Music producer Jerry Wexler dies at 91

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-wexler16-2008aug16,0,2248740.story

Jerry Wexler, the influential Atlantic Records producer who coined the term "rhythm and blues" before helping shape that music into one of the most powerful musical forces of the 1950s and '60s, died this morning at his home in Sarasota, Fla. He was 91.

Wexler had suffered in recent years from congenital heart disease, said David Ritz, who co-authored Wexler's 1994 autobiography "Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American Music."

As Atlantic co-founder Ahmet Ertegun's partner during that label's vital years from the '50s to the '70s, Wexler co-piloted one of the most successful and influential independent record companies in history.

"Wexler's efforts at Atlantic helped bring black music to the masses, and in so doing built a significant and lasting bridge between the races," according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted Wexler as a non-performer in 1987.

In the early 1960s, Wexler signed a gospel singer whose career had been languishing at another record label and unleashed her vocal talent, helping turn Aretha Franklin into "the Queen of Soul." He also produced numerous hits for Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles and the Drifters and later, with rock performers including Dire Straits and Bob Dylan, whose 1979 album "Slow Train Coming," produced by Wexler, earned Dylan his first Grammy award.


"He was one of the last of these record guys who grew up in the rough-and-tumble music business -- independents who had to bang it out, press them and get them out on the street because other people were stealing songs left and right," Ritz said today. "It was really a free-for-all.

"If you weren't Louis Armstrong or the Mills Brothers, the major labels didn't want to deal with you," Ritz added. "They didn't want to deal with R&B because they didn't understand it. Jerry had the street toughness to survive in that environment, but he also had such wonderful taste, and a deep, deep appreciation for the artistry of Ray Charles and Solomon Burke and on and on and on."

In addition to producing hundreds of recordings for Atlantic, Wexler was known for his endless passion for promoting those records.

"He loved the music and he lived the music," soul singer Burke said Friday. "He lived the rhythm and blues. . . . His greatest job was being the ears of Atlantic Records' R&B division; he had great ears and he could hear things other people couldn't hear.

"But he also was a great promoter who worked 24 hours a day to promote a record," Burke said. "If he wanted a record to happen, it would happen. . . . If he made a record at 1 o'clock in the morning, at 2:30 in the morning he was on the phone waking up a deejay to tell him about it, and he'd have that record waiting at the station when the morning deejay got there at 6:30."