This is a remembrance I have submitted for an obituary:
https://www.hochfuneralhome.com/obituaries/john-lemay-2
I have quite a few records that Capitol reissued into the early 80s. As I listened to them, I noticed that some had a consistently distinctive and appealing sound quality. It was full and smooth and, to my preference, not overly bright. In the run-out grooves, those records were all signed “Jay Lemay,” “J. Lemay,” or simply “Jay,” as seen in the photo. I always wanted to tell Lemay how much I appreciated his eminently listenable work as a mastering engineer.
Thanks very much! The inscriptions sure do appear to have been made by the same guy. I’ll check them again. Steve Hoffman once said that every Capitol record from that time had excellent mastering.
You are mixing up two engineers. John Lemay and Jay Maynard. Both worked at Capitol and both did great work on their cuts in the mid to late ’70s and 1980s. John Lemay went on to work for George Lucas’s Skywalker Sound in the 1980s.
That is super nice, Doug.