Michael Zager.By Bill Meredith
When Michael Zager founded the commercial music program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton in 2002, it’s unlikely that some students knew about the level of commercial success he’d achieved in the music industry.
Perhaps they know now. The 67-year-old professor and eminent scholar has had a 50-year career as a keyboardist, composer, producer, arranger and educator that includes 13 gold or platinum records and three instructional books.
The Passaic, N.J., native has also worked with jazz artists Herb Alpert, Joe Williams and Arturo Sandoval as well as R&B acts The Spinners, Luther Vandross and Peabo Bryson, written chart-topping hits, and discovered future six-time Grammy Award-winning singer Whitney Houston when she was only 14 years old.
“I was producing a record for her mother, Cissy Houston,” says Zager, who lives in Delray Beach with his wife (and has sons as old as some of his hit songs at ages 40, 37 and 33). “One of her background singers couldn’t make the recording session. When I asked Cissy who she wanted to sub, she said her 14-year-old daughter, and I thought she was crazy. But Whitney came into the studio and seemed like she’d already been in the business for 40 years. I’d never heard anything like her, and had her sing on some of my own albums afterward.”
Some of Zager’s original scores and recordings (with Houston, The Spinners, and his own self-titled band) are on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. The professor’s life experiences, as well as his multi-faceted musical education, helped to form the curriculum of his commercial music program.
“The goal is to produce graduates who are prepared for virtually every facet of the music industry as professionals,” Zager says. “We not only train them in the classroom, but we also have a professional record label, Hoot/Wisdom Recordings, so whatever they learn in class must be applied to a digital, globally distributed label. We have a creative track for students who want to be composers, arrangers and producers; a technology track for those who want to be engineers, and a business track for those who want to be executives. We also have two masters programs, one with a concentration on commercial music and the other focusing on music business administration.”
“I got my master’s in commercial music at FAU in 2006,” says 46-year-old Israel Charles, a Fort Lauderdale-based composer, producer, drummer and educator. “Now I teach music technology and production at the performing arts wing of Dillard High School. It was great learning music production from Prof, and being able to make it my career. He talked to me at an educational conference in 2003, attracted me to his program, and was a great professor. I’d bring in mixes of songs that I thought were hot and ready to go, and he’d tell me what was missing and send me right back to the drawing board. He’d always find one or two elements that were needed, and he was always correct! Now I get the chance to show kids that knowledge in return, which is an awesome job.”
Zager was surprised to be hired full-time by FAU in the first place. A 1964 University of Miami graduate, he’d gone on to study at New York City institutions like Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College of Music, a division of New School University. When he applied for a part-time position at FAU, administrators clearly knew about his history.
“I wasn’t even a music major at Miami,” Zager says. “I loved warm weather; my grandparents were here then, and I studied to work in television, something that my oldest son ended up doing. He’s a producer at Paramount. But I never wanted to go back to the cold weather.”
“I’d started teaching two courses in 1997 as an adjunct professor at the Mannes College of Music,” he continues, “back when I was a full-time composer and producer. But I wanted to move back down here and teach, and it was an accident that I got this full-time position. I really just came down here for an interview to teach a course as an adjunct professor.
“The vice president asked if I wanted to apply for my current position and it worked out, even though I’d never been a full-time academic. It was like ‘The Godfather’ in that they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. And it was the best decision I ever made to this point in my career.”
He’d certainly made some other good ones. Zager may not have planned to be in the music industry, but his career started rolling in 1968 as a member of the band Ten Wheel Drive – horn-heavy contemporaries of Blood, Sweat & Tears and precursors to Chicago and Tower of Power. The keyboardist co-founded the group with guitarist Aram Schefrin, who now resides in Wellington. After a 1969 appearance at the Atlanta Pop Festival, the band was signed to Polydor Records, and released four albums by 1974 on either the Polydor or Capitol label.
“I was a jazz nut, and we were one of the early jazz-rock horn bands,” Zager says. “We got a record deal and became quite successful. But our management turned down Woodstock, or we might have been more successful. Although who knew then that Woodstock would be Woodstock? Once we saw what it turned into, that was our lowest point.”
Zager started composing for TV, radio, and films afterward, and built an impressive résumé that includes everything from IBM, Budweiser and Buick to Ally McBeal and the films The Eyes of Laura Mars and Summer of Sam. But the mid-1970s also produced a new musical trend called disco, something that Zager embraced wholeheartedly.
“I didn’t know anything about disco,” he says. “My musical partner, Jerry Love, was the head of A&R at A&M Records in New York City at the time. When he left, we formed our production and publishing company in 1975, Love-Zager Productions, where he handles the business end and I handle the creative side. He started hanging out at Studio 54, and he said, ‘This disco thing is going to blow up, so let’s make some dance records.’ I started listening to it and really liked it, right as it exploded. We ended up having hit after hit.”
The biggest was Let’s All Chant by the Michael Zager Band, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard disco chart in 1978.
“I get more checks now for that song,” he says. “I sold more than five million copies of that record, and it’s bigger than ever, especially outside of the United States. That’s the case with most of my records. But I had a hit here with The Spinners called ‘Working My Way Back to You,’ and one with Peabo Bryson called ‘Do It With Feeling,’ which went to the top of the R&B charts.”
Disco may be a four-letter word to some music fans, but Zager is unabashedly unapologetic about the genre.
“Disco is bigger than ever now, but they just call it dance music or electronica,” he says. “What do you think Lady Gaga is? There’s no difference, other than they’re using synthesizers instead of orchestras. They use more tricks in the studios now. Look at the talent from that era. There were some of the greatest singers and musicians in the world recording disco.”
Most figures as successful as Zager don’t go back to school after topping the charts, but he checked his ego at the door of Mannes College between 1984 and 1988.
“I wanted to start film scoring and do big orchestrations, but I got scared that I didn’t know enough,” he says. “So I went back to school and majored in composition. And this was after I’d been at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, plus studied with Stephen Sondheim for several years.”
Zager’s students praise the professor for showing them the intricacies of the music biz.
“When you walk into Prof’s office, you see gold and platinum records on the wall,” says Charles, “so the hardware speaks for itself. As a songwriter and producer, that’s the same impact that you want to make on the music industry. He has so much practical experience to go with his knowledge that you just keep quiet, listen, and try to soak it all in. He let me produce my own 10-song CD as my thesis, since I wanted to do something hands-on rather than written.
“I got an area singer I was working with, Rachel Brown, to contribute vocals. After I graduated, I formed my own label. And one of those songs, ‘Let’s Fall in Love Again,’ ended up going to No. 1 on the ‘Billboard’ hot R&B single sales chart.”
Zager is at work on a fourth educational book, plus producing a singer named Karina Skye. He even released his own independent smooth jazz CD called South Beach Wind a few years back. While some in the industry avoid South Florida because of its tourist-driven music scene, Zager shakes his head at his good fortune.
“I wasn’t even familiar with FAU before Jerry Love told me about it,” he says. “It was one of those things that happens once in a lifetime. I love being here. My job as an eminent scholar is to stay very active professionally, so it’s very fulfilling, especially when I see my students get out into the world and do well. It’s a dream job.”