Producer Phil Ramone could wake up Monday morning a 13-time Grammy winner. Since 1964, he’s brought home nine awards, and an honorary statuette for technical achievement will make it an even 10 Saturday night. Sunday evening, he’ll face the familiar anticipation as the names of the nominees are read: His Ray Charles duet album, “Genius Loves Company,” is up for two honors and his cast recording of “The Boy From Oz” for another. No matter what awaits, the following day – Valentine’s – he’ll return to his true love, the control booth: His next album is a Michel Legrand songfest with Melissa Errico, who starred in Mr. Legrand’s “Amour” on Broadway.

Almost 40 of Mr. Ramone’s 60 years were spent bobbing about in the uncharted waters of the music business. He entered through the engineering room’s backdoor. Now, he is a bona fide legend, known for spinning records into gold and platinum.

If only one could figure how the be-all and end-all of record producers spends his days. “I’m always asked, ‘What does a record producer do? What does a music guy do?'” he admitted somewhat sheepishly. “A producer of records is like a director of film. He makes the script come to life. I make the music come to life. And I do whatever it takes, from hiring the right people to just being a good audience. Sometimes, I do arrangements. In the beginning, I even played in the recording sessions.”

Mr. Ramone’s musical vocation struck early. At age 3, he was a violin prodigy. He received classical training at Juilliard, where he became concertmaster of the orchestra. Then his penchant for innovation acted up, and he started jazzing up his violin act with a little Jack Benny here, a little Victor Borge there. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, the powers that be at Juilliard were not amused. Mr. Ramone began playing club dates as a strolling fiddler and settled into a recording studio, JAC, as an assistant. “The engineering side of me was there without my knowing what it was.”

The technical wizardry he achieved in those four soundproof walls is essentially what is being recognized this weekend, and the assured 10th Grammy win has left him a little giddy. “That’s even more fun,” he says. “In my whole life, I can’t remember anything like this.”

But it’s high time for a man who has flitted with firsts his whole career: the first CD (Billy Joel’s “52nd Street”), the first Dolby four-track discrete sound, and the first use of a satellite link between a Burbank Studio and Todd-AO (Barbra Streisand’s “A Star Is Born”), the first Dolby optical surround sound for a motion picture (Paul Simon’s “One Trick Pony”), the first pop DVD surround sound (“Dave Grusin Presents West Side Story”), the first use of fiber optics system (EDNet) to record tracks in “real time” from different locations (Frank Sinatra’s “Duets I & II”) – and that just scratches the surface.

His latest foray into surround sound is one of the three things for which he is currently in Grammy contention. His Ray Charles duet album, “Genius Loves Company,” is nominated for both Best Surround Sound and Album of the Year. Critics are predicting an easy win in the latter category, mainly because it was the R&B giant’s last hurrah and Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of him in “Ray” has garnered so much positive attention.

Unlike Sinatra’s duet swan songs, “Genius Loves Company” was recorded one-on-one in a single locale – what Los Angeles has recently declared a national landmark and dubbed the Ray Charles Studios. An assortment of artists, including Elton John, Natalie Cole, Bonnie Raitt, and Diane Krall, converged there to join the singer in the numbers that Charles made famous.

“It became apparent only in the last two months that Ray was not well,” Mr. Ramone remembers. “He always had a lot of energy. He used to walk into a room and take over the room, whether it was a performance or a recording. In September and October, he seemed fine. The difference was that we were in his studios, so he had a little short walk from his office. There wasn’t a lot of interaction as far as physiology goes. The June prior to that, which was just a few months before, we had recorded live and on videotape the Songwriters Hall of Fame, where he performed with Van Morrison, and he seemed fine.

“Ray was always what I call a musical challenge,” Mr. Ramone adds in praise of talent with temperament. “For me, it’s about people who come from that school of incredible musicality, who demand that everybody around them be on that same elevation. Their impatience is in line with their desire to have something great. That’s misunderstood a lot. People say some one’s abrupt. No, no, no. It’s ‘Let’s get to the point.’ That’s different.”

There’s a long and eclectic list of artists like Charles with whom Mr. Ramone has worked – people from whom he has managed to draw out the best without bruising pride.

“That’s the assignment. You’re always dealing with egos. My way of working is that the crew is as important as the people in front of the microphone. Sometimes you get a little difficult with the people you’re working with because it’s all about capturing. Some directors produce with a semi-harsh way of working. I work with the soft, inviting ‘let’s go there.’ People sense when you mean ‘This is it. Now it’s going.’ That’s when you take no prisoners. That’s when the creative side of the artist is working and going smoothly.”

Among the giants who have found their groove with Mr. Ramone: Luciano Pavarotti, Madonna, Quincy Jones, Liza Minnelli, Bono, Renee Fleming, B.B. King, Sinead O’Connor, Paul McCartney, Gloria Estefan, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Sting.

In addition to establishing talent, Mr. Ramone is in the business of discovering it, so he always has an ear out. His third Grammy nomination is for his cast recording of “The Boy From Oz” in the Best Musical Show Album category. At the time he entered the project three years via an Australian workshop, Hugh Jackman was not known as a musical talent. He subsequently tore through Broadway like a tornado, taking the Tony and all other Best Actor prizes with him for his portrayal of Peter Allen.

But then, the best seem to gravitate naturally toward Mr. Ramone. They always have, from “Promises, Promises” and “Midnight Cowboy” on. Just guess who was at the control knobs when Dusty Springfield sang “The Look of Love,” when Billy Joel sang “My Life,” when Joao Gilberto sang “The Girl from Ipanema.” He was even there when Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”