Jerry Moss Dies: A&M Records Co-Founder Was 88
Jerry Moss, who co-founded A&M Records with Herb Alpert more than 60 years ago and helped build it into one of the most successful independent record labels in history, died today in Los Angeles. He was 88.
His family shared the news in a statement to the Associated Press.
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Named for its co-founder, the artist-focused A&M Records was launched in 1962 and has boasted such hitmaking and influential acts as The Police, Quincy Jones, The Carpenters, Carole King, Styx, Janet Jackson, Peter Frampton, The Go-Go’s, Supertramp, Rita Coolidge, Joe Cocker, Sheryl Crow, Bryan Adams, Humble Pie, The Tubes, Oingo Boingo, Cat Stevens/Yusuf, Nazareth and, of course, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. Billy Preston had a pair of No. 1 singles for the label with “Will It Go Around in Circles” and “Nothing From Nothing” in the mid-1970s.
The label’s story was told in Mr. A & Mr. M: The Story of A&M Records, a two-part documentary that aired on Epix in 2021.
Moss and Alpert’s Carnival Records issued a couple of singles before its founder renamed it A&M Records. The rechristened label’s first major success was The Tijuana Brass’ “The Lonely Bull,” a Top 10 instrumental that featured Alpert memorable trumpet hook. As Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass, the group scored another national hit in 1965 with “A Taste of Honey,” for which Moss shared a Record of the Year Grammy.
The song was culled from the album Whipped Cream and Other Delights, which spent eight weeks atop the Billboard 200. The group’s 1962 debut disc, The Lonely Bull, had made the Top 10, as did its 1965 follow-up, South of the Border. Alpert and The Brass would continue to score smash albums through the 1960s, with three — What Now My Love (1966), Sounds Like (1967) and compilation The Best of the Brass — hitting No. 1. S.R.O. peaked at No. 2 in late 1966.
With A&M Records was firmly established, its renown for artist relations helped pad its roster in the 1960s with Cocker, Stevens and such other acts as Free — whose enduring Top 10 smash “All Right Now” hit in 1970 — Fairport Convention, “Whiter Shade of Pale” group Procol Harum and the Frampton-led Humble Pie.
During the 1970s, A&M had massive hits from the likes of Styx — who had three consecutive triple-platinum albums late in the decade — Supertramp and most notably Frampton Comes Alive, the 1975 double live set that helped launch the era of the mega-album. It spent 10 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 and has sold more than 8 million units in the U.S. alone.
For the first part of that decade, A&M distributed Ode Records, home of stoner comedy act Cheech & Chong and released The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack.
MORE TO COME…
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