Mark Ronson: The New Master Of Old-School Funk

DJ and super producer Mark Ronson – behind Adele and Amy Winehouse and Bruno Mars, “Uptown Funk” – is up for more Grammys. He’s with us.

DJ, musician, producer Mark Ronson was super cool, huge, when he won Grammys with Amy Winehouse for “Back to Black" and "Rehab”. When he worked with young Adele on her debut album, “19”.  Then Ronson went low-profile for a while. Last year, back, producing a super hit “Uptown Funk” with Bruno Mars. There with Stevie Wonder. Kevin Parker.  Mystikal. Now he’s up for three more Grammys, and with us. This hour On Point, Mark Ronson.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Mark Ronson, Grammy-winning and nominated musician, DJ and producer. His most recent solo album, "Uptown Special," has been nominated for the 2015 Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album. His song, "Uptown Funk," is also up for Record of the Year and Pop Duo / Group Performance of the Year. (@MarkRonson)

Esquire: Mark Ronson Changes The Record — "It’s been noted before that a feature of Ronson profiles is their subject insisting he doesn’t lead a glamorous life, while giving the opposite impression. In fact, the two things might not be so contradictory. He has recorded with everyone from Paul McCartney to Ghostface Killah and is from a starry background: his dad managed Eighties pop stars Bucks Fizz and Roachford; his stepdad is the guitarist in soft-rock titans Foreigner, who wrote 'I Want to Know What Love Is' to woo his socialite mum, Ann Dexter-Jones."

NPR Music: Uptown Boy: Mark Ronson And The Producer As Rock Star — "I feel like surrounding yourself with people that are more talented than you is the best way to get better at anything — so like, working with someone like Jeff Bhasker on this album and wanting to really step up my musicality and chord changes. Picking up a Stevie Wonder songbook and teaching yourself the most complicated thing in there, even if it takes you four weeks to figure out one song. Any of those things, I love doing. They feed the brain and the soul at the same time."

Grantland: Uptown Guy: How ‘Uptown Funk’ Almost Destroyed Mark Ronson Before It Saved Him -- "During the making of Uptown Special, Ronson came to accept the conventional view of his work, which is that his strength is isolating elements from past eras and moribund genres and then synthesizing them into a thoroughly modern package."