Rusty Garner passed away in December 2007. I don't know why, or any particulars regarding his passing, but the world of dance music lost one of the great behind-the-scenes guys. He was one of the premier remixers of the 80s, at a time when nobody got really famous for mixwork. Back then, you'd have an 'Extended Version,' or a 'Dance Remix,' or even a 'Special Dance Re-mix' on the A-side, and, on adventurous 12" singles, maybe a dub on the b-side. This was when the remix was meant as something to complement the album/single version, not like today, when a remix can be just about anything.
My first exposure to Garner's work was on Sheena Easton's "Sugar Walls." One of Prince's throwaway gifts to other artists (the song is credited to Alexander Nevermind, though one listen to the drum programs tells you who's running the show with this one), I remember there being a minor furor back in the day once parents and white Top 40 radio realized that 'sugar walls' meant the vagina. In that way, I suppose "Sugar Walls" was the "Get Low" by Lil' Jon and The East Side Boys of its day. But I adored the song, even though I could never finagle the 45. So I had to wait a few years.
But the funny thing about "Sugar Walls" is that the album version, on Easton's 1984 A Private Heaven, sounded wrong. The main keyboard line sounded off- it didn't sound like the version I knew from the radio (and, looking back on it, it doesn't sound like any of the keyboards Prince was using at the time he would have made the demo that became the final track), and neither did the version on the 45. So I had to just let it go- I didn't understand the music industry, or what remixes were, or why I couldn't find the version of the song with the awesome keyboards.
Until the day I found a copy of "A Non-Stop Music Mix" (EMI-America ST 17170). It looked weird, the cassette I found at The Great Escape in Madison- the graphics seemed vaguely Keith Haring-like, and it had a goldmine of songs on it. David Bowie's "Let's Dance," "Sidewalk Talk" by Jellybean, "It's My Life" by Talk Talk, "Crazy in the Night" by Kim Carnes, "Neverending Story" by Limahl, "Turn Your Back on Me" by Kaja, and both "Strut" and "Sugar Walls" by Sheena Easton. I take the space to list all the tracks because, with the exception of the Kaja track (which I had never heard before), I knew and dug all of those songs. And that's a remarkably high percentage for any compilation.
And as for the 'Non-Stop Music Mix," I was familiar enough with the concept because, like all gays of a certain age, I knew Donna Summer's On The Radio- Greatest Hits Volumes I & II, with all the proto-mixing and resequencing on it. So, for three bucks (a decent investment for me at the time, depending solely on a pittance of an allowance), I picked it up. And the credit on that tape said the following "Album concept produced by Rusty Garner. Additional Production and Mixing by Rusty Garner and Paul Sabu." The version of "Sugar Walls" that I had always remembered, with the good synth sound, was his mix. The version of Limahl's "Neverending Story" that introduced me to what a flanger can do with soundspace- that was his as well. Even the version of Kim Carnes' "Crazy in the Night" that used orchestra hits to play the main synth riff in the intro (which I've never found on any 12")- that was his.
All of them on that one tape. All of them remarkable achievements in serving the original song but expanding its sonic space and making them something more. There were other remixers working beforehand, and there were remixes done before his that stand the test of time as art, but it was Rusty Garner who taught me the value of looking to see who did the remix before I shelled out money for a 12" single. I knew if it said "An Endless Music Mix" or if there were a "Red Mix," that there was something worth listening to contained within those grooves.
Rusty Garner did a lot of remixing over the course of his career, and even up until recently he had been doing remixes and re-edits with video, an innovator and promoter in the field of dance music up until the end. He never reaped the benefits of the superstar remixer boom in the early nineties, but he made inroads between the dancefloor and pop radio that no one did before or since, and there's not a mixer today with that kind of track record. I can't speak for anyone's view of what comes after this life but my own (and even then I'm not too sure, practicality and dogma having made uneasy détente sometime back around 1989), but somewhere, somewhen, I'm hoping Rusty Garner is at the boards in the cosmic DJ booth/engineering studio of whatever comes next. I may not be able to recognize the beat at first, but I know I'll be able to dance to it.
And that remix of Sheena Easton's "Sugar Walls" that I remembered (The "Dance Mix," as it is called on the label)? Oddly enough, it's one of the few mixes of Rusty's to given proper love in the digital era, showing up perfectly mastered on the now out-of-print EMI/One Way reissue of A Private Heaven in 2000 (along with Rusty's mix of "Strut" as well and his dubbier 'Red Mix' of "Sugar Walls"). Check it out if you should come across it. And here's hoping that more of Rusty Garner's work can be given its proper due…
