I feel like this list is a glaring omission to the site. Here are a few unordered names that should be on the list:

George Martin
Jeff Lynne
Frank Zappa
Alan Parsons
Brian Wilson
Phil Spector
Sam Philips
Eddie Kramer
Jimmy Webb
Barry White
Trevor Horn
Brian Eno
Rick Rubin
Todd Rundgren
Dave Fridmann
Max Martin
Steven Wilson


Note that it excludes rap producers because the two kinds of production are almost completely different.

I'd add...

Holland Dozier Holland
Thom Bell
Bones Howe
Herb Alpert
Ahmet Ertgen

I don't think we have to exclude rap producers. It's more fun if we have all kinds of rock producers.

Not to mention that Rick Rubin was already mentioned, and while he does a lot of other stuff, he's probably the greatest rap producer ever.

Don't have time right now to get too into this, but off the top of my head:

Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff
Dave Bartholomew
Joe Meek
Shel Talmy
Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller
Peter Asher
Jerry Wexler
R. Kelly
Babyface
Quincy Jones
Allen Toussaint
Milt Gabler
Shadow Morton

Some good ones, but for sake of discussion...

Gamble & Huff...Great thinkers who took a terrific idea (Motown)...ran with it and expanded it to take on the character of Philadelphia. After their initial hands on introductory successes, they essentially folllwed the Berry Gordy Jr model and focused on the executive duties of running a profitable enterprise and left the "in the pit" producing to others...Thom Bell, perhaps the most prolific of them, and Producer/songwriters like Bobby Eli, Norman Harris (with Ronnie Baker & Earl Young), and others. I guess that's why one of the G&F's today owns a large bank and the other is married to 60's songstress Dee Dee Sharp and dabbles in community affairs...or something like that. Producer Don Davis from Detroit (who produced several notable hits at his United Sound Studios ) did much the same...ended up starting a bank of his own. If you count Gordy and G&H, then I guess you'd have to include Clive Davis. Although Clive throws those over the top Grammy party's every year, and had all these producer awards for his association with some great artists (Whitney Houston eg.)...he's not the guy in the session getting the stuff done that has the most input in the finished product...he's the guy pulling all the strings to produce profit on the bottom line going by the title of "executive producer".

Now Norman Whitfield...HE was a hands on kind of guy...

Lieber& Stoller...interesting...but were they primarily songwriters or producers?

Quincy...Crackerjack producer and musician. Perhaps the most respected of any living rock/pop producer today. This particular forum however, may argue that Michael Jackson alone does not make a "rock" producer, since much of Quincy's credits are in film, television, and mainstream pop artists. Just sayin...

Toussant and Wexler...Both solid producers with great resumes.

Wilson, Martin, and Spector are top 3 locks, not necessarily in that order.

Some suggestions:

Martin Hannett
Nigel Godrich
Scott Litt
Steve Albini
Alan Moulder
Ivo Watts-Russell
Butch Vig
John Leckie
Todd Rundgren
Stephen Street
Joe Meek
The Dust Brothers
Steve Lillywhite
Brian Eno
David Lanois
Don Was
Jackknife Lee
Gary Katz
Jerry Finn
Tony Visconti
Glen "Spot" Lockett
Bob Ezrin
Trevor Horn

I'm excluding rap producers because they have their own separate list and because the role of a producer in rap is very different from the role of a producer in rock.

Anyway, I'm thinking the Top 5 should be (in no particular order) Spector, Martin, Lynne, Wilson, Zappa. Spector obviously had the Wall of Sound, Martin had The Beatles, Lynne had insanely complex rock music with ELO and other stuff, and Wilson obviously had his stuff.

Zappa had one of the first instances of mapping drums to different channels, speeding up and slowing down of tapes for different effects, fused studio/live performances, and his Synclaiver compositions.

A rap producer's role is greater than the producers you cite, but they still fulfill the same jobs the guitar rock producers do as well.

Actually, now that I think about it, I probably agree with you.

Yeah. Comparing Dr. Dre and Phil Spector is quite difficult considering how vastly different what they do is.

For this list, I'm also slightly unsure about what to do when bands produce their own albums. Like I know Dave Fridmann produced "The Soft Bulletin" by The Flaming Lips, but I don't know how much production work the band itself did.

Also, I'd like to see a companion list for "Most well-produced albums." Dark Side of the Moon is an absolute shoe-in for #1.

Pet Sounds would run it close, no? If there was some criterion for influence, then it would surely take number one.

What's Goin' On would need to be high on that list.

Sgt. Pepper's production was also very influential.

Phil Spector is unique in that his records are more noted for him than they are for the artists, and the sound of his records is really his sound rather than the sound of the artists. Admittedly, that's partly a function of him being just the producer. Brian Wilson was both the producer and the artist, and was noted for what he did as both. But intuitively, Spector would seem to be a good choice for #1.

Maybe we should get criteria first. Especially since beaverteeth mentioned something like "Most well-produced albums" and I don't know what that is supposed to mean. What exactly is it that a producer does anyway? You usually have extra credits for arranging, writing, mixing, etc. What's the producer's job?