Jerry Moss, who co-founded A&M Records with Herb Alpert and rose from a Los Angeles garage to the heights of success with singles by Alpert, the Police, the Carpenters, and hundreds of other performers, died at the age of 88.
Moss, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Alpert in 2006, died Wednesday at his home in Bel Air, California, according to a statement provided by his family. Tina, his widow, informed The Associated Press that he died of natural causes.
“They truly don’t make them like him anymore,” the statement says in part, “and we will miss conversations with him about everything under the sun,” as well as “the twinkle in his eyes as he approached every moment ready for the next adventure.”
For more than 25 years, Alpert and Moss ran one of the music industry’s most successful independent companies, publishing chart-topping albums like Alpert’s “Whipped Cream & Other Delights,” Carole King’s “Tapestry,” and Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive!” The Carpenters and Cat Stevens lived there, as did Janet Jackson and Soundgarden, Joe Cocker and Suzanne Vega, and the Go-Gos and Sheryl Crow.
“Every once in a while, a record would come through us, and Herbie would look at me and say, ‘What did we do to deserve this, that this amazing thing is going to come out on our label?'” Moss told the archive and resource center Artist House Music in 2007.
Jerry Moss, who co-founded A&M Records with Herb Alpert, died at the age of 88.
His musical connections led to a wealthy horse racing operation, which he co-owned with his second wife, Ann Holbrook. Nate Duroff, a record producer, loaned Alpert and Moss $35,000 in 1962 to print 350,000 copies of Alpert’s instrumental “The Lonely Bull,” the label’s first significant hit. Duroff persuaded Moss to invest in horses a decade later.
Giacomo, named after A&M musician Sting’s son, won the Kentucky Derby in 2005. Zenyatta, named after the Police song “Zenyatta Mondatta,” finished second in 2008 and 2009 before winning the following year. Moss named another profitable horse, Set Them Free, after a hit tune by Sting.
Moss made one of his final public appearances in January when he was honored with a tribute concert at the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles. Among the performances were Frampton, Amy Grant, and Dionne Warwick, who wasn’t an A&M artist but had known Moss since the early 1960s when he helped promote her songs. While Moss did not speak during the event, many others did.
“Herb was the painter, and Jerry was the visionary.” On the red carpet, singer Rita Coolidge observed, “It just changed the face of the record industry.” “A&M made such a difference, and it was where everyone wanted to be.”
Moss’ second wife, Tina Morse, and three children survive him.
Moss, a New York City native and English major at Brooklyn College, had wanted to work in show business since his twenties and had seen how much fun the entertainment industry clients seemed to be having. Following a six-month term in the Army, he got work as a promotion for Coed Records and eventually relocated to Los Angeles, where he met and befriended Alpert, a trumpeter, songwriter, and entrepreneur.
Jerry Moss, who co-founded A&M Records with Herb Alpert, died at the age of 88.
They founded Carnival Records with a $100 investment each and had a local hit with “Tell It to the Birds,” an Alpert ballad issued under the name of his son, Dore Alpert. After discovering that another company called Carnival existed, Alpert and Moss renamed their company A&M, working out of Alpert’s garage and designing the iconic logo with the trumpet across the bottom.
“We had a desk, a piano, a stool for the piano, a couch, a coffee table, and two phone lines.” “And that worked out very well for the two of us because we could go over the songs on the piano and call the distributors,” Moss later told Billboard. “At the time, we also had an answering service. I’d handle all of my own billing.”
For many years, they specialized in “easy listening” acts such as Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Sergio Mendes, and the Sandpipers, a folk-rock trio from Brazil. Moss began adding rock performers, including Cocker, Procol Harum, and Free, after attending the Monterey Pop event in 1967, rock’s first major event.
“Frampton Comes Alive!” was a live double album released in 1976 that sold more than 6 million copies in its first year, catapulting Frampton from mid-level talent to stardom.
“Peter was a huge live star in markets like Detroit and San Francisco, so we suggested he make a live record,” Moss told Rolling Stone in 2002. “What he was doing onstage wasn’t like the records; it was far superior.” I recall being at the mix of ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ at Electric Lady Studios and being so taken away that I requested a double CD.”
Jerry Moss, who co-founded A&M Records with Herb Alpert, died at the age of 88.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, A&M expanded its catalog by signing the Police, Squeeze, Joe Jackson, and other British New Wave acts, R&B musicians Janet Jackson and Barry White, country rockers 38 Special and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
By the late 1980s, Alpert and Moss were working out of a Hollywood lot where Charlie Chaplin used to make films, but they were struggling to keep up with ever-increasing recording contracts and sold A&M to Polygram for an estimated $500 million. They stayed with the company until they battled with Polygram’s management and left in 1993, with one of their last signings being Sheryl Crow, a singer-songwriter from Kennett, Missouri. (Alpert and Moss eventually sued Polygram for breach of contract and received a $200 million settlement.)
Alpert and Moss owned Almo Records for a few years, releasing music by Garbage, Imogen Heap, and Gillian Welch.
“We wanted people to be happy,” Moss said in 2010 to The New York Times. “You can’t make people do a certain type of music. They generate their best music when they are free to do what they want, not what we want.”
SOURCE – (AP)
