Malcolm Cecil, the brilliant bassist, synthesist, producer, and engineer passed away on March 28th. He was best known for his work with his partner Robert Margouleff on four of Stevie Wonder's 1970s releases: Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale.
Cecil helped create the TONTO system used on many of Wonder's albums. TONTO was a large custom-built synthesizer system that combined modules from ARP, Moog, Serge, and Oberheim. It had a number of customized switch triggers and sequencers that allowed the modules to communicate with each other, years ahead of the MIDI protocol that arrived in the 80s.
RIP Malcolm, and thank you for all the great music and inspiration!
Tom
And TONTO was even a character on “Phantom Of The Paradise” (1974).
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