1966), Absolutely Free (1967), and the third The Velvet Underground album (1969).
Valentin"s work in films includes The Color Purple.
Valentin"s earliest known engineering credits are from around 1951, when he was credited on records released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Metro Records. When Verve Records was sold to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1961, Valentin, who had already been engineering for Verve for over five years, was soon after made the label"s house engineer
Valentin retained a very low profile and very little is publicly known about his life. Valentin has hundreds of engineering credits and has worked with such artists as:Eric Burdon, Dimitri Tiomkin, Barney Kessel, Art Tatum, Shelly Manne, Red Mitchell, Marty Paich, Lester Young, Gene Krupa, Bobby Short, Art Pepper, Julie London, Coleman Hawkins, Buddy Rich, Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, Astrud Gilberto, Count Basie, Kenny Burrell, Lalo Schifrin, John Barry and literally hundreds of others
The importance of his engineering discography of jazz recordings is arguably second only to that of Rudy Van Gelder, with whom he worked on many Verve recordings including Getz/Gilberto#2.
His talents have also been utilized for many movie soundtracks, including What"s Up Tiger Lily. Arguably one of the most fascinating, yet untold parts of his early career is the recordings he engineered at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the last two years of Hank Williams" life.
