By Rebekah TsadikThe Daily Northwestern

In gray wool socks, jeans and a gray sweatshirt, music producer Jim Tullio sat back casually in a leather chair in his basement recording studio. Thousands of tapes and CDs of sessions filling a dozen shelves surrounded the award-winning artist as he played sound bytes and took long drags from his cigarettes.

“Most kids wonder, ‘What am I going to do when I grow up,'” said Tullio, 54. “I never had to ask that question.”

The man behind artists such as Aretha Franklin and television jingles including “Did somebody say McDonald’s?” has used his home in Winnetka as a recording studio for 20 years. He will move to Evanston later this year, leaving more than his home behind.

“He’s so busy with his own career, but he’s just so accessible and a good friend,” next-door neighbor Christy Kaskey said. “Right away, he was just so great with our kids.”

Kaskey credited part of her middle son’s interest in playing guitar to Tullio’s influence. Tullio helped her husband select an appropriate guitar for their son.

“We actually go to bed listening to his music,” she said.

Kaskey recalled several instances of Tullio playing guitar or cooking a meal for musicians on his back porch. True to his “open-door” policy, he often introduced her to them.

“I’ve made a lot of good friends around here,” Tullio said.

The son of a jazz drummer, Tullio grew up in Atlantic City, N.J., and wrote songs from a young age. He moved to the Chicago area and began writing and producing music.

Tullio compared music production to film directing – the producer has a creative role in the action. Not only does he help artists write lyrics, but he also decides how to mix different recordings and at what level instruments play.

Tullio has won both Grammy and W.C. Handy Blues awards.

He said he originally moved to Winnetka because of the schools, but after his daughter graduated from high school in 1996, he considered moving closer to Chicago’s music scene. He placed his house, which had been host to artists such as Los Lonely Boys and Rita Coolidge, on the market and searched for a bigger home. He even considered moving to the East Coast.

But two fateful calls from a real estate agent and his daughter, who plans to move back to Chicago, led him to his soon-to-be new space.

“I fell in love with it immediately,” Tullio said.

From the 2,000-square-foot Evanston studio and home at 1224 Washington St., Tullio will continue his work as a producer. He will take most of his equipment with him – compressors from the 1950s and vintage microphones worth thousands of dollars – and will purchase new microphones and equipment. Stained-glass windows and 14-foot ceilings frame the entrance, and two bedrooms in the basement will house visiting artists.

“It just goes to show you it doesn’t matter where you are, but what you do,” he said.

Tullio’s work has left a strong impression on members of the local music community.

“I don’t know how he does what he does,” said folk music player and Evanston resident Kat Eggleston. “He knows what he wants to hear, and he makes it happen.”

Eggleston said she had heard about Tullio several years before she recorded in his Winnetka basement studio, which she described as comfortable and casual. She called Tullio a “magician” who found bass and drums combinations to songs that had not occurred to her.

“He’s got a great rhythm sense,” she said. “He hears things in a different way than I do.”

When he isn’t recording, Tullio teaches a class in music production at Columbia College in Chicago.

He now is working on scores for “Bolden!” a movie coming out next year. Wynton Marsalis also will contribute to the film.

“If I didn’t have music, who knows what my life would have been?” Tullio said.

Reach Rebekah Tsadik at [email protected].