I think you could say that Alan Parsons realy defined the role of the producer as a major creative
force....
For me, most of the producers that I like, have also been engineers, and many are also musicians too, so their perspectives when wearing the producers hat are usually based in both creative and technical experience.
I would say that Phil Spector and Berry Gordy were the first of those producers that were more of the creative than technical
forces. They were really ensconced in the music and the records were often more about
them or their brainchild/
vision. Sometimes the actual artists were kind of interchangeable and while not irrelevant, less important.
I have to say, some producers have been responsible for some great records that would never have been the memorable artifacts they are were it not for them. For example, Pink Floyd's debut album, "The piper at the gates of dawn" has attained legendary status and to a large extent, most of Syd Barrett's mythical
status derives from his songs on it. But it was the producer Norman Smith who really steered the Floyd into recording
songs that were accessible, rather than the free form stuff they did live.
Giorgio Gomelsky moreorless created the Blossom Toes psych
classic "We are ever so clean" album. The band wrote the songs for it as pretty
standard R&B/pop but this was 1967 ! Having already lost the Stones and the Yardbirds, he was determined to make his mark with his own label and band and after the Blossies had recorded
the tracks, he got in the orchestras and woodwinds to spark up the songs into something else. Listening to the bonus tracks shows the difference the producer made ¬> the bonus tracks {without the additions} are pretty drab but the producer had a creative
vision and though some of the band didn't like it, it was a better album for it.
Norman Whitfield wrote some great stuff at Motown and as a producer, he really made his mark with the Temptations. He certainly moved them into that psychedelic soul phase and in their funkadelic phase, both with production and the songs he and Barrett Strong were writing, it's arguable whether the Temptations would have been successful or even gone in that direction without him.
There are many examples of that kind of producer {among the varying types} and I suspect that they will always be in some kind of demand.
However, the home recording move and it's accessibility to all and sundry with an interest kind of tells me that the producer as we've known {and been confused by} them are going to become a lesser species in the times ahead because as people have been getting their feet wet in their studios, the production mystique has diminished.