Tom Moulton

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Tom Moulton is an American record producer. He is the originator of the remix, the breakdown section ("Disco Break"), and the 12-inch single vinyl format. He has humbly maintained that the last two innovations were pure accidents. Perhaps contrary to expectation, Moulton's early successes in "mixing down" dance records were the result of insistently taking away elements from the original multi-track. Although not a disc jockey, Thomas Jerome Moulton was more essential to the rise of disco than any other single person in its history. Born in Schenectady, New York on November 29, 1940 music was in his life from a very early age. Moulton even quit high school to work in a record store in the late 1950s. With aspirations to become a radio DJ, he quickly found that he didn't have what it took to be a DJ in the turbulent payola-ridden radio scene of the 1950s. His career started in the late 1960s with a self-made tape of overlapping songs created for the Fire Island bar and restaurant The Sandpiper. As the club in question was very high profile, it was only a matter of time before his skills were noticed and put to use pre-release by those in the music industry. Moulton preferred R&B and dance music, but actually mixed a wide range of popular recordings. A noteworthy quote has him saying, "I never made a dance record, I made records you can dance to." Moulton worked as a model at the Bookings and Ford agencies before beginning his production career. Before that, he had worked in the music industry, holding a sales and promotion job at King Records (from 1959 to 1961) and similar positions at RCA and United Artists. He eventually left due to his disgust at the industry's dishonesty.