Harold Battiste: The Man Behind Everyone Else's Hits

The Man Behind Everyone Else's Hits

Harold Battiste arranged "You Send Me" for Sam Cooke. Let that sink in. One of the most important songs in the history of popular music — the song that launched Sam Cooke's solo career and helped define the sound of soul music — was arranged by a guy from New Orleans that most people have never heard of. And that was just the beginning.

Born in 1931, Battiste grew up in New Orleans and earned his music degree from Dillard University, mastering saxophone, piano, and the art of arrangement. In a city full of musical geniuses, Battiste was the genius behind the geniuses — the arranger and producer who took raw talent and shaped it into records that sold millions.

In 1961, Battiste did something revolutionary: he founded AFO Records, the first African American musician-owned record label in the American South. The label immediately produced a million-selling single by Barbara George and released Ellis Marsalis Sr.'s debut album. AFO was proof that Black musicians didn't need to wait for white-owned labels to recognize their talent — they could build their own infrastructure.

From there, Battiste's career becomes a who's who of American popular music. He arranged and produced records for Lee Dorsey and Joe Jones. He worked with Sonny and Cher for fifteen years, earning six gold records. He introduced Dr. John to wider audiences. He played piano on Tom Waits' Blue Valentine and baritone saxophone on Gram Parsons' GP. The range is staggering — from New Orleans R&B to folk-rock to country-rock to avant-garde.

Later in life, Battiste joined the University of New Orleans Jazz Studies faculty alongside his old friend Ellis Marsalis Jr., teaching the next generation the things he'd spent a career learning. He founded the AFO Foundation to preserve and document New Orleans music heritage and published his autobiography, Unfinished Blues, in 2010.

He died in 2015 at eighty-three. Harold Battiste's name isn't on the marquee of any of the hits he helped create, but his fingerprints are on some of the most important records in American music. That's the New Orleans way — the music matters more than the credit.