Jerry Wexler: Pioneer of Postwar Pop
American record producer and music executive helped to start Atlantic records and coined term 'rhythm and blues'
Few of the pioneers of the postwar pop music industry more effectively exploited the art of connoisseurship than Jerry Wexler, the American record producer and music industry executive, who has died of congestive heart failure aged 91.
It was his good luck that along with two similarly endowed members of that small band, the Turkish brothers Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, he developed the Atlantic label into a significant creative force in the fields of rhythm and blues, soul, jazz and rock.
By supervising the recordings of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Joe Turner, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and many others during a studio career lasting almost 50 years, Wexler left a discreet but indelible mark on the popular culture of the second half of the 20th century.
It was in 1947, as a young reporter with Billboard magazine, that he coined the term “rhythm and blues" to replace “race records" as the title of the weekly charts listing the best-selling 78rpm discs among America's black population. Having given it a name that became universally accepted, he helped define the genre after switching to record production.
Few of the pioneers of the postwar pop music industry more effectively exploited the art of connoisseurship than Jerry Wexler, the American record producer and music industry executive, who has died of congestive heart failure aged 91.
It was his good luck that along with two similarly endowed members of that small band, the Turkish brothers Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, he developed the Atlantic label into a significant creative force in the fields of rhythm and blues, soul, jazz and rock.
By supervising the recordings of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Joe Turner, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and many others during a studio career lasting almost 50 years, Wexler left a discreet but indelible mark on the popular culture of the second half of the 20th century.
It was in 1947, as a young reporter with Billboard magazine, that he coined the term “rhythm and blues" to replace “race records" as the title of the weekly charts listing the best-selling 78rpm discs among America's black population. Having given it a name that became universally accepted, he helped define the genre after switching to record production.
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