Post by Emerald City on Mar 4, 2005 19:49:44 GMT -5
Genius loves justice.
Ray Charles' longtime recording engineer was sprung from jail Thursday after posting $100,000 bail stemming from charges that he swiped hundreds of master tapes from the late music icon.
Terry Howard, 48, won three Grammys last month for his work on Charles' posthumous release, Genius Loves Company. On Feb. 17, four days after Howard took to the Staples Center stage to collect his hardware, he was in police custody, charged with stealing 300 original masters from Charles.
Police say Howard made off with the recordings between Feb. 18, 2004 and Feb. 17, 2005. Charles was apparently unaware of the missing masters at the time of his death on June 10.
Howard has pleaded innocent to the crime. His lawyer, Steve Crom, has told reporters that the entire incident is a mix up.
"He did not have original master recordings. He had copies, and he had every right to have them," Crom told Reuters. "Sound engineers routinely take home material and work in their home studios, and that's what Terry did."
Crom also intimated that professional jealously led to Howard's arrest. The lawyer said the engineer's relationship with Charles "was long-standing and very close."
Police say it was an associate of Howard's who tipped them off to the presence of the recordings of in the engineer's Los Angeles loft. They dispute Crom's claims of the tapes being copies that Howard was working on, since the recordings allegedly included old reel-to-reels of Charles and other artists. A master recording of Charles' famed single "Georgia on My Mind" was reportedly among the items found at Howard's, as were several boxes of audiotapes marked "property of Ray Charles Entertainment," according to police. Some of the fragile tapes were not properly temperate controlled and had suffered damage, police said.
"Whatever the outcome [of the case], Ray Charles Enterprises puts a high value on its assets, especially its master tapes, and will do its utmost to ensure their safety and proper handling along with protecting other irreplaceable valuables belonging to the late entertainer and his estate," a spokesman for the singer's estate said in a statement.
Howard had been jailed since his arrest. He had been unable to post the original bail amount, which was set at $1 million. A judge reduced the bail earlier this week because Howard had no previous record.
Howard, one of several engineers credited on Genius Loves Company, shared Grammys for Record of the Year, Album of the Year and Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording. All told the chart-topping, multiplatinum album won a record-tying eight Grammys, five of those going to the late Charles.
