Remembering Jerry Moss

• Jerry Moss, who, along with his longtime friend and business partner, Herb Alpert, turned A&M Records into one of America’s leading independent record labels, died Wednesday at his home in Bel Air, CA. He was 88.

In a statement to the Associated Press, Moss’ family said, “They truly don’t make them like him anymore and we will miss conversations with him about everything under the sun. The twinkle in his eyes as he approached every moment ready for the next adventure.”

Moss first entered the music business as a promoter for Coed Records and later moved to Los Angeles, where he met and befriended Alpert, a trumpeter, songwriter and entrepreneur. With an investment of $100 each, they launched Carnival Records and had a local hit with “Tell It to the Birds,” an Alpert ballad released under the name of his son, Dore Alpert. As the story goes, after learning that another company was already using the name Carnival, Alpert and Moss decided to use the initials of their last names as a temporary placeholder, renaming the business A&M, working out an office in Alpert’s garage.

For several years A&M specialized in “easy listening” acts like Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass, Sergio Mendes and the folk-rock trio The Sandpipers. However, after attending the seminal Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, Moss began adding rock performers, including Joe Cocker, Procol Harum and Free. A&M enjoyed an explosion of sales success during the ’70s and ’80s with such high powered talent as The Carpenters, Cat Stevens, Supertramp, Peter Frampton, Carole King, The Police, The Go-Go’s, Bryan Adams and Janet Jackson, to name just a few, operating out of their headquarters on the former Charlie Chaplin studio lot on La Brea Blvd. in Hollywood.

Following the sale of A&M to Polygram in 1989, Moss and Alpert founded a new imprint, Almo Sounds, which developed such acts as Garbage and Ozomatli.

As The Associated Press reports, Moss’ connection to the music industry led to a lucrative horse racing business that he owned with his first wife, Ann Holbrook. That path started in 1962, when record manufacturer Nate Duroff lent Alpert and Moss $35,000 so they could print 350,000 copies of Alpert’s instrumental, “The Lonely Bull,” which became A&M’s first major hit. A decade later, Duroff convinced Moss to invest in horses. Fast forward to 2005, and the Mosses’ horse Giacomo, named for Sting’s son, won the Kentucky Derby. Zenyatta, named in honor of The Police album Zenyatta Mondatta, was runner-up for Horse of the Year in 2008 and 2009 and won the following year. A hit single by Sting also gave Moss the name for yet another profitable horse, Set Them Free.

Moss and Alpert were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as non-performers in 2006. Moss is survived by his current wife, Tina Morse, and three children. Variety has more details about Moss’ remarkable career.

(Left): On Oct. 1, 2012, the Grammy Museum honored Moss and Alpert as “Icons of the Music Industry,” an event that turned into an impromptu A&M Records reunion — Pictured, (l-r): Jon McHugh, the late Richie Gallo, Rick Stone, Herb Alpert & wife Lani Hall, Jerry Moss, DJ Ennis, Steve Resnik and Scot Finck.

Below: That’s Moss addressing an A&M Records Convention, circa 1988. Among the many luminaries pictured, Moss (center, with microphone) is bookended on his right by the late, legendary Charlie Minor and on his left by RAMP‘s Steve Resnik. [Group photos from the Steve Resnik Collection]