Craven likes a lot of people you’ve never heard of.

Obviously, he also likes ending sentences with prepositions, but that’s a subject to be taken up at another time, probably at the behest of Grand Junction Free Press Editor Josh Nichols.

At any rate, when it comes to celebrating the little-known and inconspicuous, Craven is practically the Secretary of Homeland Obscurity. During his weekly radio program on KAFM and often within the confines of this column, he lifts a figurative glass to the unheralded John Does and Joe Schmoes who populate the history of popular music.

Take, for example, Larry Levine.

Levine passed away a couple weeks ago on his 80th birthday. I’d bet my prized collection of original 1964 “Outer Limits” trading cards that you’ve never heard of Levine — although I’m just as certain you’ve been exposed to his work.

Perhaps you heard it during the 1960s, crackling from a 45 rpm single spinning on a
GE suitcase turntable. Or maybe it was more recently on TV, as the accompaniment to a commercial for Teabury gum or as the theme to an HBO series about
polygamists. And there’s a darned good chance you’ve heard Levine’s work blaring from the speakers of a radio — probably many, many times.

Larry Levine’s métier was sound, and he toiled in the shadow of geniuses to plumb its untold depths. If it was famed producer Phil Spector who invented the “Wall of Sound,” then it was Levine who laid its foundation, one mono brick at a time. While it was Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson who forged a “teenage symphony to God” out of “Pet Sounds,” it was Levine who swept the menagerie. Sitting at the knobs in the legendary Gold Star Recording Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles in his role as recording engineer, Larry Levine sweetened “A Taste of Honey” for Herb Alpert ... pampered “Be My Baby” for the Ronettes ... and erected “Twenty Flight Rock” for Eddie Cochran.

Levine was practically a member of the “Wrecking Crew,” the legendary group of session players comprised of guitarists Barney Kessel, Tommy Tedesco, Glen Campbell and Billy Strange, drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, bassists Carole Kaye and Larry Knechtal, and keyboard players Leon Russell and Dr. John. The Wrecking Crew played on scores of hits for the likes of Spector, the Beach Boys, the Monkees, the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Frank Zappa — even Frank Sinatra, who utilized the Crew on ’60s hits like “Strangers in the Night.”

And Larry Levine was there, too, in later years, when Phil Spector would come to recording sessions half-plastered and when (on separate occasions) the groundbreaking producer pulled a gun on Leonard Cohen and the Ramones.

So ... this one’s for Larry Levine ... whose name you never knew, but who enhanced your life time and time again with his inspired knob-twiddling and meticulous attention to the art of sound.

(By the way: I had my fingers crossed. I’m not parting with my “Outer Limits” cards for nothin’, bub!)

<i>Notes is supported by the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, promoting the success of after-school programs throughout Colorado in cooperation with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Notes can be heard daily on KAFM 88.1 or at kafmradio.org on the Web.</i>