Jerry Wexler

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Jerry Wexler was an American music journalist and producer, born in 1917 in the Bronx, New York. He grew up in Washington Heights and as a young man collected 78 rpm records of jazz musicians. After his military service he studied journalism in Kansas. He then worked as an editor at the trade magazine Billboard. There in 1949 he coined the term rhythm and blues, as a replacement for the name race records that the magazine used for the chart of Black music.

Music and breakthrough

In 1953 Wexler became a partner at Atlantic Records, the label of Ahmet Ertegun. Together they made it a major label, with Ray Charles, The Drifters and Ruth Brown. In the 1960s he struck a distribution deal with Stax in Memphis and had artists record in the studios of Muscle Shoals in Alabama, among them Wilson Pickett. In 1967 he brought Aretha Franklin to Atlantic. She had had little success at her previous label, but with Wexler she became the most successful female singer in America within a short time. Later he produced Dusty in Memphis by Dusty Springfield, signed Led Zeppelin and produced Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming (1979).

Influence

Wexler was a producer who put an artist's talent first. He looked for the right musicians and the right studio, and then let the singer have her way. In this way he put Atlantic at the forefront of soul music. Asked what should be on his gravestone, he answered: more bass. He died in 2008.

Listening

In School of Rock

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