Billy Straus

Billy Straus is an American songwriter and music producer, known for his work in popular children’s shows such as Dora the Explorer, Little Einsteins Story soon >> Read More... , Bob the Builder, and Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?, for which he has also won the Emmy Award. In 1979 at Fedco Audio Labs, he began his career as a remote recording engineer. He recorded many artists like Miles Davis and radio shows like The King Biscuit Flower Hour where he recorded artists like The grateful Dead. During the early 1980s, he was in a band called Redline and has also toured with the rock band U2 after a year. Soon his work brought him to the US, where as an engineer, he worked at a recording studio called The Hit Factory in Manhattan, where he worked with admired artists like Julian Lennon.

In 1985, he laid the first stone of The Manhattan Recording Company. He kick-started the radio series The Manhattan Jazz Hour,hosted by John Wilson – a jazz critic from The New York Times which soon after aired on American Public Radio. In 2003, Straus wrote the lyrics and music for the musical adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey named Rock Odyssey. In 2007, he worked as an executive producer for legend Bob Marley’s compilation of earliest remix recordings – Roots, Rock, Remixed and a couple of volumes of Christmas Remixed: Holiday Classics Re-Grooved. Billy Straus currently lives in Vermont with his family where he is volunteering as an emergency medical technician.