Who stays, who goes? He knows

The guillotine fell again on the “Idol” stage. After the series’ least compelling performances thus far, it was also the least shocking results show. Wednesday night’s widely predicted ouster of Haley Scarnato seemed an orderly piece of business as usual.

As the one-hour affair marched inexorably toward the scaffold, and 30 million viewers waited for the verdict, only one person on that platform actually knew whose Idoldom was about to end. That person was not Angel of Death Ryan Seacrest, nor the judges.

Sitting at the back of the stage, the most low-key but perhaps most integral member of the on-screen family, music director Rickey Minor begins every Wednesday night show with a little voice in his headset telling him the identity of the condemned, so that quietly but efficiently he may prepare for that most hallowed of “Idol” traditions -- the goodbye song.

Minor’s role in preparing this ritual and keeping the secret to himself for that one crucial hour is a telling example of how the unassuming bass player seamlessly guides each week’s show. But let not the low-key smile and wave at the start of every show fool you -- in a machine the size of the Idol Industrial Complex, not an acorn falls whose descent is not meticulously mapped to the molecule.

The music director’s recent credits include guiding the sounds of almost every major American awards show (including the Emmys and Grammys), the Super Bowl, VH1 Divas and work on albums, tours and specials for a ridiculously encyclopedic client roster (including Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ray Charles, Mary J. Blige, Beyonce Knowles, Josh Groban and the Black Eyed Peas, to name a handful).

Visiting Minor at his bungalow office/production space in Hollywood one Thursday afternoon, one quickly gets the eye-of-the-hurricane sense that around the peaceful picture of a man listening to some recent cuts at his work station, there is a storm swirling.

Minor calmly gives his visitor a taste of the whirlwind, answering the innocently posed question, “What are you up to today?”

“Well, last night I watched the show with Quincy [Jones],” he begins. “We’re working on the song for ‘Idol Gives Back,’ which has to be done in two weeks. We talked about whether the song should be a ballad, should it be a ‘We Are the World’ or should it be something that has tempo. I opted for the latter. We’ll have enough ‘no dry eyes’ video clips and the comedians will bring some humor into it. But the uplifting song needs to have the energy.

“For that show, I’m organizing a 44-piece orchestra.... The night of ‘Idol Gives Back’ I have a jet leaving; I’m producing a festival in Tobago. Then I’m also producing; on that week, CedarsSinai is opening the Johnnie Cochran brain tumor center.”

Not to mention some records he’s working on and bands he’s putting together for those musician friends.

Asked how he keeps all this straight in his head, Minor produces a legal pad with page after page of items jotted down in a meticulously clear hand.

“I’m a Virgo, and I’m a math major. It’s about organizing yourself. I wake up about 4 in the morning, write the projects down and write out my checklist. Then through the day I go through my checklist and I check the boxes for all my TV shows, my records and the shows I’m producing.”

What could be easier?

But despite the several dozen or so side projects that clutter Minor’s checklist, it is his “Idol” duties that are the most consuming.

The process begins weeks in advance when the show receives a list of songs from each celebrity mentor. The clearance process in itself can be tricky. Minor acknowledges, for instance, that getting approval for Beatles songs has been very difficult. (To date, only one Beatles song has been performed on “Idol.”)

On Thursdays, “the contestants each get an hour with the vocal coach. They get that list of songs on the Sunday prior to the show so they have to already be thinking about ‘What song works for me.’ They all get one hour, the same amount of time, so no one can be accused of hogging the time.”

When the coaches finish their run-through, “they make a CD of the contestants singing.... I listen to it and make my suggestions. I decide the songs I want to work on and I decide what arrangers would be best [for the rest].”

Continuing his run-through of the week, he says, “Sunday morning we’re at Capitol Records recording the long version that goes up at American idol.com.... Monday is all-music day. It’s not cameras, it’s not lighting. It’s not producers, it’s nothing but music, it’s me and the band....

“Generally at the end of the day on Monday, I have all the contestants in the room with me. It’s one-on-one.

“The first week they’re frightened, but when it gets to the top 12, I tell them, ‘There’s going to come a time when your ego is going to surpass your talent and for some of you that’s starting to happen already. So I would encourage you to put your ego in check.’ ”

The other great problem Minor deals with is deadly to singers, he says: chattiness, a problem accentuated in this particularly chummy group.

“They need vocal rest. But ... they run around, talking too much, laughing too much. It’s a big problem.”

Ultimately, the choice of how to perform each song is left to the singers. He refers to LaKisha Jones’ very public dismissal of celebrity mentor Tony Bennett’s advice not to add a tag to her rendition of “Stormy Weather.”

“She had said, ‘What should I do?’ and I said, ‘Well, listen, it’s Tony Bennett. He’s got 80 years of singing and experience and you can either do what he says and what the band says -- we have 400 years of experience collectively. Or you can do whatever you want.’ ”

It came as little surprise to those who have observed her in the Idoldome that Jones went with what she wanted.

Asked how he rides the whirlwind, Minor cites advice given him by Jones, advice that could be the motto for the show itself. “Quincy said, ‘You know what to do when it rains?’ I said, ‘No, what?’ He said, ‘Get wet! Get soaking wet, man!’ ”

richard.rushfield@latimes.com

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