Music industry giant Jerry Moss has died at age 88. Moss teamed with Herb Alpert to co-found A&M Records and rise from a Los Angeles garage to wealth and fame with hits by Alpert, the Police, the Carpenters and hundreds of other performers, He and Alpert were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.
Jerry Moss, right, and Herb Alpert, co-founders of A&M Records, appear during their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in New York on March 13, 2006. Moss, a music industry giant who co-founded A&M Records, died Wednesday at his home in Bel Air, Calif. He was 88.
For more than 25 years, Alpert and Moss presided over one of the industry’s most successful independent labels, releasing such blockbuster albums as Albert’s “Whipped Cream & Other Delights,” Carole King’s “Tapestry” and Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive!” They were home to the Carpenters and Cat Stevens, Janet Jackson and Soundgarden, Joe Cocker and Suzanne Vega, the Go-Gos and Sheryl Crow.
His music connections also led to a lucrative horse racing business that he owned with his first wife, Ann Holbrook. In 1962, record manufacturer Nate Duroff lent Alpert and Moss $35,000 so they could print 350,000 copies of Alpert’s instrumental “The Lonely Bull,” the label’s first major hit. A decade later, Duroff convinced Moss to invest in horses.
“Herb was the artist and Jerry had the vision. It just changed the face of the record industry,” singer Rita Coolidge said on the event’s red carpet. “Certainly A&M made such a difference and it’s where everybody wanted to be.”Born in New York City and an English major at Brooklyn College, Moss had wanted to work in show business since waiting tables in his 20s and noticing that the entertainment industry patrons seemed to be having so much fun.
For several years they specialized in “easy listening” acts such as Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Brazilian artist Sergio Mendes and the folk-rock trio the Sandpipers. After attending the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, rock’s first major festival, Moss began adding rock performers, including Cocker, Procol Harum and Free.
A&M continued to expand their catalog through the 1970s and ‘80s, taking on the Police, Squeeze, Joe Jackson and other British New Wave artists, R&B musicians Janet Jackson and Barry White and country rockers 38 Special and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
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