Jerry Moss, a music trade big who co-founded A&M Records with Herb Alpert and rose from a Los Angeles storage to the heights of success with hits by Alpert, The Police, the Carpenters and tons of of different performers, has died at age 88.
Moss, inducted with Alpert into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, died Wednesday (Aug. 16) at his dwelling in Bel Air, California, in accordance with an announcement launched by his household.
“They truly don’t make them like him anymore and we will miss conversations with him about everything under the sun,” the assertion reads partially, “the twinkle in his eyes as he approached every moment ready for the next adventure.”
For greater than 25 years, Alpert and Moss presided over one of many trade’s most profitable impartial labels, releasing such blockbuster albums as Albert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights, Carole King’s Tapestry and Peter Frampton’s Frampton Comes Alive! They have been dwelling to the Carpenters and Cat Stevens,Janet Jackson and Soundgarden,Joe (*88*) and Suzanne Vega, the Go-Gos and Sheryl Crow.
Among the label’s singles: Alpert’s “A Taste of Honey,” the Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together,” Frampton’s “Show Me the Way” and “Every Breath You Take” by The Police.
“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 instructed Artist House Music, an archive and useful resource heart, in 2007.
His music connections additionally led to a profitable horse racing enterprise that he owned along with his first spouse, Ann Holbrook. In 1962, report producer Nate Duroff lent Alpert and Moss $35,000 so they might print 350,000 copies of Alpert’s instrumental “The Lonely Bull,” the label’s first main hit. A decade later, Duroff satisfied Moss to put money into horses.
The Mosses’ Giacomo, named for the son of A&M artist Sting, gained the Kentucky Derby in 2005. Zenyatta, in honor of the Police album “Zenyatta Mondatta,” was runner-up for Horse of the Year in 2008 and 2009 and gained the next yr. A success single by Sting gave Moss the identify for an additional worthwhile horse, Set Them Free.
Moss’ survivors embody his second spouse, Tina Morse, and three kids.
Born in New York City and an English main at Brooklyn College, Moss had needed to work in present enterprise since ready tables in his 20s and noticing that the leisure trade patrons appeared to be having a lot enjoyable. After a six-month Army stint, he discovered work as a promoter for Coed Records and finally moved to Los Angeles, the place he met and befriended Alpert, a trumpeter, songwriter and entrepreneur.
With an funding of $100 every, they fashioned Carnival Records and had an area hit with “Tell It to the Birds,” an Alpert ballad launched underneath the identify of his son, Dore Alpert. After studying that one other firm was referred to as Carnival, Alpert and Moss used the initials of their final names and renamed their enterprise A&M, figuring out an workplace in Alpert’s storage and designing the distinctive emblem with the trumpet throughout the underside.
“We had a desk, piano, piano stool, a couch, coffee table and two phone lines. And that for the two of us worked out very well, because we could go over the songs on the piano and make phone calls to the distributors,” Moss later instructed Billboard. “We also had an answering service at the time. I’d do all my own billing.”
For a number of years they specialised in “easy listening” acts corresponding to 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 main pageant, Moss started including rock performers, together with (*88*), Procol Harum and Free.
One of their largest triumphs was Frampton Comes Alive! a reside double album from 1976 that bought greater than 6 million copies in its first yr and remodeled Frampton from mid-level performer to famous person.
“Peter was a huge live star in markets like Detroit and San Francisco, so we made a suggestion that he make a live record,” Moss instructed Rolling Stone in 2002. “What he was doing onstage wasn’t like the records — it was outrageously better. I remember being at the mix of Frampton Comes Alive! at Electric Lady studios, and I was so blown away I asked to make it a double album.”
A&M continued to develop their catalog via the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s, taking over The Police, Squeeze, Joe Jackson and different British New Wave artists, R&B musicians Janet Jackson and Barry White and nation rockers 38 Special and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
By the late ’80s, Alpert and Moss have been working out of a Hollywood lot the place Charlie Chaplin as soon as made motion pictures, however they struggled to maintain up with ever-higher recording contracts and bought A&M to Polygram for an estimated $500 million. They remained on the label, however clashed with Polygram’s administration and left in 1993, one among their final signings a singer-musician from Kennett, Missouri: Sheryl Crow. (Alpert and Moss later sued Polygram for violating their contract’s integrity clause and reached a $200 million settlement.)
For a couple of years, Alpert and Moss ran Almo Records, the place performers included Garbage, Imogen Heap and Gillian Welch.
“We wanted people to be happy,” Moss instructed The New York Times in 2010. “You can’t force people to do a certain kind of music. They make their best music when they are doing what they want to do, not what we want them to do.”
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