When the great Motown acts had given their all; when the Funk Brothers had stopped playing, The Andantes had stopped singing, the orchestral arrangements and the overdubs were done, and the legendary producers were through producing, the whole thing could be won or lost at the mixing desk. As in so many other ways, Motown was blessed with sound mixing talent. Founder Berry Gordy could drag a hit record out of almost anything by use of his finely tuned ears and what were then non-programmable dials and sliders. But there was one man who emerged as the most trusted and successful board pilot of them all. In the early days, Berry and he would trade mixes in frenzied competitions to best one another. When it came to mounting the Motown 25 television spectacular, there was no one else for the job. When Diana Ross performed to what seemed like the entire population of New York, who else to trust? And when the King of Pop passed, there was only one man who could be relied upon to breathe life into the unreleased master recordings that formed part of his great legacy. You would need only to list the singles and albums Russ Terrana has worked on to get that this quiet, unassuming man is a towering genius. This book is no dry list of achievements. Written by twin brother Ralph, (whose own story is told in his autobiography, The Road Through Motown), it's something of a minor miracle of Terrana style cooperation, in that somebody got a word in edgeways and they stopped laughing long enough to get it done.

Russ Terrana by the way started out playing guitar in a band called the Sunliners, who would later become Rare Earth. He went on to become a recording engineer for Golden World Records. When Motown bought Golden World Terrana went to work for Motown, and later went to engineer at his brothers studio Tera Shirma. Russ later returned to Motown and stayed there until Berry Gordy sold the operation.


His twin brother Ralph wrote this book. Ralph was also in the Sunliners and left to start up the Tera Shira recording studios.