Session player extraordinaire Dann Huff has had his fair share of iconic sessions – it’s enough to mention that, in the ’80s alone, the six-stringer-turned-producer played on albums by George Benson, Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, Whitesnake, and Johnny Van Zant, to name a (very) mere few. And that’s without even mentioning his work with the King of Pop – aka Michael Jackson.
“That was a tracking session, too, which was the first time that I worked with him,” he tells Vertex Effectsin reference to his work on I Just Can’t Stop Loving YouJackson’s duet with Siedah Garrett and his first release from the iconic Bad album.
“The first emotion, the first thought, was just abject fear. Pick your poison, Michael Jackson, or Quincy Jones, or (recording engineer, mixing engineer, and record producer to the stars) Bruce Swedien… I was old enough to know that I was in the deep waters.”
The other musicians in the troupe – which included Nathan East on bass, N’dugu Chancler on drums, and Paulinho da Costa on percussion – were also very high-profile in their own right, which made the session even more daunting. However, as Huff puts it, “It was the same as any other session – once you take that mystique and legendary status of all these people that were there.”
So what was Huff’s main goal when composing his guitar part for this particular track? Turns out, it was all about trying to stay out of the way… well, almost.
“You hear the song and the object is… not to stay out of the way, but to find small – you can call them hooks – compositions that compliment the song, (and) elevate the song,” he imparts.
“You find out what you can do with your instrument that’s going to contribute to that, and if you want to talk about the art of being a studio player, that is really what it’s about. It’s (why) you get hired. You have longevity because of the consistency of bringing those elements to a song.”
As Huff continues explaining, being a good session player is not necessarily about the “tone colors” or bringing “fast and flashy licks,” but about honing in on the compositions and finding “those little earworms.”
“Without it (the hook), it wouldn’t have the same bounce or same content,” he asserts. “So on the Michael Jackson session, what I was listening for were little openings that I could insert some of these things. I did a lot of that thing where you volume chords, (and) whammy them a little bit.”
Moreover, because of the “dense” synth sounds that were common during that period, Huff describes how the producer would also take direct guitar outputs with the same synth effects applied to them for added oomph. “It would put that little extra sheen on top, and (so, it was all about) finding little hooks that would compliment that,” he adds.
Huff had previously spoken to Vertex Effects about his string of high-profile sessions – including Michael Bolton’s meticulous approach in the studio and recording Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like A Woman! with Mutt Lange in ’97.
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