Grooming, nowadays, is a word that is applied to dog shows and facial hair.
Once, it applied to pop stars.
Back in the day, there were teams of record industry people who developed an artist’s sound, image, repertoire, wardrobe, hairstyles, dance moves, even personal etiquette, before unleashing them on a rapturous public. “Grooming” them, it was sometimes called.
Producers Ray and Vivian Scott Chew, co-founders of Hackensack’s new R.V.M.K. Studio, plan to make stars the old-fashioned way. They’ll groom them.
“We felt there was a real void of artist development in the industry,” says Ray Chew, known to millions of TV viewers as the orchestra leader of “Dancing With the Stars,” the music director of “American Idol,” the man who led the band when Barack and Michelle Obama took their first dance together as president and first lady in 2009.