Jerry Moss, co-founder of A&M Information, dies at 88

By Hillel Italie | Related Press

Jerry Moss, a music trade large who co-founded A&M Information 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 Corridor of Fame in 2006, died Wednesday at his residence in Bel Air, California, in response to an announcement launched by his household.

“They really don’t make them like him anymore and we’ll miss conversations with him about every little thing underneath the solar,” the assertion reads partly, “the twinkle in his eyes as he approached each second prepared for the following journey.”

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 & Different Delights,” Carole King’s “Tapestry” and Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive!” They had been residence to the Carpenters and Cat Stevens, Janet Jackson and Soundgarden, Joe Cocker and Suzanne Vega, the Go-Gos and Sheryl Crow.

Among the many label’s singles: Alpert’s “A Style of Honey,” the Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Preserve Us Collectively,” Frampton’s “Present Me the Manner” and “Each Breath You Take,” by the Police.

“Each occasionally a file would come by way of us and Herbie would take a look at me and say, ‘What did we do to deserve this, that this wonderful factor goes to return out on our label?’” Moss advised Artist Home 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, file producer Nate Duroff lent Alpert and Moss $35,000 so they may 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 12 months in 2008 and 2009 and gained the next yr. A success single by Sting gave Moss the title for an additional worthwhile horse, Set Them Free.

Moss’ survivors embrace his second spouse, Tina Morse, and three kids.

Born in New York Metropolis and an English main at Brooklyn School, Moss had wished 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 Military stint, he discovered work as a promoter for Coed Information and ultimately moved to Los Angeles, the place he met and befriended Alpert, a trumpeter, songwriter and entrepreneur.

With an funding of $100 every, they shaped Carnival Information and had an area hit with “Inform It to the Birds,” an Alpert ballad launched underneath the title 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 brand with the trumpet throughout the underside.

“We had a desk, piano, piano stool, a sofa, espresso desk and two telephone traces. And that for the 2 of us labored out very properly, as a result of we may go over the songs on the piano and make telephone calls to the distributors,” Moss later advised Billboard. “We additionally had an answering service on the time. I’d do all my very own billing.”

For a number of years they specialised in “simple listening” acts equivalent to Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Brazilian artist Sergio Mendes and the folk-rock trio the Sandpipers. After attending the Monterey Pop Pageant in 1967, rock’s first main competition, Moss started including rock performers, together with Cocker, Procol Harum and Free.

One in every of their greatest triumphs was “Frampton Comes Alive!” a dwell 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 an enormous dwell star in markets like Detroit and San Francisco, so we made a suggestion that he make a dwell file,” Moss advised Rolling Stone in 2002. “What he was doing onstage wasn’t just like the information — it was outrageously higher. I keep in mind being on the mixture of ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ at Electrical Woman studios, and I used to be so blown away I requested to make it a double album.”

A&M continued to broaden their catalog by way of 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 Particular and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

By the late ’80s, Alpert and Moss had 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, certainly one of 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.)