Rest in peace, John Matousek, Motown Mastering Engineer
Sad news...John Matousek passed away on May 27th. He was a long time Motown mastering engineer and was responsible for mastering a large chunk of Motown's catalogue starting in the mid 70's, up until the early 90's...including many of the anthologies and Compact Command CD series that we've all purchased, enjoyed and loved. The first link below is his obituary and the second link is a listing of the various releases he worked on, from Discogs' database. Thank you for working your magic, John. Rest in peace.
https://www.horancares.com/obituary/John-Matousek
https://www.discogs.com/artist/410413-John-Matousek
The Man Who Mastered Motown
Many years ago, a posting on the SteveHoffman forum that praised John Matousek for the 'warm' and unadulterated sound that he achieved with his mastering started my quest to obtain Motown CDs mastered by him as my primary choice - I became a John Matousek collector! I have therefore ended up with many of those Motown discs released in the late 1980's and early 1990's during his prime time both at Motown and, presumably, out on his own at Soundworks West.
Given the choice of his mastered discs or those 'Remastered' re-issues from later, I would always chose those with John Matousek's name on them, and still do. I'm not some nerdy audiophile; I just happen to really like his work, as opposed to the later re-issues on Polygram, for example, where someone has twiddled with the knobs just a little too much so the result will sound good coming through earbuds or as a download, instead of John Matousek's way of making something sound as it did when it was first recorded, plus a little bit better. I've said before that those '2 All Time Great Classic Albums...Remastered on 1 CD' are pure Motown gold, as are all the other recordings that I treasure because they passed through the hands and ears of The Man Who Mastered Motown. He's left a wonderful legacy behind.