Arif Mardin, who died Sunday at 72, was a record producer whose work helped form the pop soundtrack of the past four decades, from Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” (1967) and the Bee Gees early disco “Jive Talkin'” (1975), to Chaka Khan, Bette Midler, and Phil Collins in the 1980s.

In 2002, he produced the capstone of his career in Norah Jones’s unexpected multiplatinum “Come Away With Me,” whose sweet, spare piano jazz stylings garnered four Grammys for Mardin, including the Producer of the Year award.

While recognizing his huge contributions to popular music over a lengthy and varied career, Allaboutjazz.com, an online music magazine, asked Mardin, “Is Norah Jones a kind of penance for Boy George?”

Mardin, ever true to his artists, defended the Culture Club lead singer, a kind of punk-era Carmen Miranda, as “definitely … not a manufactured person.”

Although there was never an identifiable Mardin sound of the kind Phil Spector embodied, he did become identified with female singers and with the black-influenced wispy subgenre called “blue-eyed soul,” starting in the 1960s,when he produced Dusty Springfield’s live album “Dusty in Memphis” (1969) and Laura Nyro’s “Christmas and the Beads of Sweat” (1970). Later, he would work with Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, and Jewel. But his chops were just as strong in black soul, as Patti LaBelle, Anita Baker, and Roberta Flack could all attest. He liked to take credit for the basic rhythmic idea behind Chaka Kahn’s biggest hit, “I Feel For You” (1984). He told Billboard in 1994, “We used to joke at the piano, Chaka’s brother and me, ‘Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan, taka boom, taka boom.’ I thought, why not use that as a percussive segment? We spliced a lot of tape on those sessions.”

Mardin grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, and Cairo, Egypt, the son of a Turkish businessman with interests in banking and filling stations. He was descended from a family that had long held high prestige in the Ottoman Empire in diplomatic, business, and military matters. Mardin studied at Istanbul University and the London School of Economics. Music was a hobby, and Mardin eventually learned to arrange; he also played piano in a big band in Istanbul. In 1956, he met Dizzy Gillespie and Quincy Jones while they were touring Turkey. He showed Mr. Jones some arrangements, and Mr. Jones helped arrange for Mardin to get a scholarship for the Berklee School of Music, in Boston. After graduating in 1961, Mardin went to work as an assistant to Nesuhi Ertegun, a fellow Turk who was a partner in Atlantic Records and primarily responsible for jazz. Mardin stayed with Atlantic for the next four decades.

At first, Mardin concentrated on jazz players, like Sonny Stitt, Freddie Hubbard, and Mose Allison. In 1965, he produced his first pop no. 1 hit, “Good Lovin’,” by the Young Rascals.

It was the start of a dizzying career on the charts, which included arranging, producing, or supervising albums for Ms. Franklin, the Average White Band, Queen, David Bowie, Dr. John – an almost impossibly rich cornucopia of pop. In the late 1990s, he took a slightly different direction, and produced Broadway cast recordings of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” (1996) and “Rent” (1997).

Mardin stayed with Atlantic through 2001, at which time he moved to EMI, where he produced Norah Jones for the Blue Note label.

In recent years, he occasionally collaborated with his son, Joseph, also an arranger-producer.

Speaking to Billboard in 1994, Mardin tried to describe the type of relationship he tried to cultivate.

“I must like the artist and the artist must like me. Second, I try to convey the message that I am on the artist’s side and that I want to make the best music possible. There is no conspiracy here. I’m not going to leave anything in the record that doesn’t work. But if I believe in something that an artist does not hear, I will fight for it. I enter the world of the song and I become partners with the artist while the record is being made. Hopefully, along the way, I make friends for life.”

Arif Mardin
Born March 15, 1932, in Istanbul; died June 25 in New York of pancreatic cancer; survived by his wife Latife Hanim, son Joe, and daughter Julee.